I went on a gun and ammo buying binge

So I finally know exactly how much I have and I have paid all of Dee's Debts off. After the last close to 3 Months since Dee's Passing things have been financially REALLY tight. Since 2020 my income has been some incidental sales here and there and In August 2023 when Dee began the 6 Months without pay between retirement and the Pensions kicking in...... I started taking a $750 per Month payment from one of my annuities to make ends meet. So without her income and my piddly $750 per Month and selling some live stock here and there the last 6 Months have indeed been really tight. I finally have all the Survivor Pension stuff worked out and Both of her Pensions start paying me the Survivor rates in February, all of the money in he 401B Is Rolled into my Tradional IRA and Rolling back door into my Roth IRA over the next 10 years to keep the tax in the 22% bracket rather than the 37% bracket. The Two Life insurance Policies she had and the one I didn't know she had are in the checking account and all of money owed to her by the State not in stuff that had to roll into the IRA is in the Checking account. And I have gone from not being able to rub two nickels together last Monday to pretty well off by noon on Friday.

So the entire last year+ Since November 2022 and through the cancer fight have been lean and I have not done much for myself during that time. So Yesterday after putting the last Paper Life insurance check in the bank. I drove over to my favorite gun shop. I went with the intention of buying a Henry Bushmaster Single shot in .350 Legend and a Case or two of .350L Ammo. Which I did plus 3 more cases of .350ammo, and a Henry Bushmaster in .360 Buckhammer and 4 cases of Ammo for it and a Cheap $200 Savage .22LR Bolt action to replace my old ragged out savage .22 bolt action. And a CZ Bobwhite 20gauge Side by Side 2 trigger shot gun and 10 cases of mixed high brass 3" Shells and well the Tri-Star Trinity 2 Over Under 12 gauge kept calling to me and ended up on the FFL ticket LOL and 10 Cases of Mixed 3" high brass for it. And then for some reason a Henry .45-70 All Weather chrome lever gun jumped into my hands and made its way on to the ticket and 4 cases from ammo for it and then I had to call the bank and have them up my cards spending limit to pay for it all. And Larry advised that if I bought many more guns he was going to run out of room on the FFL paper. So I stopped there before getting into the wheel gun case No Idea why I bought both the .350 Legend and .360 Buckhammer since they are almost identical in performance and ballistics. I can pick all of Guns Up Tuesday Afternoon and the ammo they ordered should be there Tuesday Morning. And I think I now have the treat myself gun buying urge all worked out of my system. Since the registry and scary gun ban went into effect in IL and my scary guns refused comply and ran away and went into hiding rather than get registered. I have a lot of empty slots on the cabins wall gun rack. And I really could use a better selection of hunting rifles and shotguns and if Only buy 15 more I will fill up all the empty slots on the wall rack LOL. Even the .700 Nitro Express ran away and went into hiding because no one could give me a straight answer if it fell in with the .50cal ban is just .50cal or is it .50 and bigger. The language in the Safe T bill and law is about as clear as mud on that and a whole lot of other things. So H&H Decided it was best if he just ran away and his with the scary guns until the SCOTUS hopefully overturns this BS Law. Then maybe the scary guns will come back out of hiding and I will have to build another rack for them since their slots are getting filled up with new guns.

Never owned a Tristar Arms Gun before but the over under is very attractive and in the $850 price range. Seems like a solid shotgun. CZ I am very familiar with and generally like them and love to Older side by side bobwhite 20 gauge I have so figured I could not go wrong with the new Bobwhite Side by side 20 gauge. The Henry's If Henry has ever made a bad rifle or shotgun I have never met it. The Henry bushmasters meet the rules and laws for Rifle and Cartridges for the new Rifle Deer Season in IL.

 

I've always thought buying 'bulk ammo' as involving a wooden crate with rope handles and a funky can opener.

 

Hey i think your scary guns probably ran across the river in to Iowa or Missouri or did they go south? Where we live right along the river plenty of people are storing their evil guns at relatives across the river. Total bull shit what you guys are going through.

 

I offered to send you a bill of sale for those scary guns!

 

Tristars like every other comoany, they have good ones and bad ones, the raptor semi auto was a turd but it was a sub 300 dollar gun. The viper/viper max is a 800 dollar gun and is a great well built gun. They have a great warranty/customer service to if needed.

 

Paw? is that you Paw?

