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Episode-1634- Expert Council Q & A for 8-28-15 — 14 Comments

  1. No excuses, can’t wait to listen.
    You’re hard on a fella man.
    I just finished a busy day gardening.

    No rest for the wicked

  2. Appleseed instructor here: No. 1 answer is “bring the rifle you have”. Our course of fire is designed around a magazine or clip fed semiautomatic, but I have shot and seen tube fed, bolt action, lever guns, you name it ( one instructor took a Davy cricket youth single shot rifle and scored rifleman with it to prove it could be done). If the caller doesn’t have a rifle and wants something special, the easy answer is the 50th anniversary edition Ruger 10/22. It was designed by an Appleseed instructor, comes with an aperture (peep) sight and interchangeable cheek comb and length of pull spacers to get a custom fit.

    Really, any rifle will do. Our standard is hitting a 500yd man sized target (or 4moa reduced target at 25m) with a rack grade military rifle, surplus ball ammo, and iron sights. We allow any rifle from .22 to 8mm, any sights, sling support only.

    If you want more info go to appleseedinfo.org >links>our forum.

    • My advice for a new shooter going to their first appleseed. Go into it with a good positive attitude and have the right gear. The right gear as far as firearms goes is a semi-auto magazine fed .22 rifle WITH sling swivel studs, 1.25” quick detachable sling swivel loops, a USGI web sling, and a scope. This will give you the best chance learn the skills taught at an appleseed.

      Why does this matter in wood or synthetic stock? Does either of the stock options you’re looking at have have built in studs to attach the sling swivels? If not you MUST install them yourself. Would you rather install those into wood or plastic? For a 10/22 do you want to install the front swivel stud in the stock or by the barrel band adapter? This may affect your decision.

      Next is appearance. Your wood stock will get nicked and scratched and dented. Will this bother you? Synthetic won’t be so easily damaged.

      Why scope versus iron sights? You will receive a lot of shooting instructions in a short amount of time and may get overwhelmed. You will be outside all day in the rain, wind, sun etc. Your eyes will get tired. A scope will allow you to learn the skills taught, save your eyes, and quickly see each shot and learn what it feels like to “throw” a shot and instantly see it. You will get instant feedback on your shots and you will have more success and enjoy the event more. Then you take your skills learned back home and practice with iron sights. You don’t need a fancy scope. Get a basic 22 scope with good reviews and good scope mounts.

      I agree with Andrew above that you can shoot any type of gun at an appleseed. However, what I described will give you the greatest chance to enjoy your experience. Also, a Marlin 795 is a great choice for an appleseed if a 10/22 isn’t in your budget. Don’t forget to thank your instructors and be safe and have a great time!

  3. Sugar: Here is one example that really drove the point home for me. Total blood serum in your body is about 5L more or less. At a blood glucose level of 100 mg/dL this equates to 5g of sugar – one teaspoon; just multiply the numbers. Forget the distinction between glucose and fructose. So what happens when you eat a bag of Oreos, drink a couple of cokes, and eat a bag of chips? The only reason you are even alive is because of the capability of your liver to metabolize this crap. Otherwise, you would have been dead a long time ago. Unfortunately, eventually your liver can’t handle it, along with our pancreas, and you get sick, and die.

    For me there is no down side to reduced refined carb consumption. Call it Paleo, or take it to a full blown ketogenic diet, and I have done that; it will lengthen your lifespan.

    There is no requirement for a human being to eat carbohydrate. Your brain needs glucose, but if you don’t eat it, your liver will supply it from amino acids. And even if you did eat it, you still can’t identify where the required glucose came from to power your brain. If this were not the case people could not survive fasting for extended periods of time. I point this out just to emphasize how absolutely insane the US food supply has become. It is basically anti-human being.

    Insulin is the big elephant, but so is glucagon. A great lecture can be found here, https://youtu.be/VjQkqFSdDOc, which was taken from Kendrick’s website, http://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2015/08/04/turning-diabetes-upside-down/. If this does not motivate you to kick the refined carb habit, I don’t know what will.

  4. SLUGS! I’m near Seattle as well, as a long time “eagle eye slug hunter”, the title given to me by my grandma when I was a kid I know a whole lot about dealing with slugs. I honed my BB gun shooting skills on slugs btw :p

    Here’s a few pointers without having to buy much. Beer is #1, Slugs love Beer..the cheaper the better..they also drown easy. My family would put slug beer stations every 8-10′ in the garden, using old butter containers or as my dads favorite Rainer Tall cans…buried with a 1/2-1″ lip above the ground. The slugs climb in to get the beer but then can’t get out and drown.

