Cliff R

"I wish the B5 P23 grip had a cap, and could store something (spare batts, M&Ms, whatever)." +2 All of my 308-AR's have A2 stocks on them for the same reason, storage. I keep a small cleaning kit in the 308-AR I take out West Elk Hunting and some fire starting stuff......

Agreed, nice shooting. Personally I would NOT make any changes or rule out the Barnes bullet not working well until you get to spend some range time on a calm day with no wind at all. Wind is NOT your friend with these things and can move the shooter and the bullets around a lot more than one would think they would.......FWIW.....

never heard of the guy......I guess I don't get out much......

Keep in mind that your equipment shoots better than you do.......and.....................there is no-one shooting back at you! Nice work!!.........

I did some 22 ammo testing a few years ago in my bolt action. It's a really old Sears and Roebuck (Marlin) and absolutely the most consistently accurate 22 rifle I've ever shot. It was a MESS way back in the 1970's when I acquired it, but cleaned up nicely and turned out to be quite a shooter. A few years ago just for fun I tested a bunch of different 22 LR ammo. Some of the details escape me but I shot Remington bulk pack stuff, Federal, CCI and Winchester. ALL the bulk pack stuff was dirty and not all that great. I did all the shooting at 50 yards from a good bench rest. The overall winner for accuracy was Winchester Western Super X. With that said it came from bricks I bought at least 30 years ago. CCI was right there with it. Both were just standard 22 round nose, not hollow points. I managed several dime sized groups from the WW and the CCI was hanging right there with it but just a tad larger groups. Some of that bulk pack chit was out to almost 2" with a few fliers in most groups making them even bigger. This particular rifle is so accurate you can shoot a hole in a piece of paper at 25 yards then shoot at the hole and after half a dozen shots you can't tell how many rounds you've fired. My 10/22 is decent, but no where near as accurate or consistent as the old Marlin bolt action rifle. I have managed a few groups hovering around 1" at 50 yards but it's not consistent and almost always a 10 shot group will have several fliers in it. Although not as accurate I've moved to the 10/22 for groundhog hunting and have killed several in excess of 200 yards. My hit ratio to 100 yards is pretty close to 100 percent. It falls off so fast after 100 yards I'm half that at 150 and maybe one in 5 or 6 out at 200 yards and that's on a calm day where I don't have to worry about windage, just elevation.......

I ran into some crappy 22 ammo from Remington yesterday....Thunderbolt 22. I was sighting in my 10/22 after upgrading the scope. Talk about chitty ammo. I started out with some CCI and once I got things dialed in shot a nice 1" group at 50 yards. Started running low on the CCI and had brought along some Remington Thunderbolt. Talk about crap. Every other round or so had a noticeable difference in "report" like the powder charge was down some. A couple didn't have enough ass to eject the shell and effectively chamber another and jammed it up. One jam was so bad I had to pry the dinged round back with a screwdriver to clear the weapon. The groups at 50 yards were chit, lots of flyers and groups were out to about 4-5" instead of nesting nicely in a 1" circle like the CCI ammo. I switched back to the CCI and everything was fine. I guess Remington either doesn't know or doesn't care about that crap because it's just 22 rimfire and unlikely one would stick a round in the barrel or blow your gun up with it.......FWIW......Cliff

Thanks......not sure if anyone noticed but he plague from SAI School was for being on staff at the Instructors School, or train the trainers course. I can't think of a better job, teaching others to be SAI instructors and shooting guns all day! Sadly, I couldn't hang out there very long. It was a nice break from chit-tons of deployment, and Deb was getting tired of me being around so much anyhow so I short toured from there and back to the grind......

Thanks. Got to do a lot of cool chit back in them days, been all over that region. Can't remember ever being in a hotter place than Guyana, never checked but it's probably only a couple of clicks North of the equator. Probably best known for the Jim Jones thing........

