Articles by Herschel Smith

American Hunter.

This is the primary reason hunters pull the cord on all-day sits. It’s tough to sit in a tree or ground blind all day, but it’s almost impossible to do so if you’re too cold, too warm or soaking wet. That’s why high-quality clothing is worth the price.

Hunters have learned that layering is the key to regulating temperature. The widely accepted three-layer system, which consists of a base layer, mid layer and outer layer, works well, but you must understand why this system works—and what may cause it to fail.

The base layer should be made of thin, wicking fabric. Cotton is out because it holds moisture, which robs the body of heat. The mid layer is an insulating layer that is designed to hold heat while still wicking away moisture. The outer layer is your protection against wind and rain, and it provides an additional insulating layer. Moisture is your enemy, so don’t pile on all your layers then hike a mile to your stand. Instead, shed your top layer and allow the perspiration to evaporate. Any exposed skin will lose heat, so a face mask, beanie and gloves that extend above the cuff of your jacket will help retain heat. Mittens are warmer than gloves, but in recent years I’ve come to prefer a hand-warmer muff with heat packs inside, and I always carry extra hand and foot warmers. In extreme cold, a sleeping bag or body suit will help keep you warm.

While I can’t say I live in the coldest of climates (certainly not compared to some of my readers), I can say that I have never gotten cold during a sit.  Boredom is my biggest enemy.

I wear a short sleeve sports shirt, wicking and non-cotton, with a long sleeve Merino wool shirt over that, the next layer is fleece, and the final layer is a Simms GorTex Parka.  It’s pricey, but fishing companies make the best rain gear.

I use Mechanix camo Impact gloves for mild days, and if it’s really cold I have Swany brand ski gloves.  I might invest in another brand (Hestra Guide Gloves), but they’re very pricey.

One trick I’ve known all of my life is that you lose a lot of warm air up through your neck coming from your whole body.  Using the hood of your parka prevents most of that.  Also, if you’re prone to your face getting cold, wear a balaclava.

Finally, a really enjoyed wearing a neck gaiter for the first time last season.  There is nothing like it.

Here are three good reviews of the new form, admittedly a bit wordy in places, but make sure not to miss the nuance.  They all seem to add different things to the full analysis.

I guess the moral of the story is to be very careful in the future what you say, what you sign, and how your purchase your firearms.  Not that you aren’t already so, but increased diligence is required in the future.

In particular, I don’t like the question asking where you are within the city limits where you reside.  I also see this as fomenting the upcoming war between the DOJ/ATF and local, county and state law enforcement over the 2A, with the former pressing increased infringements, and the later exercising nullification.  I’ve told you to watch out for this as the movement expands and increases over the country.  And expand it will, you can be sure.

This comes via Ken’s site.  It should be a daily stop for you.

Remarks: Listen carefully to what the CEO said when they brought the idea for the predecessor to the Model 70 to him.  In my own experience, CEOs rarely if ever make good or right decisions for companies.  It would nearly always be better to put major company decisions up to a vote of the employees, bit a second option would be to use a random number generator to make company decisions.  It would usually be better than what corporate officers decide.

Just wow.  If this is the level of reasoning present in the courtrooms of American, it’s no wonder we are in such trouble.  The judges are just awful, especially Thacker (while Neimeyer and Richardson are only slightly better), and while Neimeyer and Richardson should probably be disallowed from doing anything more complicated than sweeping floors, I’m not certain that Thacker should even be allowed to answer phone calls.

I’m also not very impressed with the first attorney, but the second one (arguing for the state of Maryland for the AWB) was as dishonest as he was disrespectful of the judges.  He had the gall to argue that the fact that so many people own AR-15s didn’t mean that it was in common use for self defense.  He wanted the case to be remanded back to the district court to develop that argument (he doubts that it’s ever been used).

It’s astonishing that the judges didn’t hold him in contempt for making such a ridiculous argument.  Even after Bruen, the state of Maryland still cannot abide the ownership of America’s Rifle, and also cannot seem to come up with good arguments against it.  If the judges allow that bit of stupidity he expressed to hold the day, it’s a stupider court than I had even imagined.

And I’m very unimpressed with the 4th Circuit.  For what it’s worth, the entire edifice of whether a weapon was once in military use is silly and was never a good foundation.  All weapons were used in the military, pump action shotguns, semiautomatic shotguns, bolt action rifles, semiautomatic rifles, machine guns, cannon, knives, etc.

Listen to it all, or begin at 24 minutes if you want to hear someone actually argue that ownership of said weapon doesn’t count as common use if it hasn’t actually been used in a self defense scenario.  He wants you to suffer a home invasion in order to kill his argument in court.

Gun controllers are such awful people.

Slav Guns has this fun video of unboxing of his new Savage 110 Switchback, which apparently was only built in a limited run and only available through Sportsman’s Warehouse.  He obviously intends to remove the action and put it inside a chassis.

