Articles by Herschel Smith

Every … single … rule. Every one.

It’s remarkable how slowly he tried to figure out how the other guy was. He just sort of sauntered over to him, huh?

A Polish Sport Shooting Federation judge accidentally shoots a contestant at a shooting event. pic.twitter.com/jp3qwFU5i5

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 17, 2024

Via Wisco.

The old .270 Winchester ranks near the top, or at the top. His list is interesting, and it would never have occurred to me to choose a small caliber like that to hunt deer.

I will also say that I spent some of the evening studying the 280 Ackley Improved and I like what I see. It’s basically much like the 270 Win except about 20 grains heavier bullet weight.

What’s your favorite, and why?

These are the people who would presume to rule you, knowing nothing whatsoever about either firearms or the law. It’s truly remarkable how ignorant judges can be.

On another note, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, that arguing for semi-automatic firearms because they aren’t fully automatic firearms and thus not in military use is the wrong tactic. One of these days, some bright, inspired, progressive lawyer is going to make hay out of that tactic.

First of all, it runs contrary to the purpose of the second amendment, which is to ameliorate tyranny, or in other words, self defense against both individuals and the state. The only reason for taking firearms is that the government intends to do something to you that wouldn’t be possible if you were armed.

Second, this tactic is just factually false. Pistols are semi-automatic weapons, as are the Benelli M4 shotguns the Marines used to clear Now Zad, Afghanistan, of the Taliban. Designated Marksmen still use both bolt action rifles and AR pattern rifles, and shooting fully automatic as a designated marksman makes no sense. Sniper rifles are virtually universally bolt action rifles due to the bolt lockup and chamber dimensions as compared to gas guns. Many times I have conveyed that my youngest son used both the SAW and the M4 in Fallujah, and he never used the M4 in full auto mode. None of the Marines did. The “military use” mantra is a distinction without a difference.

Third, we are poisoning the court record with all of this language about semi-automatic versus automatic and how one is for civilian use and one is for military use. This could come back to harm the second amendment community when all of the examples of semi-automatic firearms usage is cataloged by some enterprising controller.

Just stop doing it. I understand all about winning the case before you, but these records could become very important down the road.

Readers may have noticed that I’ve been out a bit lately. I’ve been busy on hunting trips.

The deer was an 8-pointer taken at Groton Plantation with a 6.5 Creedmoor. He was shot straight through the chest. He pivoted directly towards me and I knew it was take the shot or lose the chance on him forever. The hog was taken at Groton with .444 Marlin. He had tusks. I can’t say enough for the power of the .444 Marlin. If you ever wonder if you’re bringing enough cartridge for the game, you don’t have to wonder with the .444 Marlin. Recoil is a thing, but only when you’re sighting in the gun. When harvesting game, recoil is irrelevant. It may as well be a 22LR. You don’t feel a thing. Maybe next year I’ll use a 45-70 with a Marlin rifle to see how that compares and contrasts.

I would in fact recommend Hornady 265 grain jacketed, bonded flat point versus the Hornady Lever Revolution. I just like it better.

You know how sometimes a hog will roll over and the legs look like he’s swimming? That doesn’t happen when you’re using .444 Marlin. It’s a quick, ethical kill.

There is nothing more fun than southeastern quail hunting. The dog handler was extremely good, and the dogs were great.

“Trooper, Star, get over here and get on them birds. Trooper, find birds. Trooper, hunt birds. Trooper, you’re a lying dog. There’s no birds over here. Trooper, come here and get on birds. Trooper is staying. Trooper is locked up on point. He’s right, they’ve coveyed up. Whoa Trooper, hunters, get over here, Trooper and Star are both locked up on point. Hunters, get over here. Good shot, nice shot. Trooper, dead bird. Trooper, go get that bird.”

At which point I saw Trooper swim into a swamp and get my bird, and on to the next single, or pair, or covey, for two and a half miles. I harvested a total of a dozen quail.

If you have a problem son, or a son or grandson who is bored, or into trouble, there is no greater antidote than something like this. Who wouldn’t like to see deer, hogs, snapping turtles, lizards, turkeys and quail? And see fantastic sunrises in the morning as a testament to the creation God gave us as a token of His esteem? I saw turkey at virtually every sit, and a lizard visited me in every stand I sat.

In my last sit I saw six does and a 4-pointer and 6-pointer. As a disciplined deer hunter I had to let them walk. That 6-pointer had good genetics and was chasing does. I’ve seen 6-pointers that didn’t do that even during the rut, but this boy will be a nice 8-pointer next year, and if I don’t take him next year maybe he’ll be a 10-pointer the following year.

This is the perfect solution to the feminized, communist education camps we call schools. In schools the state believes they own the children. During hunting, you can make it clear that men can do men things and it’s okay. No one owns them. And it’s okay to study the difference between 6.5 Creedmoor and .444 Marlin. And it’s okay to harvest deer with your favorite AR-10, or a bolt action, or a lever action, or any rifle that works for you.

So, fathers and grandfathers, get busy. This is what you should be doing with your boys. They may have to shoot a 20 rather than 12 gauge.

This is their antidote to the massive change in American politics.

Political commentator Anand Giridharadas said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Democrats needed a “feminist” version of  Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Giridharadas said, “You know when one person has a traumatic experience, we know what to do. we go to a counselor, a therapist, maybe they take some medication. When an entire country has a traumatic experience, it’s just called life. It’s just called history. We have an entire country and world that had a traumatic experience, whether it was my kindergartner wearing a mask to school, which I’m very glad we had masks, but also watching my kindergartner not being able to recognize the faces of their best friend because eyes are not enough at age 6 to recognize a face. And the enormous amount of mental health challenges that I don’t think we even fully realized were unleashed. The sense of defenselessness people felt economically. And you’re right that when you have that kind of traumatic event, it’s just in the blood in ways that historians may make sense of, sociologists may make sense of. I don’t think we right now are in a position to make sense of it.”

