Range tips to improve your shooting ability, safety and fun.

If possible avoid the "shooting range", finding an out of the way spot to shoot allows you to shoot at your own style target in various scenarios as well as pick and choose your own distances instead of the standard pre determined ranges.

Vary your targets. Instead of punching holes in paper try hanging paper plates, tin can lids, clay pigeons etc. at various ranges and heights.

Practice while wearing the equipment you might be wearing in a SHTF situation.

Practice weapon transition, go from a long gun to a handgun and then back to a long gun with out loosing control of any of them.

A holster tip, if ya can't reholster and secure the handgun with one hand then you need to change holsters. In a worse case situation where you may need to do a weapon change you don't have time to fight with a holster to get your weapon secure. The same thing applies in a situation where you may have to walk up on someone and handcuff or search them.

Practice with all your weapons with no sights. Take a piece of tape and tape over the rear sight.

The "standard" with a handgun is that you don't touch the trigger until your on target however in a more realistic scenario your hammer should be ready to drop as soon as your front sight hits the center mass of your target. As a revolver shooter this means that as soon as I get a grip on the weapon and it starts to come out of the holster the trigger finger is already at work and by the time I'm crossing the target with the front sight the hammer is all the way back at the point of no return. This can also be accomplished with most semi autos as long as your familiar with the weapon. DO NOT run out to the range and try this, all you will get for your efforts is a hole in your leg or foot. This is something that should be practiced at home with an empty weapon. Practice ALOT until you get the technique down pat. Being able to do at least 100 dry runs with out the hammer falling until your ready means you might be ready to try live ammunition VERY SLOWLY.

Fast drawing is alot of fun, seeing how fast you can get out and get a round down range. Always remember though that "speed is fine but accuracy is final".

Have someone else go with you to go out and shoot. Have them load your magazines for you and include empty brass as well as not tell you how many rounds are in the mags. Have them go out and hang targets for you along a pre determined walking route. Take a walk and engage targets as you find them having to clear jams and reload as needed.

Take the lids to coffee cans and paint one side red and one side green. Hang these with pieces of fishing line along your designated route. They will swing and spin in any breeze. As you walk only engage the targets that are green.

Practice shooting from your vehicle. Place a target near the front bumper in line with the driver seat. Start from a seated position and exit the vehicle and engage the target. A tip. It is easier for me to leave my right leg extended in the vehicle drop my left knee to the ground and fire from a low cover position between the door and the door post. REMEMBER to stay behind cover.

Use an old railroad tie or something similar to act as a roadside curb. Practice firing from behind it using it as cover, laying parallel to it. Depending upon how your laying you may have to fire off handed and in case will have to fire one handed.

Practice firing from various unusual positions. Sitting, squatting, on your side, on your back. Note that some semi autos will not function when fired upside down. Is one of them yours?

Practice firing while rolling on the ground. Pick a destination and start to roll toward it, every time you roll to your stomach fire one round at your target. A reminder, with a shotgun this can hurt in a hurry as it's difficult to seat the butt properly against your shoulder. The primary purpose of all of this is to put yourself into situations that you may encounter in the field. Practice them now so that if the situation should ever arise it won't be new to you. PLEASE, practice these with an empty weapon to start with, get familiar with what your doing and make sure your able to control your muzzle 100% of the time before you try it with live ammo.

For more fun and exciting stuff, come visit me at Prepare to Survive in California: http://www.preparetosurviveincalifornia.blogspot.com

Yes, I know we are not allowed to trap in CA without all sorts of red tape; however, if you ever decide to get up off your duff and try...here are some tips.

Squirrel


For squirrel, move into an area where there are large oaks with acorns or other large nut and bud bearing trees. Locate cuttings (nut acorn shells the squirrels have cracked open with their teeth. If you can locate a den tree with the bark worn off near entrance holes, sit yourself down at dawn and wait without moving or making noise. This is hard if it is cold..wait.

Squirrels feed at dawn and in the late evening, so you will see them scampering around on logs and in trees. Use a 22 or an air rifle to shoot one and note where it lands on the ground, but sit still, and soon, you might have another one move. Ive shot as many as 6 by just sitting and spotting them and shooting them. Early morning and late evening for shooting squirrels.

Rabbit

Rabbits live in overgrown fields and thickets. First make sure there and no people around and then move into an overgrown field. Move along kicking clumps of grass in order to "jump" a rabbit. Unless you are a superb rifle shot, you won't hit a running rabbit, but wait quietly...the rabbit will make a circle, and eventually come back to its nest. It will hop a few hops and stop. When it stops is when you shoot.