 

Don't exactly need crates of ammo for breech load double and single barrels The Exception being .450 Bushmaster as I may or may not have a Ruger MPR Chambered in .450 Bushmaster if I would have a AR platform adapted to .450BM or Ruger MPR in .450BM Then Crates might be in order But given the cost of .450BM Crates even at bulk wholesale pricing would ungodly expensive $390 for .450BM Flex Tips 200 Round Cases is bad enough Flex Tips BTW just totally destroy lungs and hearts.

Just not familiar with them beyond the Trinity Over Under Felt good in the hands and appears to be made and functional/ Too damned cold to take it out back to the range and play with it yesterday LOL.

Heard our Guv Slug on the Radio the other day saying that only a tiny fraction of the 2.4 Million gun owners in IL have these dangerous assault weapons, because they are expensive and hard to get........ Errr Contradiction there when he was pushing the Ban Bill he was saying they are cheap and easy to get and they littered the street and every household putting families and children at risk. I think what meant to say is that only tiny fraction of Semi Auto Firearm owners are Complying with the Registration mandate and that those estimated 1.6 million owners of banned firearms are giving him double barrel middle fingers. LOL its like .05% have registered their banned firearms. I can't think of anyone I know that does not own at least one firearm on the Banned/Must Register list. And don't know anyone that has or is planning to comply with registering Mandate.

 

Fine business Kamp! You deserved to buy yourself a little something.

 

I was looking at getting a .450 bushmaster in AR platform for hunting. My husband has a henry .45-70 he uses for that but the recoil on it is pretty bad for my small size so accuracy suffers. Or he did have one before that tragic boating accident… so glad I live in a free state. We don’t need any more of the dems moving here. We are trying to convince the ones we have to leave.

 

You can store those scary guns with me, get them out of your state. There's no requirement to "register" (read surrender) them here. I'll keep them warm, cozy and rust free in the dry climate and comfortable.

Buying all those fancy new firearms and cases of ammo in such a short period of time may just attract the attention of a SWAT team. Seems all they need for an excuse any more is a speeding ticket, especially if you're a Caucasian, heterosexual male.

You already have three strikes against you.

About three months after my wife passed in July I read an article that Springfield Armory had taken over production of the old Browning Hi-Power. I owned one back in the 70's and loved it except for the fact that it had a bug or three.

Springfield made some incidental design changes so that the hammer doesn't turn the web of your hand, between thumb and forefinger, into hamburger after a magazine full. They also improved the feed ramp to better allow the use of hollow points, got rid of that god awful magazine disconnect, beveled the magazine well and increased the capacity from 13 to 15 rounds.

I stopped by my local gun shop, well local to my remote property anyway about 60 miles, spied one in their display case and made an immediate purchase, out of town for me but in the same state so it's legal. It's everything they claim. Not a great big fan of 9mm, but that particular one has a special place.

Couldn't help myself but didn't go quite so overboard.

 

A gun buying binge? All I can say is, given the state of affairs in this country, a fully corrupt ruling government, and a very bleak future - well - why in the hell not?

 

Yeah we kind of concluded yesterday that a 5 gun purchase will probably trigger the Strawman Portion and 1-3 Months from now I will probably be getting a visit from ISP *Requesting* to physically see them and verify they are still in my possession. Truth is I am pretty weak on hunting firearms and what I do have are 30+ years old and are as ragged out as my old Savage Mark II. I waskind of amazed that all these years later the Savage Mark II F is Literally identical to my old MARK II Except the old one has the Indian Head Metal Plate on the butt and the new one doesn't and I guess the new one has the Accutrigger that you can adjust and the old one doesn't. Other primary Hunting Rifle is the Trusty Marlin 925M .22Mag I put a scope on it and it is my Lazy sit on the Porch and pop rabbits and tree rats at range rifle and use it for Coyotes, Fox, Coons in the fields. Other than my AR platform shotguns I have The Older CZ Bobwhite side by side and 4 single barrel Harrington and Richards in 10gauge, 12 Gauge, 20Gauge and .410 with Slug Barrels for the 12 and 20. I used to go out West and hunt Pronghorn at my Cousins place and bought the old Remington 700 in .300WM primarily for those annual hunts. And that was the sum of my hunting firearm collection.