Wow, went down to the safe today as talking about 45/70 stuff got me motivated to pull out my old friends and check them out. I also searched and located the stock that I split and repaired but ended up not using it as I was able to find one in mint condition from a guy on one of the Forums. The upper rifle in the pic is the one that got a new stock. While looking for the stock I found a couple of plaques that brought back some memories...........

From my personal experience with these things a full charge of Reloader 7 pushing a 300 grain bullet in 45/70 is remarkably hard on the shooter. Hat and glasses removal highly recommended before you touch one off. Moving up to a 400 grain bullet is brutal! Some added padding between the stock and your cheek required, unless you want some loose teeth. I'll no plans now or to NEVER touch off a 500 grain round from one of those rifles again as long as I live! Even with that said standing up and in most hunting situations you'll probably not notice it all that much......FWIW. As a side note here my "hand loads" for 45/70 would be consider +P so I'll keep all that to myself and recommend others working with this sort of thing to go the reloading manual for starting loads and work up if/as needed........at your own risk........FWIW

"Y'all are a bunch of ladies. 45-70 ain't that bad." I used to shoot with a Lieutenant that I worked with, we hit the range nearly every weekend testing out our hand loads. One day handed me his Ruger #1 in 45/70 with some loads he worked up using 500 grain cast bullets and a full charge of Reloader 7. That was in the late 1980's and my teeth are still loose from touching off one round with that little rifle! I got really stupid a few years ago checking my Marlin 45/70 right before deer season and used one of those rifle rests that support the stock and keep it off your shoulder. My nephew had just bought it and I'm getting old enough that I'd had enough of getting thumped by the 45/70 at the range. Well talk about a DUMB idea. I touched off a round and it split the stock in half and broke the butt-plate into two pieces! It took me nearly a year to find another straight walnut stock and matching butt plate for that rifle. You'd think at almost 60 years old I'd have been a little smarter than that.....DUH! Anyhow, no more rifle rests I'll take the beating instead. I will say that in a hunting situation you never notice any of that and I've killed everything with my 45/70 from ground hogs to Elk. Nothing I've ever shot with it takes another step!.........Cliff

You can shoot my 45-70 when you come out here for the Fall Shoot. As much as you want. I've been reloading and hunting with a Marlin 45/70 since for at least 40 years. I own two of them, straight stock, no recoil pad, square lever, no safety. My brother and nephew also have them as they are now legal here in Ohio for deer. I load a 300 grain bullet backed by a full charge of Reloader 7. It goes across the chrony at 2400fps and good to at least 300 yards without worrying much about holdover. When we sight them in the first thing you do is to take off your hat and glasses.......because they are going to be on the ground after you touch off the first round anyhow!.....LOL.....

+2 It's probably good for 60,000-70,000 more rounds thru it before it's worn deep enough to cause any issues.......IMHO....

Here's my 450 Bushmaster...

Have you taken the human factor out of the equation?.....FWIW......Cliff

Thanks. For sure a game changer and very costly way to learn lessons with that sort of thing....

Unlikely they would keep any records like that. About as close as you'll get is finding out what weapon or weapons were issued to field agents at that time....IMHO. Most departments/agencies, at least the ones I've worked for don't pay a lot of attention to what you carry off duty or as a secondary weapon. Some even allow you to replace the issue weapon with something of your own choosing. Even with that said the days of going on the cheap are pretty much over and most agencies are going to the top of the pile for side-arms and long guns that will be issued to their officers. So aside from buying yourself a nice high capacity secondary or off-duty weapon, like a Hellcat with a couple of 15 round mags there is seldom a need to "upgrade" from your issued weapons........

At 30 yards I'd expect groups coming in well under a dime even if the ammo wasn't that great. Heavier bullets for sure and I'd work something up to just about one-hole them at 30 yards before moving on to longer distances.......