You might carry a shotgun if you have one. The H&R Handy Gun is an excellent inexpensive survival gun. You can get these in large bore 308 and with an extra 20 guage barrel that snaps on. You can lash the extra barrel to your pack frame However, Shotgun shells are rather heavy if you carry a lot of them, but a few buckshot shells and a box of bird shot might be worthwhile, especially if you have time to cache some stores ahead of time. You can shoot game on the run, but shotguns make a hell of a noise compared to a 22 or an air rifle.

Deer

As you travel and patrol, look for deer watering spots and crossings. Locate yourself in a tree or concealed behind a blind of leafy vegetation upwind from where the deer cross. You will get one chance. When the deer approaches, aim carefully. If you are accurate, you will have a weeks worth of excellent meat.

Do not handle rabbit meat if you have cuts on your hands since rabbits sometimes carry the germs for tularemia (rabbit fever). After cooking or roasting, rabbit meat is ok.

You can eat deer raw if you like if the deer looks healthy. A deer is just a glorified goat.

Handle fresh squirrel with care, but they are usually not diseased.

In case you kill a bear or wild hog, under no circumstances should you eat it raw or undercooked since these animals have tiny worms in the meat that causes Trichinosis in humans and this will kill you. For my part, I will cook all wild and domestic meat rather well before I eat it.

Small birds or ducks or geese

You can use yor air rifle or 22 or shotgun to kill any kind of small bird. Even small birds have a sizable breast that is nice little morsel when you are hungry.

Ducks and turkey and geese can be killed on the water with a rifle or shotgun, but small bird shot in a shotgun will not do the job. You need No 4 or larger shot shells. You can hang these birds after removing the insides and slice strips of meat from them to add to the cook pot.

In cold weather, meat will last about a week and sometimes two before it begins to spoil. In predator country, hang it high so that predators will not raid your camp and steal it. In bear country, hang it some distance from the heart of your camp so you won't have to argue with a bear over it.

For more fun and exciting stuff, come visit me at Prepare to Survive in California: http://www.preparetosurviveincalifornia.blogspot.com

http://www.infowars.com/arrow-drivers-wake-to-nightmare-before-christmas/

The link says it all, be sure to read the comments at the bottom

Then for better news go here...http://www.landlinemag.com/Special_Reports/2009/Dec09/122309-trucking-community.htm

A neighbor asked me why he should lay in some supplies/prep. I sent him this link as he is in California.

http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm


A picture sure is worth a 1,000 words!

Merry Christmas

Loco Gato
3%
Be safe, be free

Merry Christmas to all!

Prep like your life depends on it! It does!

Loco Gato 3%
Be safe, be free

Instead of trying to buy very expensive bags of pre 1965 nickels and dimes; would these be a good investment?  I am working in Afghanistan and can get my hands on thousands of these.

Trade Dollar 1875

SPECIFICATIONS:
Designer: William Barber
Weight: 27.22 grams
Net weight: 0.7874 oz pure silver
Composition: 0 .900 silver, 0.100 copper
Diameter: 38.1 mm
Edge: reeded
Minted at: Philadelphia, Carson City, San Francisco
Years Minted: 1873 to 1885
Mint mark: On reverse below eagle and above the 'D' in the word 'dollar.'


Federal officials faced a dilemma in the years after the Civil War. The Comstock Lode and other Western mines were producing large quantities of silver, but the government could use only limited amounts of it in coinage. This seems puzzling in retrospect, for silver coins were few and far between in circulation (a lingering legacy of wartime hoarding), and Americans presumably would have welcomed major infusions of silver coins. But Mint officials feared that new silver coins would be subject to hoarding as well, since the marketplace was awash with paper money, including fractional currency born of wartime need. People would have been only too happy to exchange these notes, which brought less than full face value, for precious-metal coinage.

For a time, the miners found outlets for their silver, often in coinage form, in foreign markets. Canada, Latin America and Europe all absorbed significant quantities during the 1860s. But then, for various reasons these markets became glutted. In Europe, for example, Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck established a gold standard for Germany after unifying the country in 1871 and promptly dumped huge amounts of silver on the international market.

For the miners and their powerful allies in Washington these developments were doubly disturbing: Not only was it hard to sell their silver, but the market price was steadily declining. Initially, coinage did offer one escape valve: Under a long- standing law, silver could be deposited with the Mint for conversion into silver coins, for which it could then be exchanged. Having no other ready outlet, miners took advantage of this one. Invariably, they chose silver dollars, the one denomination that hadn't been changed when silver coins were reduced in weight (and precious-metal content) in 1853. As a direct result, silver dollar mintages soared above one million in both 1871 and 1872.

But with the Coinage Act of 1873, Congress closed this loophole by suspending further production of silver dollars. And that's where the trade dollar came in: Flexing their muscle, the mining interests won approval for this new silver coin-one that would, in theory at least, not only provide an outlet for the metal, but also open a whole new market for it in an area that was already receiving Congressional attention.

