Ted’s essays

why reload your own ammunition

By the time you have purchased the equipment required to load your own ammunition, then bought primers, powder, brass and bullets, you will not have saved any money over purchasing commercial factory loaded ammunition. Trained snipers use commercial high-end ammunition made specifically for that task. Cost per round doesn’t matter, but repeatability, reliability and lethality mean everything. Hunters only take a few shots per year per rifle. They cannot make handloading pay off for them. Your typical handloader is a guy who shoots in competition. We shoot a lot. The cost-per round must be on par with the cheap ammo while the accuracy through OUR GUNS has to be nearer the high end. I shot DCM, then CMP, and […]

wasp nest VS Mossberg

I have no love for meat bees. They invariably figure out that I am meat. I can share my spaces with honey bees of all stripes and persuasions. If I don’t attack them, they don’t attack me. That is the essence of Libertarian relationships. I have employed various tools to minimize the meat bee populations in my area of operation, including baited traps and hired killers. With the leaves gone from our local trees the very large hornet population around here was explained by a mongo nest high in a tree above the corner of our house. The above photo is after application of birdshot and buckshot which I am confident will minimize the population next spring and summer. I […]

The blessings of a few hundred Gs

Today uncountable Gs definitely brought a smile to my face, a spring to my step. Organized crime (private sector) movies taught us to use Gs when referring to thousand-dollar bits. A hundred Gs is $100,000 in that parlance. I am abusing the pun here. My semi-retired Honda CRX race car was scowling at me from under its coat of dust. We hadn’t flexed our muscles in a very long time and the rapidly approaching winter threatened to add another 6 months to that streak. Heck, world events could add “forever” to it. Today I was harrumphing my way around the estate mulling over my impossibly long list of pre-winter chores when the CRX suggested we do something JUST FOR THE […]