Turns out that I was correct about the Military training. Both were discharged but had been on active duty, Marine Corps (Matix) and Army (Platt). They both went to jump school. Looks like they met serving as Military Police at some point. Not much of a "google" type (I much prefer direct experiences I've had vs copy/paste those of others) but I did find this interesting read on Platt and Matix: https://vault.fbi.gov/FBI Miami Shooting 4-11-86 /Miami Shooting 4-11-86 Part 8 of 11 Sorry to drift this off topic, but there are good lessons to learn from this sort of thing. The FBI sure stepped up their game after getting their arses handed to them in the Miami shootout. They were really only up against one man, Matix never fired a single round that I know of. From memory once again one of the agents killed was a "rookie" (Dove). I believe it was his weapon that was stuck with a 223 round from Platt's Mini-14 that rendered it inoperable. The other deceased agent was a small arms instructor and excellent marksman. Sadly during the crash he lost his glasses and was basically blind without them. To sort of drag this story back on topic it was about a year after that shooting that I worked with the agents down in Texas and they were armed to the teeth!........

Incorrect about Platt. Going from memory Platt was Military trained and may have spent time in Vietnam. In recent weeks prior to the shooting he had purchased several thousand rounds of ammunition and was doing a LOT of practice in the Everglades. He was highly motivated, disciplined and accurate. He hit almost every FBI agent that showed up, even hitting several of their weapons and disabling at least one of them as they hid behind their cars and were trying to return fire. While most of them were either wounded, reloading, taking cover, or out of ammo or combinations of all four Platt systematically walked around executing them. He was successful twice and missed a third agent at point blank range. That agent was able to engage him with a shotgun and his revolver even though severely wounded and having to work the shotgun's action with one hand. His efforts ended the encounter. The names of those agents escape me but I'm sure someone can Google up the details. Platt was stuck early in the encounter with what the ME described as a "non survivable wound". He did most of if not all of the carnage AFTER being shot by the agents. Specific details of the event are well logged in my memory banks and some of it may not be public knowledge. I spent some time on staff at one of the Federal LE Training Centers and that shooting was actually part of our curriculum which included a tape made by the FBI (8 track) which I still have a copy of around here someplace. Sorry to drift off topic, hope some of this helps someone along the way......Cliff

The last time I did OPS with the ATF was in the late 1980's. We were in Texas down on the Coast by Corpus Cristi or Port Aransas, can't remember exactly which at the moment. I remember the agents opening up the trunk of their Caprice and it was full of weapons, body armor, etc. I saw MP5's and a couple of black rifles in there. I didn't ask any stupid questions about them being full-auto or not but would have been very surprised if everything they had in there was not select fire. Keep in mind that the shooting with Platt and Matix in 1986 was a game-changer for Federal LE Officers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout They very quickly decided that ONE very well trained individual with a Ruger Mini-14 and a couple of taped together 30 round magazines is more than nearly a dozen agents could handle armed with small caliber handguns and a shotgun. So moral of the story is NEVER take a pistol to a rifle fight!......FWIW......

"Indeed, my good man. Bounced from Tocumen to Rio Hato, to David, into Panama City, then Cologne." Cool. A few years later I was on a ship that went thru the Canal, great experience that I woln't forget so easily.......

1989.....the "invasion"? I was there right before that. Remember being in Rodman, Panama City, the airport, most everything else is a blur or I logged it in the CRS file someplace........

Depending on what year this "murge" took place most of the items on that rifle may not have been in production yet. Flat top uppers haven't been around all that long have they? Or am I just having bad cases of CRS now that I collected my first SS check last month? Matters not and I would get no pleasure researching it's authenticity and letting out the bad news as it's really not my style to pic apart the efforts of others. The item will do that for itself. If it's a "real deal" I'm happy for them, but at that price you aren't getting much for your money.....IMHO I will also say that as soon as I saw the pics I wondered if any of it was OEM other than maybe the lower receiver.......

I like being the "lead dog" most of the time, unless we were running into live machine gun fire. In those times I'd rather hang back just a bit!.....LOL....