With the addition of the Lake and Ponds the whole wildlife dynamic has changes A LOT here since 2022. Most Notably the Number of Deer coming in is insane as are the number of different wild turkey flocks. Fall 2022 some Ducks and Geese were hitting the lake. Fall 2023 there were times you couldn't see the ground on the Lake dam from all of the Geese resting on it. Ducks not quite as thick And had a decent number of Ducks and Geese that spent the spring and summer here nesting. The Rabbit Population exploded as well but that was not so much the bodies of water as all of the Clover/Alfalfa/Orchard grass that I planted around them. Same with the quail we went from a couple small coveys of quail to some very large coveys and about 10 new off shoot coveys. There is little on this Earth that I like more than a pair of plump roasted bobwhite quail on my dinner plate I was just always very reluctant to take any because we had so few. Between the land changes and a more aggressive feral cat eradication program 2023 saw the quail population explode and Coveys from off the property move in. LOL the Squirrel Empire here has always been massive. I believe I could sit on the porch and kill a squirrel every 10 minute of every hour of every day for 365 days and still have thousands of squirrels annoying me at the end of that year LOL. Some farms have Rats..... My Farm Has squirrels which I believe are even more destructive than rats! Difference is I wouldn't eat a Rat ..... I will eat the hell out of the Squirrels

Anyway I really had nothing suitable for Ducks and Geese other than the AR Platform Shotguns and I hear the Possum Cops Frown upon people hunting waterfowl with 20-50 round drum magazines on them and I don't have them to hunt animals with anyway.... I like hunting with single shot, double barrels and bolt actions and a over under 12 gauge with a good selection of choke tubes was what I was wanting for the duck and geese hunting. That long point that comes out into the lake on the right... LOL I am going to build a nice Gazebo at the end of it next summer to enjoy sitting out there and fishing from and in the fall drape it with appropriate Camo netting and call it a Duck and Goose Blind to shoot them from The all love landing and hanging out in that water to the right of the point It is a mix of shallows 6" to 3' deep out to a center channel that is 6 feet deep. The cove to the left of it pretty much drops straight off to 12-14 feet deep , we mined most of the heavy clay for the Lake dam core out of that deep hole. Pic is fall 2022 I built both of those points up a couple more feet and made them level with the mainland as I time to over last summer. Also sank quite a few post oak brush piles in strategic place like that deep water in between the points.


A whole different piece of land since the day we started building the lake and ponds in 2022. The Wildlife since that time has just exploded and I swear every deer in the County is visiting us regularly now LOL. I wanted to build my own personal and private hunting and fishing reserve complete with a decent quality shooting range with a 300 yard shooting alley with benches at 50 yards, 100 yard 150 yards and 300 yards. And a solid clay backing (Mount Krap) I think at this stage I can say Mission accomplished in achieving all of those goals. I have it seems pissed off a couple of the adjacent property owners and property owners one or two tracts over from my farm. It seems the lake and ponds have changed the Deer movement patterns and they are taking different paths across their properties to get to the lake and ponds and not walking right under or by their perm fixed Tree stands and blinds now...... Not my intention to disrupt their set ups but not much I could have done or do about it other than not have built the Lake and Ponds. LOL One a couple tracts over has demanded that I break the dams and make like it used to be again. That ain't going to happen. He doesn't even Deer hunt but leases his out to deer hunters and his leases are not happy with the shift in the Deers movement which he claims takes the deer totally out of range of his blinds and stands that he leases out. My suggestion is he do something on his property to draw them back in closer to the blinds and stands on his property......


LOL Google Earths Sat pic should update this year so I don't have to keep using the digital crayons to draw the water in Or I guess I could break down and buy a drone with a decent camera on board to take pics with. I searched for a long time before I found this property. The property I consider to be nearly perfect in every way to fulfill my long term intentions and purposes. The first time I saw that multi arm low spot, I said yep that is a future lake and terraced ponds above the lake! It could generate passive income with crop leases or direct income with me working the land or a combo of both passive and direct. It could produce 95% of our food, 100% of our Water and great spots to set up a big hybrid solar/wind set up The wind here sucks June through September but is more than sufficient October through May to power wind turbines... Which is when the solar will be at its weakest points. I have enough timber to provide firewood and logs for the sawmill for infinite lifetimes if manged correctly and harvested responsibly. And the hunting opportunities here have always been good, with the addition of the lake and ponds they turned from good to GREAT. And with the addition of the ponds and lake the fishing aspect is coming into play. I designed their shapes and beds for fishing and wildlife not for pretty and people. Hopefully 2025 I can expand the 3 stock ponds and make them bigger and deeper. 2024 is mostly going to be building the solar mounting frames and the wind turbine towers and putting that big puzzle together. I am up to enough panels now to put together a 65KW System and batteries to jump a 8,000AH battery bank together. Just got the big Outback Charge Controller that I wanted and that can handle 65kw going through it. And the pure sinewave inverter coming out. Found a deal on a pair of 26kw Kohler Propane Generators one of which will be wired in with the solar as back up. I bought 6 automaxx 1500W wind turbines to experiment with the wind side. I am doing the whole system in 24V I figure 24V will serve my purposes well. The 6 wind turbines like the generators are back up/supplemental to the Primary Solar but inlike the Generators the Wind Turbines can't even come close to being standalone power and would be totally dead ends July, August and September and WEAK June and October. Anyway I want to play with little wind turbines before I commit to 10-15KW Wind turbines. Something I have found is that very few of the solar companies/installer will do offgrid systems. They all want to do Grid Tie Systems. fortunately I would not pay the crazy high pro install prices to start with....... Jumping panels together in combiner boxes and running them all into a central big combiner breaker box and then out to the charge controller and into the battery bank and then out through the inverter and into the multi 50-200amp breaker disconnect box and running the individual lines out of it to wherever is time consuming but not rocket science On average I Need 23.4KW to keep this place powered year round. So I am over sizing the system a little less than 3X bigger than I need to generate what I actually need and have some to spare. LOL if you average say 10KW and install a 10KW system you are going to be very disappointed with your 10kw solar system


