Post by jaypee on Jul 10, 2017 11:17:58 GMT -5
Did I ever tell you guys about my greatest accomplishment as a handloader? Well, ahem, I happen to be the only handloader in history to work up a Salmon load for the .243 Winchester. Yessir, I really did.
It happened like this. Back about twenty five years ago I was living in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California and had worked up some really good loads with Speer's new 85 grain deer bullet in my .243 bolt guns. The principal species of deer in most of California was the little Pacific Blacktail, and the 85 grain bullet was just the ticket for them. If you got 50 pounds of meat out of the little devils you had surely shot a monarch, they were so small.
Well, a friend had asked me to adapt one of my bolt action .243 loads to his Browning Auto Rifle and the little 85 grainer shot like a dream in it and his brother's BAR as well. So I loaded up a hundred rounds for them, never imagining what they would be used for.
My friend's brother had a farm up there and that year the Sacramento River had risen and receded unusually rapidly and landlocked several goodly, 40 pound Salmon in one of the brother's irrigation canals. The banks were so steep they couldn't trap or net them, so they either had to let the fish rot in the stagnant water or harvest them. Well, you have to know what they did. Brother called my friend and told him to get his butt up to the farm with some of the 85 grain loads and they proceded to kill the Salmon with head shots in about four feet of water.
Now I've been meticulous about obeying game laws all my life, and so had my friends, but watching those salmon rot in the sun just wasn't something these guys were prepared to do, and I wouldn't have either. Well, I only tell the story because the statute of limitations has long since expired, but listening to the story and the smoked salmon they gave me was almost worth a little jail time, IMHO......tragically, I don't think the Guinness Book of World Records is too interested in that sort of thing, to their great loss.
Now, like Paul Harvey used to say, you have the WHOLE story.
Jer
It happened like this. Back about twenty five years ago I was living in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California and had worked up some really good loads with Speer's new 85 grain deer bullet in my .243 bolt guns. The principal species of deer in most of California was the little Pacific Blacktail, and the 85 grain bullet was just the ticket for them. If you got 50 pounds of meat out of the little devils you had surely shot a monarch, they were so small.
Well, a friend had asked me to adapt one of my bolt action .243 loads to his Browning Auto Rifle and the little 85 grainer shot like a dream in it and his brother's BAR as well. So I loaded up a hundred rounds for them, never imagining what they would be used for.
My friend's brother had a farm up there and that year the Sacramento River had risen and receded unusually rapidly and landlocked several goodly, 40 pound Salmon in one of the brother's irrigation canals. The banks were so steep they couldn't trap or net them, so they either had to let the fish rot in the stagnant water or harvest them. Well, you have to know what they did. Brother called my friend and told him to get his butt up to the farm with some of the 85 grain loads and they proceded to kill the Salmon with head shots in about four feet of water.
Now I've been meticulous about obeying game laws all my life, and so had my friends, but watching those salmon rot in the sun just wasn't something these guys were prepared to do, and I wouldn't have either. Well, I only tell the story because the statute of limitations has long since expired, but listening to the story and the smoked salmon they gave me was almost worth a little jail time, IMHO......tragically, I don't think the Guinness Book of World Records is too interested in that sort of thing, to their great loss.
Now, like Paul Harvey used to say, you have the WHOLE story.
Jer