Indoor projects during the cold weather

“Hey Baby, it’s cold outside!” This past week has seen the coldest temperatures of the year so far at my house in Big Lake. We had a couple of nights where the temperature was minus 13 degrees when I looked at the thermometer. It might have been even a degree or two colder during the early morning hours when I was sleeping. Thank heavens our recently repaired heaters are working fine!

As I get older, I find I’m not tolerating the extreme cold as well as in my younger days. Temperatures like we’ve been seeing are tough for anybody to deal with, but especially for us geezers. Since it’s too cold to do much outside, I’ve been looking for projects I can do around the house where it’s warm. Recently, I’ve been going through my firearms, wiping them down and oiling the mechanisms for proper function.

I haven’t done any shooting for the past couple of years because of medical situations, so the guns haven’t received any use or much attention. Now that my medical conditions have been resolved, I’m hoping to get back into actively shooting a bunch this coming summer season, since salmon fishing probably won’t be any better than it has been the last few years.

I like to look at, admire, and refamiliarize myself with the various firearms and their functioning while sitting on the couch in the evenings when watching television. As a result, I’ll bring a firearm upstairs from out of the safe and begin the inspection. I’ve got a small bottle of gun oil with a ”drop of oil” tip, a silicon wiping cloth, and several long swabs within easy reach of my couch spot. I’ll use the swabs to clean hard to reach areas in the action, and I’ve been surprised at how much powder fouling I’ve cleaned out from what I had thought was a clean firearm. I’m also amazed at how a single drop of gun oil in the right spot makes the action function so much smoother.

I’ve gone through most of my handguns, maybe half of my rifles, and a couple of my shotguns. I’m especially interested in the shotguns at this point, since I am an invited guest for a sandhill crane hunt around Delta Junction this coming fall. My hunting partner and I are planning about a week in the area encompassing two days of guided crane hunting, along with, hopefully, some Canadian geese and grouse hunting on the days when we won’t be crane hunting.

I’m planning to use my Remington model SP-10, 10-gauge semi-auto for the crane hunting and any geese we might get into. I’ll bring a 12-gauge shotgun for grouse. I’m debating bringing my American Arms 10-gauge, double-barrel shotgun as a backup in case there’s a problem with either my semi-auto or my partner’s shotgun (he has a 12-gauge, 3 ½ inch gun). I’ve hunted and harvested waterfowl with the double-barrel in years past. In fact, the only two Canadian geese I have harvested to date have been with that shotgun.

Back before I purchased the semi-auto, and when the double-barrel was readily available (I haven’t seen one advertised for sale in several years), I spent some time looking for and finding a complete set of choke tubes for each barrel. I finally found them at a gun show in Anchorage. After I bought the SP-10, I spent a fair amount of time trying to find choke tubes for that shotgun. Finding choke tubes for a 10-gauge and especially one long out of production, took some time and effort, but I found the ones I was looking for through the internet. These tubes are modified or tighter chokes for the longer distances for which a 10-gauge is commonly used, especially for waterfowl or geese.

Other indoor projects I’m looking at are finishing some reloading for my “bang-and-clang” rifle for the coming year and making some reduced loads for one single-shot handgun I have. The gun is in 444 Marlin caliber and is not fun to shoot just for relaxation! I killed a moose several years ago with a single shot at about 100 yards, suggesting that the gun is powerful. I’m looking to load lead bullets that would be comparable to 44 Magnum, or slightly lighter, loads.

There’s a chance you might read this before Christmas. If so, have a Merry Christmas. If this is printed after Christmas, I hope you had an enjoyable day. We’ll look at a few things from this past year next time.