One commenter remarks, “I’m waiting for the Ruger Predator.”  I didn’t know they were intending to build a 6mm ARC bolt action gun, but he might have meant the Savage 110 Carbon Predator, which is available in 6mm ARC.  He said that the Savage 110 Tactical was being built in a 16″ or 18″ barrel, defeating the point of the 6mm ARC.  The Savage 100 Carbon Predator is also being built with a 18″ barrel.

Right now not even the Savage web site shows this in 6mm ARC, while Shooting Illustrated says it is.

Field & Stream has an article up on low recoil deer cartridges.  Their list is as follows.

• .223 Remington
• .224 Valkyrie
• .243 Winchester
• .257 Roberts
• .25-06 Remington
• .260 Remington
• 6.5×55 Swedish
• 6.5 Creedmoor
• 6.8 Remington SPC
• 7mm-08 Remington
• .30-30 Winchester
• 350 Legend

It’s beyond me how you could write an article on the best low recoil deer cartridges and not mention 6mm ARC, using a bullet twice the weight of the 5.56/.223, essentially the same velocity, with only slightly more recoil.

Perhaps it’s the lack of viable bolt action rifles in this round, but you can still use an AR for the hunt.  Grendel Hunter has as many or more 6mm ARC uppers as they do 6.5 Grendel.

I remain disappointed at the slow adoption of this cartridge.

Outdoor Life.

New Jersey appellate court judge issued an order on Wednesday, Nov. 30 to temporarily pause the state’s first black bear hunt since 2020, which was set to start on Monday, Dec. 5. The halt is in response to a lawsuit filed by the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, the Humane Society of the United States, and Friends of the Animals. These three organizations decry active black bear management and denounce population count methods used by the state. (If this all sounds familiar, it’s because a similar lawsuit was filed in Montana over wolf hunting.)

Many New Jerseyans were shocked on Nov. 15 when governor Phil Murphy and the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife reinstated a limited black bear hunt. Governor Murphy had sworn to end the hunt once and for all during his campaign but changed his tune after bear encounters spiked across the state. New Jersey has one of the highest concentrations of black bears in the country, with an estimated population of around 3,000 to 4,000 bears. New Jersey is 8,723 square miles, putting the population density at around one bear every 2.2 square miles. However, since much of the state is made up of metropolitan areas, densities in some places are likely much higher than that.

No one deserves this more than a state who would elect the likes of Bob Menendez and Cory Booker to the U.S. Senate, and Phil Murphy to the governor’s mansion.

Actions have consequences.  Suck it up, New Jerseyans.  Call the cops while that black bear is charging you or tearing your pet dogs to pieces.  Their response time should be less than half an hour.

Modern game management techniques and herd size control are only for smart people.  The rest can go pound sand.

I removed a post made by fellow writer PGF.  I did so after receiving this note from Ammoland editor Fredy Riehl, as follows.

Hello  captainsjournal100″ (sic)

You have content from our website that is in violation of our copyrights. (here is one example, you have multiple.)

The Captain’s Journal » Self-Defense Skills and Drills, The Casino Drill (captainsjournal.com)

 Please remove all content and images you may have scraped from our domain at once and email us notice it has all been deleted and scrubbed from your domain captainsjournal.com

This is a poorly written letter with awful editing (e.g., you don’t end the sentence with a period if there is a qualifier in parentheses, nor put a period inside the parentheses, I don’t know what the ” is about at the beginning of the letter, etc.).  But I got the gist of his offense.

I responded to Fredy as follows.

Mr. Riehl,

To avoid problems with you, the offending post has been removed.  The post was made by one of my somewhat less experienced co-writers, not me, but that’s irrelevant to the main point.

But let me make this clear to you.  I don’t consider any other post (of which I’m aware) to have violated ANY legal stipulations whatsoever.  I consider previous posts in which TCJ has linked Ammoland to be “fair use.”  I make precisely zero (0) dollars or cents from my web site.  In fact, I have to pay for the services.  This is a labor of love for the sake of the 2A.

Furthermore, I’m surprised that you would have sent this note.  You clearly don’t understand the way the internet works.  We ALWAYS lift a bit of pose out of articles, commentary, and observations, usually make some comments or remarks of our own, whether agreeing and expanding on the points (usually the case) or in rare cases disagreeing and explaining why, and then send the reader to the link we provide for Ammoland (or whatever other publisher).  This increases (a) your traffic, and (b) your internet power (Google Page Rank).  That you don’t understand this is a testimony to … frankly, I don’t know what.  I rarely get notes like this except from very small publishers who get almost no traffic.  Again, I’m quite surprised at you.  Almost stunned at the ignorance of your note.

David Codrea and I have exchanged links like this almost forever, and if I do lift some limited content from his web site or Ammoland article (or Firearms News), I will NEVER copy in a link he provides himself based on his own research.  I have also helped him a bit with research (usually limited but it has happened), never demanding payment or recognition.

Henceforth, I will link to Ammoland almost never.

See how that works?  Was that what you intended?

And I will add that the instances where I have helped David are extremely rare and the instances where he has helped me far outnumber the times I’ve helped him.  But the point still stands.