I am getting VERY close to being as self contained and self sufficient on the farm as is reasonably possible and still be able to maintain a level of modern things. I am also building the water treatment plant that draws from the deepest bowl in the lake..... After reading the last annual Public Rural Water report..... Yeah I want that chemical stew out of my life and my system. Won't be saving any money with my personal water treatment plant and between the cost of building it and the maintaining it with Filter Changes and UV Lights it will actually close to triple my water bill LOL but it will be 100% Chemical Free Pure Safe water. Going to put the draw pipe above the biggest fastest flowing spring in the deep lake bowl.

What I will have next fall and winter is FREE TIME and A lot of it with all of the Major Property upgrades completed and working. So I am going to spend that free time doing a lot of hunting in my personal hunting reserve. And a lot of fishing after that in my personal fishing reserve. So I really did need to upgrade and improve my hunting Firearms. And I want to include the Rifle Season into the hunting mix with Henry's. Kind of excited to get the .360BH and .350 Legend home on Tuesday and compare them on the range and see if they really are nearly identical in performance. LOL next up on my firearm upgrades will be my muzzle loaders I like my pair of old ones well enough .30 and .50 KY long rifles I built from kits a long time ago one a flint lock and the .50 a percussion. Thinking I want a modern style with better rifling to replace the .50 in the field. And I am overdue on building a new long bow..... I am not sure if my last one is getting stronger or if I am getting weaker with the passing years And I am thinking about attempting to build a compound bow using a old set of pulleys and osage orange wood limbs......... And that would be something I would need to consult with Bishop on I can scrape out pretty good long and short bows but really don't know if doing a compound with wood is feasible or even worth the effort. That new Vaquero I bought a while back is a good choice for the handgun deer season. LOL I can get a ton of free landowner Deer and Turkey Permits and don't have to buy hunting or fishing licenses for my own waters and lands. I figure I may as well start using them.

I have pretty much decided to sell the Cattle herd off in the spring. I have had a long and good run with the Hogs and Cattle but I believe the time has came to just be done with them. I have no interest in selling meats or even butcher animals on the hoof anymore. And I can't justify maintaining a breeding herd for ONE person to eat beef LOL. The last of the pasture lands would make much better hunting land or crop lease land. And truth be told I would rather eat venison and small game anyway. I set one of the 20' containers up as a cold hanging and cutting room for my personal steer and hog processing, it will work just as well for Deer Processing. So in the near future as the beef in the freezers dwindles it will be replaced with venison and the bountiful small game, waterfowl, turkeys and fish that I now have in abundance. I can satisfy my Ribeye and Porterhouse steak fetish on Friday nights at the local Mom and Pop eatery I like to frequent now days. I don't particularly like people and am in general very isolationist, independent and anti social outside of of here and the Fb page... LOL I am told that IRL I am really a total asshole.... Which is largely true but only to the general population of ungulates. More accurate would a non conformist that no longer has patience or much tolerance left for sheep of any flavor. And the whole no filter between thought and mouth thing does not help At least online I can read it and delete the offending portions before hitting the POST buttons IRL not so much, once it is out of the mouth it out Among my small circle of RL life friends the general consensus is I am very blunt, a little crass and one of the nicest guys in the world. Funny how different the perception of how things are vary from circumstance to circumstance and person to person

LOL and back on track I simply needed and need to expand and improve my Firearm hunting tools and the other hunting tools. LOL I have more than enough AR Platforms, Galils, Ruger and other Scary Guns ranging from .22LR to the .450 and .308 big bores.

