Reeder Custom Guns - Rmemebering

I grew up in the wide open spaces of eastern Washington State. My Grandpa had a ranch there, in the dry hilly country a ways south of Spokane. He grew wheat, barley, rye and oats on quite a few square miles of land. The nearest neighbor was 5 miles away and a trip to town was big deal, nearly 20 miles! We did not go to town often.

Guns were always a part of the ranch and I grew up with them. I was never taught that handguns were a short range affair. We had plow discs for targets on the hillside 200 yards across the coulee behind the house and rang them quite often with our .22's.

In later years when I would visit I brought .45 Colts and Ruger .357's and an old 1886 Winchester in .45-70. Shooting at targets out to a half mile was not a problem with the 45-70. I was shooting handloads with a 450 gr. cast bullet and driving it around 1400 fps. It would reach out very long distances quite easily. Dad had scrapped a 1941 Ford Coupe and left the body laying upside down on a small hill east of the house, near the Section Line. It was an honest 400 yards. The first time I shot at it with a Colt SAA .45 I was using Winchester factory loads with the copper colored lead bullet. I think they called them "Lubaloy". My first shot was over the car. The second shot was under. There was no dust from the third shot and then we heard a distant THUNK!

The dry volcanic ash soil made for wonderful long-range work. A .22 would kick up a dust cloud nearly 6 feet high when shooting into the fallow ground. You could tell if you were over or under and how to adjust your shots. My great-uncle Bob shot a bandit off a wagon at better than 300 yards with his old 30-30 doing just that. He was up on a hill above the road and as the bandits drove down the road as hard as they could whip the horses, Bob held out in front and fired. He saw how far back the bullet hit and walked his shots up until he hit one of them. Folks from back east have beautiful country with all that green grass but it is sure not conducive to long-range plinking. It's hard to beat the dry western lands for that sort of thing.

It was a great way for a young man to grow up and I am grateful for it. To this day I don't care to live in the city, preferring the country instead. And while I like trees, I don't care to live closely among them. I like the open country. It is all in how a person is raised I guess.

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A few years back Mark Conner flew out and shot a few photos of my Grandpa's ranch from the air. The ranch house was about where the metal shed at the left stands. The far ridge of the coulee directly across from the shed is where our targets were.

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I went to AZ once for a few days. I never got so sick of brown and it's tones in my life. Virtually I was sick to see some green! Finally hit it again in eastern OK. The open is pretty and I like it but also foreign to me, hard to truly tell distance. Mountains look not too far off, 5-7 miles? No try 40! What?!!!

Driving 2 hrs. to "town". I can't imagine. But then again some of these places we call town, if it has a store of some sort and a RFD, for sure a "town". Throw in a Dollar General and it's a big town. lol.

I sold a motorcycle to a boy from Wyoming. He drove nearly 30 hrs. to come get it. I put him up for the night and we went riding and to town the next morning on bikes for breakfast. On our ride he would be close then fall way behind. He later asked "how can you fly around a corner not knowing what's around the bend?". I never really thought of it like that. He's used to seeing for miles down the road. In the hills it was scary to him.

So true about the bullet impacts. Sometimes you get lucky and chunk up clods. A long shot in the hills is maybe 75-100 yds. Flat-landers speak of special corn patch guns to shoot 500-600 yds. It's a different game. But in the hills a belt gun becomes more equal to a long gun in the right hands.

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than you are. Flagstaff is in the middle of many millions of acres of National Forest. There is no brown around here. My shop is up at 7000 feet and I live at 8000 feet in the middle of the National Forest. I have a 14,000 foot mountain at my back door and hills surround us. No brown at all. Where in Arkansas can you see this..
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And when was the last time you drove to work looking at this?
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And looked at a sunset like this?
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or this?
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And when was the last time you put on snowshoes, walked out of your house, looked back and saw this?
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And if you get tired of snow you can drive 2 hours down to Phoenix and lay out by the pool. Can you do that in Arkansas?

That's what I thought.

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contiguous Ponderosa Pine forest in the world.

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stayed a couple days and drove out through Apache country. Me and this big tall Nigerian fellow. I think he was the only Black guy in Phoenix that day?! LOL We were an odd couple driving a little sports car with no plates through the state. We left late afternoon and made it to Albuquerque before we had to rest.

We saw some observation shed atop some hill, maybe south side of Phoenix? Road was one way in, one way out. My true African friend was totally freaked out, out of his element. He was raised in the big city, in a sea of bobbing brown heads. A trip he will never forget. It was so wild to me too, houses, little concrete homes with no grass (but nice citrus trees). The guy we visited was very proud of his backyard that had a little pool with a sidewalk and rocks around it. House looked about 1500 sq. ft. said it was worth close to $500K on the market? Wow.

No disrespect, just a Hillbilly and African far from home. Very different to us, pretty. We got up to 140 mph going across the petrified forest area! You couldn't tell the speed. Slowed back to about 85 and cheesed on.

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I grew up in the trees of S.W. Oregon, but with my dad flying air tankers on forest fires we were fortunate enough to live in many different areas of Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona during fire season and I decided early that I
really wanted to live in the high desert of Eastern Oregon.

But making a living sometimes gets in the way and I ended up in the low desert of the Columbia River Basin of Eastern Washington, about 30 miles from your farm.

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logging. I worked on Dog Mountain on the Columbia River and in Forks on the Peninsula.. I loved it there, but as Mark said you have to make a living. I stayed in Spokane for a month on a big trial. Got my ass handed to me.
Beautiful there. I would rather be out west, but I made a promise to my father that I would take care of my mom. I will do it until one of us is gone.

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I have a mason jar filled with sprigs of Mormon or Brigham Tea. I crack it open from time to time and inhale deeply. It is the perfume of the desert.

I was " varminting" south of Hurricane near the Arizona border. As I sat out in the wild I could get this scent off the morning breeze as the sun heated the atmosphere above the Hurricane Cliffs and Molly's Nipple( name of a butte to clarify things)

I just sat on the top of the old volcanic rocks and communed with nature and talked with God. It was a tough time for me as Dad passed that summer. But again I fell in love with the region and do not go a week without thinking of the region or the Casper Wyoming area. I love the fact that you have a ton of antelope, my favorite, and some decent fishing and even duck hunting on the Platte river.

I guess I was born out of place. Born and raised in Massachusetts but the Massachusetts of my youth is gone. It is politically correct nightmare. A move is in the future.

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Rmemebering

HA! I need spell check!!

So jealous Jim. Perhaps when we all get home.

Interesting! I'm a Hillbilly I guess.

You didn't look at all of Arizona. We are more in the woods

Yep, Arizona has the largest

It was just foreign to me. We flew into AZ, drove to Phoenix

Agree completely Jim.

I worked as a helicopter hooker for Evergreen when I was

I fell in love with the desert of SW Utah

Beautiful Country!