Dapper Dynamite Dick

Good to see your back in one piece Jabez, just sent you a Match Flyer for Medicine Hat 08/09 June, hope you received it. Grumpy old fart, I'm lookin forward to seeing you!

The problem is that I am in Canada and it was hard enough to get south of the border to shoot with you at Hell on Wheels last year. Cheaper to get the job done in Canada too.

Yesterday I just watched the new Kevin Costner movie "The Highwaymen" where he plays Frank Hamer in the 1930's. My gawd he has the same amount of lard around his waist line that I do! Shocking!!

I've been shooting CAS club matches since '97, for a lot of that time I was single (read as it was MY paycheck alone). Then I met my better half, so I had to buy her a complete set of match & backup guns. I haven't priced all my Cowboy guns replacement value completely but I have 5 pair of Ruger Vaqueros that come in at just over $ 10,000 (Canadian) and 4 Uberti/Winchester M73's that come in at $1,750.00 each (Canadian) plus about 7-8 other long range rifles and shotguns. Since my wife also competes she knows the price of everything. Not hard to get above that $20 grand mark these days if you have been shooting for a while.

For a portion of my career I worked with quite a lot of different Regiments in the British Army, when conversing, the standard comment always came up. "You British might have started the language, but we Canadians perfected it"!

I bought a pair of SASS Vaqueros in .357 about 7 years ago that were "lightly" used. The reason they were lightly used was the fact that one of them kept rotating past live rounds in the cylinder. Got it repaired by a gunsmith and once they were working flawlessly, my wife claimed them. I'm still using my "Original" Vaqueros in .44 Mag that I started with in 1997.

When I bought my Shiloh Sharps #3 Sporting Rifle, I realized that I had just spent more money on one rifle than I had on 2x "Original" Vaqueros, a Marlin M1894S & a Winchester M97.

I have had a Shiloh Sharps #3 Sporting Rifle in .45-70 for the last 12 years. I have only had the opportunity to shoot it out to 500 yds, but it was no problem taking down steel rams at that distance. I wish there were more CAS matches that had long range side matches. In my area there are only 3 a year, and I run one of them.

You have competition at Simms in July with BAMM, unfortunately BATF won't let me bring my Garand south of the border.

Have a safe trip, see you in July in Granum.

Load for my .45 LC Wild Bunch rifle, 5.1 grains of Red Dot pushing a 200 grain LRNFP bullet.

I shot Winter Range clean twice (2015/2016) and I personally believe I had a golden horseshoe up my butt. I'm no speed demon, but I put a lot of effort into shooting those 2 matches. I must admit though in 2015 after completing the 10th stage someone mentioned that I was the only one on the posse to shoot a clean match so far, I didn't push real hard on the last 2 stages. In 2016, by the 3rd day I was sicker than a dog and just shot as fast as I could trying to avoid a DQ, I didn't know I had shot clean until I was in the tent when they announced it.

Looks almost dry!

Congratulations, I can sympathize. My wife is due to be a grandmother again 02 August, 2 days before the Canadian SASS Western Regionals start. Might be the first time I missed it in 7-8 years.

Better yet, I could use my 1914 Colt Commercial Model "Canadian Contract" 1911, that first seen action on the Western Front in 1915 (while you guys were on coffee break). It also "went over the top" on 09 April 1917 in the hands of a Canadian soldier from the Battalion that was formed in Winnipeg Manitoba. A number of "Canadian Contract" pistols were passed down from WW1 veterans to their sons or friends that went into uniform in 1939 for WW2. Since the WW2 re-enactor matches that I participated in were 3 gun matches that is why I had a shotgun pouch on the back of my 1917 dated web gear. At the time I used a Winchester M97 Trench gun.