Really the only thing missing that I can never replace is Dee. I am at least getting to a place that everything I do does not feel so hollow and empty without her. She was my full and equal partner in everything and we worked side by side building everything here together. We were best friends and the center of each others worlds. Just not something one gets over quickly or easily. And harder still when every step is a memory and everything you look at has us and her built in to it. I am still a very VERY long way from learning how to be ME without DEE I can at least be going through and sorting her STUFF soooo much STUFF and get frustrated and look up and ask here "WHY IN THE HELL DID YOU KEEP ALL OF THIS CRAP!!!"

The biggest decision I have managed to make since Dee Passed away is to NOT move in to the new house and spend the rest of my life living in our Cabin. It is 768 Square feet of living space inside and I am very happy and comfortable living in it. It was our home for the last 8 years since converting it into a habitable Cabin. It is relatively cheap to keep cool when its hot outside and pretty much free to keep warm inside when it below Zero outside as we learned over this last week LOL.


LOL the old Vogelzang had it 92 degrees inside with the wind howling and it -6 outside with this burn LOL I had to open the back door and turn the fan on to cool it off inside. I keep the wall mount dyna glow propane heater pilot light lit and it kicks on when the wood stove burns down and it drops below 70 degrees inside. I HATE the pain of getting out of bed in the morning and the wood stove all but burned out and freezing until I get it stoked back up...... The Dyna Glow makes that NOT happen LOL.


If I want to freeze my buttocks off I will just go out to the lakes dam SW Corner and take some pictures LOL. -2 and 30mph winds made me think I chose poor time to go out and take pictures


I almost got a picture of the giant irregular resident Buck that lives here. But he hauled ass across the big pond Ice and into the woods before I could get the camera open and focused on him He did leave his tracks on the ice for me though. He has to weigh close to 300 pounds now and his rack looks like two big beach ball size tangles of antlers on either side of his head. I have lots of pics and videos of him without his antlers but can never manage to get a pic or video of him with them. I always scour the woods and fields trying to find his sheds every spring and have yet to find even one of them.


He had a couple of his girlfriends with him when I caught him on the edge of the ice when I was out taking the pics.


I guess I am weird but I will never kill a buck. I don't need a head with a big rack to make a statement about my manhood. I only take Does because well they are actually good to eat and keep the Deer Population in check. Bucks tend to be tougher, stinkier and just not the best choice for the dinner table. But I guess among some circles they convey the message "I killed this buck and my pecker is bigger than yours."

And I love it when the wind and conditions are just right to make those kind of ice crystals on the surface of frozen lakes and ponds.

What really surprised me when I was out and about in the sub zero was that the big pond fountain did not get froze in. Pretty much every critter around has been visiting it since it got really cold and all of the other water holes are froze solid.

 

Awesome place, since your are staying in the cabin will you rent the house for extra income or would that be too much of hassle.

 

I offered to give the house to my Daughter and finish out however her and her husband want it. Don't think they are going to take it. SIL is all City and the thought of living out here in the middle of nowhere scares the hell out of him. I won't rent it out to strangers and will probably end up just finishing it and calling it a guest house.

 

Got a model # on that bad boy? The only ones on their web site are around 1/10 of that.

 

That's disappointing for you I'm sure . They don't realize what they're giving up .

 

I was not clear. It is not a single charge controller it is 5 Stacked (FP4-FXR3048A-01) each 14KW. LOL Basically stacking the stacks Alternative is to get into the big commercial units. And I want to leave the flexibility to independently split the system into 2-3-4 or even 5 if I want to or need to. I also mispoke when I said 24V system I am running a 48VDC for the East side. The Lake side system is going to run 24VDC. Or maybe use the individual outback stacks around the lake sites and get A 75KW Commercial for the East Side. Still plotting out a lot of the components but wanted the Outbacks mainly because they are rock solid and the Felx Power Covers Charging and Pure Sine Wave Inverting, without having to buy big expensive inverters a long with big expensive charge controllers.

 

Yup , I would and run Midnight charge controllers , 7 of them , Brat,Kid , Classics @ 24Vdc , 48Vdc , 96 Vdc and the brat set @ 12Vdc systems
Sloth

 

I am never disappointed in anyone anymore In order to be disappointed you have to have expectations and my expectations now days are I expect nothing or the worst and no one ever lets me down that way. LOL if You start at the bottom there is only upward to go.