The market in question was Asia, particularly China. Some U.S. silver had found its way to that region previously, but now a full-fledged offensive was planned. The Chinese had shown a decided preference for silver coins, and up to then the bulk of American trade with China had been carried out with Spanish and Mexican dollars. The trade dollar's architects set out to supplant those rivals by giving the new coin a higher silver content. They even had it inscribed on the coin: "420 GRAINS, 900 FINE."

At first glance, the trade dollar looks much like a regular silver dollar. It's the same diameter and about the same weight as its predecessor, the Seated Liberty dollar, and its portraiture is similar: a seated female figure representing Liberty on the obverse and a naturalistic eagle on the reverse-designs prepared by Mint Chief Engraver William Barber.

In contrast to the new trade dollar, the regular U.S. silver dollar weighed just 412.5 grains, and the Mexican dollar weighed only 416. But the architects had miscalculated; though it weighed slightly less, the Mexican coin had a higher fineness and therefore contained slightly more pure silver. The astute Chinese recognized this and, in many provinces, gave the U.S. coin short shrift, favoring the Mexican coin.

That's not to say the trade dollar wasn't used. On the contrary, over 27 million went overseas and found their way into Asian commerce, many later being sent on to India in trade for opium. Numerous pieces show chop marks-distinctive Chinese symbols-placed on them by merchants to attest to their authenticity. But usage of the coins never approached Americans' expectations.

The trade dollar's biggest problems occurred not in China but at home. In a last-minute deal, Congress had made the coin a legal tender for domestic payments up to five dollars. In 1876, millions were dumped into circulation in the United States when silver prices plummeted, making them worth substantially more as money than as metal.

Congress quickly revoked their legal-tender status (the only time this has been done with any U.S. coin), but the seeds of serious trouble had been sown. In the late 1870s, employers bought up huge numbers of the coins at slightly more than bullion value (80 to 83 cents apiece) and then put them in pay envelopes at face value. Merchants and banks accepted them only at bullion value or rejected them altogether, so the workers effectively lost one-sixth to one-fifth of their pay at a time when that pay often amounted to less than $10 a week.

Spurned abroad and despised by many at home, the trade dollar soon faded into oblivion. After 1878, production was suspended except for proofs-and even those dwindled to just ten in 1884 and five in 1885.

Like many other "fantasy" coins before them, the 1884 and 1885 pieces were clandestinely struck for Mint crony William Idler and were unknown to the numismatic community until six pieces from Idler's estate were sold by dealer John Haseltine in 1908. Notwithstanding their questionable origin, these two dates are viewed as great rarities today.

In all, fewer than 36 million trade dollars were struck during the coin's 13-year lifespan, including about 11,000 proofs. Production took place at Philadelphia, Carson City and San Francisco. The rarest business strike is the 1878-CC with a mintage of 97,000, many of which appear to have been melted. All high-grade business strikes of the trade dollar are rare to non-existent, leaving proofs to fill most of the demand from type collectors.

The extraordinary beauty of originally-toned proofs entices many collectors to attempt complete proof runs (excluding the virtually unavailable 1884 and 1885, of course). Indeed, any trade dollar is highly prized and sought in pristine condition. Points to check for wear include Liberty's ear, left knee and breast and the eagle's head and left wing.

For more fun and exciting stuff, come visit me at Prepare to Survive in California.

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and Christmas and the new year looms ahead, have you or are planting a winter garden? Or preparing the old one for this spring or planning on a new one? We here in California, are able to enjoy longer growing seasons,( well maybe not all of us), and on the coastal sections of the state, damn near 12 months a year. Where I am the temps to hit below freezing once in awhile so the past 2 days was spent building cold frames. I found some free windows on Craig's List along with some old fence boards and away I went! Got two built, 6'x 3' and 2' deep. Planted some white onions, broccoli, butter crunch lettuce, Black Simpson lettuce and finger carrots. So we'll see how the cold frames work as an actual green house is way too much money to build. I also try to stock up on heirloom seeds but I plant anything that is on sale at the various stores around town. Hybrids I do plant but keep the others stored for when the shtf. There are many out there that sell heirloom seeds and survival seeds, many have been around for awhile but here is a new on for ya, http://hometownseeds.com/

I checked it out and even though they are new, have a nice selection to chose from. Maybe as they grow they'll add more. I have tried any of their stuff yet but I'll give them a shot. In these times, starting out new is hard and you have to give the credit for trying.
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Still working on a post about bob's ( bug out boats)and it is taking a tad longer than I thought. I'm trying to keep it simple,(hi mayberry!), so it's been revised an zillon times now. Hopefully next week.

Loco Gato
Be safe,be free