Leaderboard

I submitted the form 1 on 3/1, approved 8/23. A big thanks to Michael Dresner of Law Enforcement Sales for doing my trust engraving and adding the folding stock. Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

We started getting serious about being prepared about 6 years ago. This followed the second incident where we were almost stuck in our car for an extended amount of time. The previous year we made it past where they closed roads due to winter storms twice by just a few minutes. I always had tow straps and such with me but I realized we needed some food and other things in a vehicle kit. Once we did that I realized how right it felt and we started learning to can and store extra food etc... I'm sure many of us went through some similar path. The thing is my extended family on both sides were country folk. Sitting on the porch helping my grandmothers prep beans and corn etc for canning was just what you did. But, I grew up and moved away and lost touch with that. Anyway, we move forward several years and we weren't self sufficient (really hard to do) but we had a couple months worth of water stored and probably 1-1.5 years worth of food canned, dehydrated, or frozen. Our path for that isn't as hard as some because it is just the 2 of us. I didn't realize how badly I wanted some land until I started looking for a piece of junk property to shoot at . I was looking for an abandoned quarry or land with a ravine that could be a backstop and would be cheap. As we looked for land I found myself drawn to places where we could actually live and have animals and a proper garden etc. We just kind of fell into it but I am blessed with a wonderful spouse who said go for it. We bought a piece of land and I started planting trees and berry bushes and things that I wanted to get started so they would be closer to productive when we moved in. We put a barn up, got all of our utilities in and now we are drawing up plans for a nice simple house that will be easy for us to maintain as we age. Spending the last 2.5 years working non-stop at the property (not blessed with millions so sweat equity is my middle name) has put a real dent in our preparedness. I'm not canning and dehydrating like I was and we are going through our stock of food. Part of that is a time thing but part is a desire to not have to move a bunch of heavy jars. We hope to start building next spring. So, as we get closer and closer to moving where we will be much more able to provide for ourselves at the same time we are burning through prepared preps. In some ways I think it was meant to go that way because the money we are saving by eating our preps is going right into land prep. Who knew dirt was so expensive. So that is how we are the least and most prepared at the same time. We just have to hang on for about a year and then we will be solidly moving in the right direction. This is by far the largest post I've ever made. I think I will go take a nap... Mark

Jury duty is one of the ways in which folks can do the most good in society. It isn't just the juror's right, but his/her duty to judge not only the guilt or innocence of the accused but the justness of the law itself. If there is no victim there is no crime and 'society' can't be a victim. Any opportunity one can take to keep the state from stealing from folks or locking them in cages shouldn't be wasted.

My wife's next car will most likely be a Subaru. What they offer at their price point is exceptional. Plus the rear seat room on an Outback is insane, even at 6' I am comfortable. Plus her girlfriend really likes them.

Don't let your wife drive it, she'll leave you......for another woman

No tree hugging or pot smoking for me, but that doesn't mean as an engineer I can't appreciate the product and what it offers. I've discovered that Subaru has their act together as a car company. I think as time passes the brand will lose more of its past stigma. If you check out some of the WRX and WRX STI offerings, you'll see those aren't the hippie cars most people associate with Subaru. They pretty much own the rally car world.

Yep. Subaru Impreza Sport. Before anyboby starts in on "Subaru is a Lesbian car", the more research I did on them, the more I became impressed with their Boxer engine design, superior AWD system, reliability, high resale value, fair sticker price, good MPG, brand loyalty, etc.

Aaaand Rosie O'Donnell gets the laundry done, can bake you an awesome pie, will clean the windows & is worth more than a few bucks, but a spade's still a spade.....

Can we introduce our wives to each other so your wife can convince mine not to trade every 24 months I would really appreciate it

50bmg in a smith. Lmao. I'll wait for the redhawk version.

A hand cannon! Too much for an old guy like me.

The easiest way to get off of jury duty is to download the cowbell app for your cell phone, when the lawyer asks you a question get up and say I have a fever and the prescription is more cowbell then use the app to make the cowbell sound they should let you go home fairly quick Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk, its either this or smoke signals!

