When a bullet exits the muzzle of a rifle, several things are happening. The gases from the ignition of the powder in the case, expand the case to form a seal against the chamber walls, and continue to expand forcing the bullet out of the case, into the throat, and rifling, which cause the bullet to spin with the rifling. It continues to spin after it exits. This stabilizes the bullet as it heads to it’s destination. The explosive force of the propellant, and the torque of the rifling, set up patterns of vibration in the barrel. When the bullet exits, it will exit at a particular point in that cycle of vibration. If the ammunition is consistent, and the operators hold is consistent, it will exit at the same point in the cycle each time it goes bang.

Good, or bad vibrations.

Different ammunition will set up different vibration patterns, and therefore produce different results. That is, the bullet will leave the muzzle at a different place. this may be only a fraction of an inch at the muzzle, but it can translate into several inches, or feet at the target end. If the barrel is vibrating upward, it will be higher, if downward, it will be lower if right or left, it will be right or left of it’s intended goal.

Try this. Take several boxes of differing ammunition for the same rifle to the range. Set up several targets, and fire five rounds each at 100 yards of each type. Some will be grouped tighter than others. If you have one that performs particularly well, you should make that one your ammunition of choice. Even if it lands low and to the left of the target, you can adjust the sights or scopes to put that group in the bullseye.

A personal experience.

I had a friend who had an old Enfield rifle that he was about ready to part with because he couldn’t keep it on the paper. He asked me to give it a try. I sat at the bench and fired five rounds of his ammo at the bullseye. None of those five rounds came within 8 inches of the bullseye, but they were all clustered in a nice little 1 inch or less cluster at the bottom right hand corner of the target. When he peered through the spotting scope at the spectacle, he changed his mind about the rifle. Damn the luck! I really wanted it for my collection!

Group size is important. Where the group lands is also important, but that is just a matter of moving the sights. A different ammunition might have put one round in the bull, and the rest in each corner. That would almost guarantee an hour of following a long blood trail through dense brush in a hunting scenario.

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Unfortunately, I don’t get to spend much time fishing. My work keeps me in a boat a lot in lakes and ponds around the Eastern part of the State Of Texas, but never with a rod and real. East Texas is covered with woodland, and lakes and ponds, it is kind of like a sportsman’s paradise if you like hunting and fishing, and who doesn’t?

So, if you have some fishing experiences you would like to share, some questions for other anglers, some stories you would like to tell about the big one that got away, or some pics of the one that didn’t, just jump right in! The waters fine!

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First of all, I am not a taxidermist, but I got the idea for the name when I was building boxes for habitat displays for a friend of mine who was an award winning taxidermist. Sometimes he would cut off a sliver of meat from a deer he was working on and pop it into his mouth for a snack! I thought, well, if you are going to kill it, you might as well eat it!

Let’s talk! Let’s talk fishing, hunting, outdoors, do it yourself, any thing your heart desires about the great outdoors.

Some of the categories I would like to create are:

• Fishing, and fishing related topics.
• Hunting, and hunting related topics.
• Guns! Yes guns I said! Whether you use them for hunting, self defense, putting holes in small pieces of paper at long distances, or even collecting.
• On the topic of guns, we can even break it into the categories listed above, and more. Things like:
• Target shooting.
• Hand loading, which is one of my personal favorites.
• Collecting military, and civilian firearms.
• Handguns
• Rifles
• Bow hunting.
• And, of course, if it is your area, taxidermy.

The idea here is to turn this blog into a sort of open forum on the great outdoors, a place you might want to set down with a cup of coffee and visit in the morning. We will be adding a forum shortly, and in the meantime use the comments section at the bottom of each post, to let us, and everyone else who reads this, know what you are thinking.

All you have to do, is sign up, and sign in, and you can post to your hearts content!

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