For evidence of what I’m saying, go peruse Instapundit any day to see the prose they lift from articles, sending visits to the source.  It’s all fair use.  This is the way the internet works.  PGF responded to me with this note.

Not only did I link the full article but what i did amounted to a tease and promo, even directing the reader that they had to procede to ammoland to get the main and important information.

I responded back with this note.

I know.  They’re acting like a small and inexperienced publisher.  This is all water over the dam.  This is fair use, and they know it.

I’m not worried about it – in fact, a bit offended that he sent the note to begin with.

This is why the 2A community might fail in the end.  He thinks we’re siphoning traffic.  Rather, we’re sending it to him.

Fredy finally responded with this: “Thank you for your fast action and for your support of our second amendment.  This is all just a matter of housekeeping when we have a large site with lawyers involved.”

I don’t think so.  I think the Ammoland lawyers know the difference between copywrite violations and fair use by sites who make no income (but rather, send traffic to the source).  I think Fredy has a flair for the dramatic.

And thus, I won’t be linking Ammoland anymore.  I thought I should explain this to readers.

Source.

A state lawmaker is now admitting a mistake was made that has led to a lot of confusion and anger from Indiana deer hunters. New regulations prohibit hunters from using any kind of rifle to hunt deer on public property, like state parks. But the author of the bill that caused this said that was never the intention.

Republican State Representative Sean Eberhart (Shelbyville) authored House Bill 1415, which is at the heart of the confusion.

“First of all, it was something that nobody caught when the bill was first passed,” said Eberhart.

In 2016, rifles could be used on public land only when they shot pistol rounds, but high velocity ammunition could be used on private property. This year, lawmakers changed the existing law to clarify the rules regarding high velocity rounds.

I think that’s an error in the article.  Rather than “pistol” cartridges, I think it should have read “straight wall” cartridges, which would include 350 Legend (Indiana was one of the reasons the cartridge was designed to begin with), 45-70, etc.  But I’ll let an Indiana reader clarify this.

“The intent of the change was to make it more clear on what high velocity rifle rounds you could use on private property,” said Eberhart, “when that change was made, it inadvertently pulled in the pistol rounds as well [and] unfortunately the law now says that you can use those high velocity and pistol rounds in a rifle, but only on private grounds.”

That oversight has left deer hunters unhappy. Many outfitters and gun stores we spoke to on the phone said they’re getting calls from angry and confused hunters.

When questioned how neither he nor any of the law co-signers caught the oversight before it was voted on, Eberhart responded, “That’s a good question, not only did we not catch it as myself or any other legislator, LSA didn’t catch it, no other department didn’t catch it, DNR didn’t catch it, so we had a lot of eyes on this bill and no one caught that inadvertent change.”

In light of that, Eberhart hopes to fix the problem soon.

“I’m very confident we can address it come session time in January…but it’s my hope that we can address it short term as well,” said Eberhart.

What that short term fix could be and whether it can happen fast enough for this season, which starts November 18^th, isn’t clear. But Eberhart reiterated that he and his fellow lawmakers are working on a solution.

Yes, this article is dated and I missed it when it came out, but after a brief search I haven’t been able to find any amelioration of this stupidity.

I’m also not convinced that this is an error or oversight.  The simplest thing to do here to remove the ban on all cartridges and let hunters shoot what they want, thus ensuring ethical harvesting.

Indiana’s hunting lands are far more expansive than where I live, and we don’t shoot centerfire cartridges into homes around here.  The alleged concern is a sham.

Thanks for all the notes.  TCJ was down for some maintenance.

Source.

The writer has it at (5) Lee-Enfield, (4) AR-15/M-16, (3) Mauser Gewehr 98 / Karabiner 98k, (2) Mosin-Nagant, and (1) AK-47 and derivatives.

They don’t do much in the way of producing evidence for their assertions and I have my doubts.  For example, who is to know how they counted AR-15s/M-16s?  If you sum the total deployed to SE Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, other armies across the globe, and AR-15 and variants, including upper and lower receivers sold separately, would you have come up with their number of 20 million?  I seriously doubt it.  I think there have been more than 20 million full ARs sold in America just in the civilian market alone.

However, it’s worth nothing that the gun that was built for conscripts (AK) who didn’t know how to shoot and didn’t want to mechanically understand the gun has been quite successful.

That’s one observation that should be made, of course, that genius Eugene Stoner designed his rifle for the professional soldier who needed MOA or sub-MOA performance, and wanted to understand how to work on his rifle.  As it is said, the AR is an MOA gun, while the AK is a minute-of-man gun.

Furthermore, America was built, at least up until the 1980s or so, with garage, backyard and farm mechanics working on cars, gun, and machines of all sorts, repairing them, cleaning them, and making them better.  Eugene Stoner knew this, I suspect, and didn’t worry too much that it was “too professional” of a rifle for the professional soldier.

From my point of view, Stoner understood the AK about as well as Kalashnikov did. Watch and tell me I’m wrong.

Here are the preceding two videos of Stoner and Kalashnikov at the range (Link 1 and Link 2).  One day I’ll embed the entire Eugene Stoner tape library for viewing.