Thanks for the replies... I don't know if anyone should be jealous. Once we decided to go down this path we went all in with my retirement plan. It looks like it is going to work out but I am 100% committed. Failure is literally not an option. I find that fear is a great motivator. My wife (who should have never said yes : - 0 ) deserves to have a comfortable retirement for putting up with me all these years. Folks in her family live about 20 years longer than they do in mine so I'm planning for the really long haul... I've learned a few things: 1) It doesn't matter how big of a tractor you bought, it will always be at least 1 size smaller than you need for some random task. 1b) Who knew tractors didn't have brakes on the front wheels? If you go down a steep hill with a heavy load in the front end bucket and the rear wheels come off the ground you are along for the ride until you get to the bottom. 1c) always keep a pair of clean shorts in your car. See 1b for any needed info. 2) Buying a backhoe attachment was a huge mistake for me. I would have done a lot better to save the money and rent a mini-excavator when I needed it. But, if you need a trench dug that is not straight, not level, and not smooth from beginning to end I'm your man! 3) The biggest leap of faith was drilling the well. It cost almost double what I budgeted. I haven't turned it on yet. Sort of like a lottery ticket: Until I check the numbers I'm a winner. If the well doesn't produce life will not be good for a while. 4) I knew the rule build a bigger barn than you think you will need. I built a 30x40. I had a 12x24 shed before. I thought a 30x40 was a huge overkill. It is only 50% too small. 5) Tractor folks only deal in 1,000's. As in: do you want to spend 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 etc... They apparently have never heard of 10's, 20's or 100 dollar bills before. 6) Tractor implements are like AR's. Once you have the first one you realize how many more you need. It doesn't help if your normally very frugal wife is a implement gateway drug... She says things like: I want mulch on the inside of the fencing around the greenhouse. Can your tractor do that? My answer was yes (sounded like thousands)... But even though I haven't mulched any trees yet she loves her little greenhouse. We've been married 23 years and I never knew she'd always wanted one. It's been tiring but we own some dirt free and clear. It is really quiet out there. The wind is almost always blowing and so far we like all of our future neighbors. BTW: when we bring the dozer in to cut our permanent drive way he is also going to take the dirt we will be digging out for our basement and close the end of a little ravine so that I can have a pond in a few years. While the dozer is there he is also going to level out a 25 yard wide by 50 yard deep spot and use the rest of the dirt for a berm. Getting a place to shoot started us down this road and I WILL have a small range. I may not be able to afford any steel for a few years but I am going to try to have a big ole TN Gunowners Mid Tn shoot and celebration. Hope everyone likes pulled pork... Mark

The only "AR10" I had was a for-real KAC Mk11 that I suppose was sold as a run-off for far too much money than I care to admit to, it was an excellent platform and a lot of damn fun, but for the money it better have damn well been. Now - for straight off the shelf AR10s, I have not owned, but I have fired, is the Armalite AR-10 VSR, it was about 1700 if I remember correctly and felt very good, .308 I suppose you can say is a bit of a stouter cartridge for perceived (notice, Perceived, it is different for all) recoil impulse versus .223/5.56 - but it felt very nice. Good balance, good tight fit between the lower and upper, the trigger was crisp and using ZQI M80 Ball copy was very capable at 200m. Building an AR10 you will be hard pressed to be able to keep prices as low as just buying a complete unit - I say that because sourcing in stock parts is a major PITA - if you are patient, and can catch sales from CTD, PSA, and other websites you can piece one together but the overall cost to include shipping will add up to be more. Musicman, and others mentioned, it is not as easy as throwing together a Frankenstein AR-15 - where you can literally jump into a trash bin of mixed manufactured parts, and assemble a working rifle - the AR-10 has compatibility issues for fitment among other things, and a lot of manufacturers don't really sell components. For instance, your PSA or 80% Lower might not work with a LaRue upper, or whomever else you choose - being conscience of what you choose, and who you source the part from is just as important as safely building the weapon. Hence my point in the 3rd paragraph; try to find a distributor with a part in stock at a good bargain you are liable to drive yourself crazy. Like with any other weapon system, there are also ammo sensitivity issues and the general 'spunk' of your AR-10 that need to be overcome. My Mk 11 as amazing as it was would have trouble with FTEs any surplus ammo, not sure if it was soft brass, but as tight as the gun was it would choke on spam can South African ammo. I would pierce primers of American Eagle 308s and in general it would only fire 'premium' grade offerings where as ZQI was the only notable objection to that rule. The AR-10 platform hasn't been widely adopted for a reason but do NOT let that detract you from partaking in one, and enjoying it. Once you understand the niches, and what it likes/hates, there are plenty of great rifles from DPMS, SW, Armalite, LaRue, etc

The way I understand it you can shoot coyotes at night that are getting into livestock or posing some sort of threat to your pets. Any chance at getting TWRA to allow predator night hunting? People can already coon hunt and pig hunt at night so I don't see what the problem would be. Also any chance at getting TWRA to allow center fire rifles for predator hunting during archery and muzzleloading deer seasons? It is kind of a pain to have to switch to a rimfire or shotgun during archery/muzzleloading deer season if you want to hunt coyotes. Our resident hunting licenses have got to be some of the most expensive in this part of the country, so it would be nice if TWRA would cut some slack on the coyote hunting restrictions.