He added, “Particularly the media ecosystem, it is not it’s not a good one. It’s a negative one, it is a radicalization funnel. What they have done in the online media ecosystem is build a radicalization engine, the way militant groups do around the world. It takes people from low level annoyances with the world, ‘Why are eggs so expensive? Why are my kids learning things in school I didn’t learn? And then moves through You Tube videos, podcasts, moves them from the annoyance, to a full blown fascist politics. It’s an elaborate multibillion dollar infrastructure, and there is nothing like it on the pro-democracy side. We don’t have, when a man is lost and lonely and not yet radicalized, we don’t have the equivalent of Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson to move that man in a feminist direction.”

While understanding just a little bit about what happened, Scott Jennings end with “We have to figure out how to talk to …”

Scott Jennings masterclass on CNN last night.

Donald Trump now has a mandate.pic.twitter.com/LtjTkBOh05

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 6, 2024

Jen Psaki tells us how she feels and wanted a woman to be elected president.

Watch the moment Jen Psaki calls the race for President Trump on MSNBC before delivering one of most hyperbolic, unhinged descriptions of Donald Trump you’ll ever hear.

What an epic day!! pic.twitter.com/9MzPjR3CFt

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 6, 2024

You see, they still don’t get it. They think this is all about an influencer.

The party of “We don’t know the difference between a man and a woman” wants a woman to be elected president. It would be literally impossible to make this up if you hadn’t heard someone say it out loud.

The problem isn’t that leftists don’t know how to talk to more than half of America. The problem isn’t a lack of communication. The problem isn’t that they lack an influencer.

The problem is that their policy choices were all too clear: Gender confusion, DEI, inflation, more theft through taxation, more onerous control, whether gun control or wage and price controls, more wars of foreign adventure, more out-of-control deficit spending, more kowtowing to both the extremely wealthy on the one hand, having made deals behind closed doors for “special” deals for them, and the lay class on the other hand who wants to do the same thing as the elitists, i.e., fleece the middle class, more unfettered immigration – both hurting wages and increasing loss of income from taxes to pay for the medical care of immigrants (because the elitists won’t pay them medical care), and on and on the list could go.

They heard the message loud and clear. They rejected it, and soundly so.

The problem wasn’t a failure to communicate. They communicated all too well.

They still don’t get it. I hope they never do.

Well, it is Illinois, and the circuit court may ride roughshod over this decision like they did Judge McGlynn’s earlier decision. Here is the decision.

For all the good I think is in here, I still think he (and virtually all other judges and justices) miss the point about the second amendment existing for the amelioration of tyranny. Personal self defense is a cleaned up, sanitized version of the 2A meant to make the 2A more palatable for the inside-the-beltway types.

Self-defense must include defense against the tyranny of the state to be complete.

American Hunter.

Forty-one percent of surveyed hunters used an AR-platform rifle at some time for hunting, according to the findings of research conducted by Responsive Management for the Outdoor Stewards of Conservation Foundation (OSCF). When asked a similar question during a 2014 study, the rate was only 25 percent. Fifty-one percent of the hunters who do not currently use an AR said they would if it were legal in their state.

Nearly half of respondents said their favorite hunting firearm is a traditional rifle—defined for purposes of the survey as any rifle that’s not an AR. Another quarter prefer shotguns.

Roughly 80 percent of AR hunters use their firearm to hunt large game, a significant increase from 57 percent in 2014. Thirty-one percent said their preferred quarry is small game, about the same as 2014.

Over a third of AR hunters cited ease of shooting as the primary reason for their preference. Another 31 percent said their main motivation was accuracy. Reliability and weight reduction were the next-highest responses.

“It was not surprising to learn that hunting with AR-platform/modern sporting rifles is on the rise,” said Jim Curcuruto, executive director of OSCF. “I was surprised, however, to see that more than 50 percent of hunters that are not currently using AR-platform rifles to hunt with, responded that they are likely to try hunting with these versatile rifles in the future.”

Well, that the main motivation is accuracy is a little weird. I’ll stipulate that AR pattern rifles have greatly improved over the last ten years, and my rifles are generally 1 MOA. Bolt action rifles are too as long as you spend the money to get good rifles, and something like a Tikka will give you << 1 MOA accuracy. But of course to get the accuracy in an AR pattern rifle costs a lot of money too. I’d have to say generally that since you can buy a Tikka bolt action for < $1500, and getting really good accuracy out of AR-10 pattern rifle requires something like a Daniel Defense or Seekins Precision, you’re saving 50% on your purchase by opting for the Tikka.

Where I think the AR pattern rifle really comes in handy is something like hunting hogs where multiple shots can be taken very quickly. There might be other applications (a deer stumbles but begins to run and you need another round quickly). Anyway, as I said, opting for an AR pattern rifle because of accuracy over a bolt action sounds strange to me.

But I don’t find it surprising at all that AR pattern rifles are beginning to take off among hunters. I would day that if you opt for an AR pattern rifle, spend the money necessary to get a good one. On a recent hunting trip I heard a guide say that the cheaper AR-10s shooting .308 had malfunctions that require slamming the butt into the ground. Normally, that comes from a double-feed.

I will continue to remind everyone of the tragedy as long as I have breath.

By the way, I really love the cadence of his narration, and his prose is virtually poetic.

Recall that I told you that the Virginia Creeper trail above Damascus, Virginia, was closed, and the only part of the trail open was between Abingdon and Damascus?

Here’s why. I can’t embed it because it’s a YouTube Short. The images are stunning.