Having a compass is a great idea when you are out in the wilderness and need to find your way about. Having a compass does not mean you can't get lost however as many of you reading this will have discovered. But once lost it's important to have the training that will allow you to ...
The trouble with archaeologists is that they seem to be preoccupied with bits of pottery and old statues, most likely because these are things that have survived the ravages of centuries, even millennia, and not completely rotted away. But for most of us pottery and old sculptures might be nice but they just aren't at ...
I read W.W. Greener's book "The Gun and Its Development" from cover to cover back in the early seventies when I was first able to get into the shooting sports seriously, all 781 pages of it, and there was interesting and valuable material on every page. I emerged from it knowing a lot about rifles, ...
The book Firearms Curiosa by Lewis Winant is simply a delightful and fascinating reference for all firearms enthusiasts, and most especially for those of us really interested in the history and technological development of them. Just a browse through the contents page is enough to whet the appetite with chapters on such unusual items as "Two ...
It seems to have become the fashion in recent years for businesses not to have Christmas Parties any more but instead to have "Happy Holiday Parties"; which is odd really because the word holiday means "holy day". And so for a whole new generation Christmas, or more politically correctly Xmas, is all about the weird ...
One of the really enjoyable challenges that some Iron, Oil and Gunpowder aficionados go for is the problem solving it takes to get an old obsolete rifle or pistol shooting again. It is a challenge that combines a Sherlock Holmes quest for clues and supplies, cases, bullets, reloading data and tools with an inventiveness that ...
Back when I was heading overseas and had to lose most of my shooting library there was one book I was determined to keep, and that was "Brother to the Dingo" by Murray Mitchell. So I have it with me to this day and although it has been read through more than once and loaned ...
Back in the early seventies I read Frank C Barnes "Cartridges of the World" from cover to cover. It got me started in cartridge collecting, it helped me get started in reloading, and it gave me a solid database of firearms knowledge in one solid dose. It was a fabulous book I finished up not ...
I gave away my copy of Elgin Gates "Trophy Hunter in Asia" many years ago when I was moving to Asia with my family and had to make some hard decisions about my hunting and shooting library. Happily all the books went to good homes, just not my home any more. The move came at ...
I used to really enjoy the opening of the duck season in Australia back when I was living there. I got in with the right group of guys who knew the best duck lakes, which were also the most isolated and hard to get to lakes, where ducks could legally be had. So we'd head ...