Nonsense! Gen 2 (or equivalent naming conventions, i.e. Mod 2, Mk4, E7, whatever) automatically give you innate shooting abilities and the gun "runs nicer" Seriously, you are right - reading that write-up I got a serious sense of dejavu, my opinion is that the G42/43, the Shield and some of the baby XD guns (Not a SA guy myself) have the market cornered on BUGs as well as some of the baby wheel guns - Remington needs to stop ruining classic designs *cough* R1911 *cough*

This entire thread is giving me mahogany.....

Glock 20 Gen4. I pretty much only shoot Underwood & Atlanta Arms Ammo. Both feed great!

I like small rivers and large streams but as of late most places I like to go are roiled up because of the rain so no luck. Anyone having any good luck? What is your favorite type of fishing? Come on people brag a little on your fishing prowness.

I decided to buy a new one. The Hillary hole doesn't bother me much! I like the 2.5 inch barrel. Also, the barrel is not overclocked like I've seen on other new Smiths. Already ordered a Simply Rugged holster last week. Here it is next to my EDC, a Glock 19, for a size comparison. Looking forward to breaking it in Thursday! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I usually start around 10-15% below max... 1.3 - 2 gr or so in your case. A lot of that depends on the speed of the powder, imho. I don't worry so much about speed as I do a consistent load that functions and goes where I want it. As I start really getting into loads for 10mm (finally have around 4-500 pieces of brass collected) that may change as I chase velocity in earnest.

Got a form4 back today, filed on 2/2/16

My new(er) ride has cooled seats. I never thought I needed or wanted such a thing, now I'll never own another vehicle that doesn't have them. It's amazing what we don't miss until we know such things exist ...

So THATS why you sold your motorcycle...

Well, this is my new 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport. It has butt coolers. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but once you feel a cool leather seat, you can't ever go back. I got the turbo AWD ultimate package. We got a great deal and with a 10 year bumper to bumper warranty and a lifetime power train, I'm pretty much going to drive it into the ground! PS: no Teva's allowed.

Me to and never had a problem.

You would have to wear the hat and sunglasses at all times while driving.

I was gonna suggest showing up in my 'Death To Whitey" tshirt, but I like the cowbell. TGO needs more cowbell.

Mindset. Skillset. Toolset - you are hitting all 3 home, you have had a vision and are making it come to fruition, which is a damned good thing. Being prepared and in the proper mindset goes a lot further than anything you can physically have. Thanks for sharing, definitely jealous of you right now.

If the game management folks here are worried about deer night poaching, then why allow coon or pig hunting at night? Someone with a light and a 22 rifle could claim to be coon hunting when he is poaching deer at night. Pig hunters can also use centerfire rifles and lights, so very easy for them to get a deer too. I'm not saying people should not be able to coon or pig hunt at night. I don't have a problem with it, but to me it is an all or nothing kind of deal when it comes to varmints and pests.

You'd think they'd use a smaller grip on a BUG.

