Little Pistol .. Big Results
If I am up I am usually carrying some kind of gun. Working around the place here, mowing, watering, feeding critters etc. I usually carry my Bearcat ShopKeeper. It's handy for snakes and other varmints.
We have had raccoons after our chickens and chicken feed. The other day using the little Bearcat I got number 10 .. or maybe it is number 11. I forgot exactly how many I have shot with this neat little pistol.
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Fond memories.
Wow. It has been forty years or so. When I was a young man I did some coon hunting with this odd fellow in town. He loved dogs and so I was the shooter. I had a Smith and Wesson M41 that was drilled and tapped ( I know. Apostasy!!! ) and had the old Tasco 1.5 illuminated pistol scope. A small red triangle on a post and cross hair reticule.
I carried it in a modified Uncle Mikes nylon shoulder rig. So with Wheat Lights and the gun, we'd take off in the wee hours of the night going after the masked bandit.
I had a ton of fun and learned a bit about night navigation as well.
Another byproduct of the hunt was delicious racoon meat. Again some will recoil in horror but when put into a crockpot it came out nice and tender.
My favorite meat (from a critter that most
wouldn't think of eating) is Mountain lion. The steaks of a lion is some good eating. And unusual too. The steak would be blood red when I put it on the grill. 3 minutes later it is a white meat, not unlike chicken.
Another unusual treat is one that one of our African
guides cooks for us. First we have to shoot an eland, and normally on any safari one of the hunters will go for eland. I have shot 2 of them and Kase another one and the villagers love me when we do. That eland will feed a whole village for a week or two.
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John Taffin shot one too.
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Some other large animals will work for this but the eland is best. I saw the guide slinging something around behind the cook shack and asked another guide what he was doing. He said he was slinging the shit out of the large intestine. When he finished doing that he cut off a section of the intestine about 2 feet long. He cleaned it out back then the heart, kidneys and liver are chopped up into small pieces. He then crammed the intestine full of the pieces of
the heart, liver and kidneys. When he finished that he took some twine and sewed up each end of the intestine and deep fat fried it in a large pot. When the whole thing was finished it was crispy and smelled great. He laid it on a table and cut off sections about an inch thick and passed it to each of us. It was some really good eating. You have to keep telling yourself it's just eland steak and forget what it really is.