    To keep rain and water from flooding your stations use a weighted cover like another plastic container with large cutouts in it. Now this is what I do these days….This is crazy easy…to make even cheaper buy bulk grain from a feed store like whole Barley or Wheat. Simply drop a 1/2 cup of grain into container with water, it will naturally start to ferment and will attract your slugs also attracts and kills flies too. Double Bonus.

    And if that’s not enough you can try to attract and or get some Garter snakes, these harmless little guys love slugs, my 4 year old daughter was screaming at me just a few days ago to come see the fat snake! It had a huge slug half way down it’s mouth and finished it in 10 min, was really cool to show them as my dad always kept nesting areas around and told me this but I have never caught one in the act, I finally proved him he was right all the 35+ years later.

    And if that’s not enough you have some final protection by using copper tape, this works sometimes if it’s dry…not so much when it’s wet or the humidity is high. In high school I actually did a science project using bare copper wires and a small solar panel with 9V battery to make an electric slug fence. I suspended it using double headed nails, one wire was the positive and another the negative…worked great and with how cheap those solar lights are these days you could make a simple cost effective solution for raised beds.

    Cheers!

  5. On the 10/22 stock, I would also add that if you are going to be taking it into the woods with you or just using it as a “throw around gun”, a wooden stock is going to get scratched and beat up much worse than a synthetic stock. Might not be a big deal to some, but just something to think about.

    • I feel this way, if you are not willing to have scratches on a gun meant for hunting, you likely don’t deserve to own the gun.

    • I prefer to think of em as “beauty marks”. I got an old (like from before serial numbers were required) Stevens .22/.410 ou (what would later be the savage 24 and is the grandparent of the savage 42 now). My father bought it from the widow of an old bush pilot in kodiak Alaska back in the late 70s. The guy had had it as a bailout survival rifle banging around in his bush plane. My dad said that there was another one in the lot that looked newer, but he bought this one cuz it had according to him “character” to it. Thirty some odd years later it is in my possession (dad threatened to get rid of it cuz the selector broke and he didn’t think it was safe anymore. I read up on em online and found that it was a common and easy fix, told him I’d take it). There’s almost no blueing left on it and the stock is cracked but useable. All the restoration I’ve done to it is scrub the surface rust off and rub some carnuba wax into the stock. I think it’s gorgeous.

  6. 2nd the Ruger 10/22 50th anniversary edition. I got the 2014 model from gunbroker, just before the 2015 model came out (51st anniversary ed??). It shoots well out of the box, and looks great too!

  7. Jack, you didn’t talk about lespedeza. You said you would in the comments of the expert council show last week

  8. This was a good one.
    Erica S. Is so cool. I’m a bit behind on episodes, but just wanted to say I like Erica! She has a great way of delivering what she has to say. Great work!

  9. On the military vehicle topic, I purchased a CUCV M1008 truck about three years ago from a person who buys a lot of military surplus vehicles near me for $2900 cash and a standard AR. I wanted a farm truck, and I’ve since added a class IV hitch and upgraded to a spin-on fuel filter and replaced the fuel lines at the same time just for good meausure. Otherwise, I’ve done nothing, and it’s been fantastic. No way I could have purchased a decent running diesel 4×4 truck where I live for that kind of money. In my opinion, CUCV trucks are a great deal if you can find one at a decent price that is in good mechanical condition. Take a look at the price of a new heavy duty 4×4 diesel truck and you’ll see what I mean. My truck may not look all shiny and new, but it’ll still haul anything I can hitch to it and pull in and out of the woods in the dirt and mud. The price I paid for it and the utility of it make me love it more than I probably would a new truck to be honest. Something great about getting value out of something cheap. BTW, they are all mechanical, so if you do any vehicle work yourself, it’s easy on this truck. Forget having to diagnose codes and sensors – another reason to love these old trucks in my opinion.

  10. Erica is *awesome*. Smart, funny, classy, personable … she makes everything sound like something we could all do and enjoy instead of a difficult, complicated chore. Her answers are clear and concise, her information is useful and sensible and her delivery is both dynamic and at the same time uniquely humble. Sometimes I listen to her answers twice and as a bonus she is easy to find when skipping through the podcast. You may want to do a ‘best of Erica’ compilation!