I am not sure that is correct. In fact, unless the rules have changed since the last time I checked it isn't. Unless I am mistaken, 'pest animal elimination' is viewed differently from 'hunting'. If I am not mistaken there are different regulations for dealing with nuisance animals than for hunting. Heck - again, unless I am mistaken - you can even get a permit from your local agriculture agent to shoot pest deer out of season. The special permit, to my understanding, is only needed for 'big game'. Endangered or protected species require special permits, too. As far as I am aware, however, there are no special permits needed to kill a non big game nuisance animal. In other words, hunting coyote at night is illegal but pest elimination is not hunting and the rules are different. As the coyote is most likely to show up and be a nuisance animal at night it wouldn't make much sense if you could only shoot them during the day. For example, I knew a guy who had raccoons tearing up his garden. He planned to put out cage traps to catch them and called the TWRA to find out what he should do if he caught some. He knew it was illegal for him to relocate them but wondered if the proper, legal thing to do would be to call TWRA to get them relocated. He was told, by the person to whom he spoke at the TWRA that they didn't do relocations for raccoons, etc. and that the best thing to do if he got one in his trap was to shoot it. Of course, the legal hunting season during that time of the year allows only one raccoon to be taken per person per night but that obviously did not apply to elimination of nuisance raccoons. Further, he was actually more 'trapping' them than hunting them and while there is no limit on trapping raccoon during the legal season that season runs from November through February and would not include the months when raccoons in the garden would be an issue. So, either way, the normal hunting/trapping regulations apparently did not apply. That said, I am not a lawyer and would recommend contacting the TWRA directly to get an answer. ETA: Here is a link to a page at the TWRA website discussing nuisance animal control: https://www.tn.gov/twra/article/adc-faq It doesn't specifically say that it is okay to kill nuisance/destructive coyote at night but it does quote part of the TCA. Notice that no mention is made of any limits to the legal ability to do this based on legal hunting seasons, regulations, etc. Again, though, I would call the TWRA for clarification :

Its all just the luck of the draw. I've been called twice, The case got dismissed the first time. The second time I didn't get seated. Jury Duty can be a real PITA and many people try to get out of it. But, if called again, I will go as I see it as a civic duty.

Pain103: You'd be amazed at the amount of State and Federal Grant money available. Not just to Police Departments, but all sorts of local government agencies. Fire, Public Works, Water, etc. Our small PD owns four Honda ATVs that very rarely get used and often just sit until the batteries die. Why do they have them? Because they got grant money to buy them. No other reason. Likewise, our Fire Dept has a ton of fancy rescue equipment that is hardly used, including a custom built ATV Ambulance. All bought on Uncle Sam's dime. Our PD had a Captain who's sole job was to seek out and do the paperwork to apply for these grants. He messed up and missed the deadline for a big one. The result was a huge ruckus that ended with him being told to retire. The money is out there. If your city and its agencies don't take advantage of these grants, that's their loss.

This is mainly for the Non note galaxies. Odd number releases have all seemed to be better and less buggy.

If you ever get a chance to handle and shoot an original model 51, the new ones will just make you sad. The old ones point like one's finger, and were an engineering marvel of their time, as well as a working, finely crafted piece of art.

I think if you follow the three S's you will be fine.

I had the note 2 and 4 and they were great phones. What's your reasoning?

yeah but do you have splinters in your arms? You know, from hugging all those trees...

Call me harsh if you want, no worries. I worked at Gibson USA making guitars for a few years and watched them do a lot of the same dumb stuff Freedom group has done. Gibson has a gold mine in quality Les Pauls and SGs. They are both (especially the LP) fantastic designs that have stood the test of time and newcomers. Even today a Les Paul is just as useful and desirable as some whizbang Ibanez shred machine... maybe more so. I watched Henry and whoever else is at the helm that day push out some ridiculously crazy, poorly designed and executed garbage out the back of the plant, while reducing focus on their bread and butter. Like the R51, many were pushed out only to be found wanting and recalled. On some models we made entire production runs... literally thousands. Then scrapped every one. (Except the ones the midlevel managers snuck out the door) They also made some stupid decisions with the core products that really hurt LP sales for awhile (robotuners and stupid wide brass nuts, anyone?) but thankfully they saw the error of their ways (read million$ in lo$$e$) and for the most part have gotten back to doing what they do best. Freedom seems to be doing a lot of the same. The 870 is NOTHING like it used to be. I don't know much about the 700 because I never really liked them anyways (and I prefer to know WHEN my guns are going to go off) but I know it is an industry standard that still has appeal to many. I think they HAVE done a good job with their 1911s, and I hope they build on that. I feel like the R51, though, is a poorly done pistol (even the second time) that is a drain on resources for the company that could be better invested elsewhere. This is all my opinion, and worth exactly diddlysquat to anyone.

We just did exactly what you are proposing: Dumped DirecTV and moved to Comcast. We already had Comcast for Internet. Since AT&T / DirecTV couldn't get fast enough Internet to the new house we bought, they let us out of that part of the contract. Our contract finally expired, and we discovered we could save about $85 by going all Comcast. I had considered getting an antenna for local channels, Prime for movies and using USTVNow to pick up ESPN and FoxNews, but I figured I would only be saving $10 or so a month compared to the Comcast bundle. The convenience factor of having only one remote, and not having to switch input settings on the TV all the time was worth the $10 to me. My wife got the whole thing set up in a chat session started from their web site. It was pretty easy. If you hesitate on pulling the trigger, they keep sweetening the deal. My wife would say "Let me think about it" or "let me talk to my husband" and they would come back with "We'll throw in a $80 rebate to cover installation" or, "We'll throw in a free DVR for a year". I had heard that part of the X-Finity rebranding, they were trying to rebuild their customer service reputation. I felt the whole process went very well. They were respectful and helpful. I do think Comcast equipment and their TV offerings are far superior to DirecTV. I really like the DVR interface. You can talk into the remote to search for shows. Seems like everything I have searched for so far shows up in On-Demand. Comcast seems to group their channels a bit better, AND they don't put a damned info-mercial channel on every other channel. I swear DirecTV had hundreds of those things, which irritated me to no end. The installer came and spent several hours here. I wanted to move my router to downstairs. The previous owner had ran 4 cable lines to the bedroom, and I wanted to clean up some cables. They did all that for me. You will want to look up on Google how to hack the remote to add a 30 second skip ahead / 10 second skip back. It makes zipping through commercials on recorded shows so much better. It was very easy to do, just a few keypress sequences on the remote to modify the setting.

I kinda wish all used cop cars went directly to the scrap yard. I can usually spot them from a mile away and seeing the old heaps interferes with my driving pleasure.

The original AR10 was designed and built by the Armalite division of Fairchild Aircraft in the late '50's. production was moved to Artillerie Inrichtingen in Holland, About 8000 rifles were built in several configurations. The last and largest purchase was by Portugal to arm their paratroopers. These rifles were used to great effect in the wars in Angola and Mozambique until they ran out of spare parts and had to re-arm with the G3. Later Mark Westrom bought the Armalite name and the rights to manufacture .308 rifles. these rifles have no interchangeable parts with the original AR10s and use the AR15 fire control and modified M-14 magazines. This company still owns the rights to the name 'Armalite' and also 'AR-10'. Eventually, other companies started to produce .308 rifles using the Stoner system and features. While many shooters generically call these 'AR10's', they cannot have that name due to the Armalite copyright. The original Dutch-made AR10's are the only rifles that can claim non-Spec-Ops combat use as they were issued and used by soldiers in Central America, Africa, and a few even showed up in Vietnam, Typically the countries that had them quit using them when they wore out from use. MY AR10? It's a Portuguese model built on a semi-only receiver. Then only reason it doesn't go to the range with me every trip is the afore-mentioned shortage of spare parts. It's an amazing rifle!!!! http://www.ar10.nl/Portuguese.html What else do you want to know?

I've caught more cats this summer than I know what to do with. Switched over to bass after I filled the freezer. It's been hit or miss on Old Hickory. Some days the action is really good, others I wonder if all the fish just died.

If you need ammo to stock, look no farther than Wolf Gold. It's loaded to 5.56 specs, and it's accurate enough out of every AR I own. In my experience it is one of the cheapest brass case rounds so I load up on it and buy "match" rounds in smaller quantities for when I want to shoot small groups. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wading the creeks have really paid off lately. The harder they are to get to the better. Catching lots of Redeye, largemouth and a few smallies, oh and a ton of bluegill. Ultralights with 6lb test and anywhere from knee deep to chest deep. Sorry, can't give up the lure of choice.

I used to be a bit hyper on the 223/556. Always wondering which to use or buy. Finally realized that my ARs are marked "multi" and quite worrying about it.

I still carried on and off stage.

I walked into my favorite gunshop this morning and spied two pre-owned LC9 s in the used pistol case. One was your generic LC9 with 3 mags, the other had a laser and two mags and the manager said to me, "pull the trigger on the one with the laser and you will recognise it." For the fun of it, I have put in two Galloway Precision LC9 triggers and the one with the laser was one of them. The gal who had traded it on for a S&W BG .380 wanted something smaller and easier to control. Holy S.......! Anyway. I had had a LC9 when they first came out and thought, along with some experienced friends, it had the worst trigger ever - so I traded it . A few months later along comes Galloway Precision with their trigger bar mods. I put in two for a couple of gals who come into my friend's gunshop. I love them, but don't have the jack to actually buy a new LC9 and install the Galloway trigger. Today was my lucky day. One of my own Galloway trigger installed LC9s came into the shop on a trade. I got to pick it up for a good price due to my volunteer work. I can't wait till my wife gets home tonight. This is going to be her favorite gun and it has a factory laser too!