Remembering my recently deceased friend John Taffin I was reminded how over the years, he shot the hell out of super-powerful handguns like the .500 Linebaugh and hot-loaded .44 Magnum, and wound up with injured hands and wrists. In his writing, he warned the rest of us about it, and set an example by publicly admitting he was shooting lighter loads these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his age group and mine (read: \u201cOld Guys\u201d) that\u2019s a common syndrome. A lot of my colleagues have gone from .357 Magnum and .38 Special +P in their lightweight pocket revolvers to the humble, mild 148 grain .38 Special mid-range wadcutter target load. It still punches a full diameter wound track, and doesn\u2019t tear up arthritic hands. Before John, I saw other aging gun experts \u2013 Walt Rauch and Pat Rogers, who are sadly no longer with us either \u2013 power down from .45s to 9mm for similar reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same is true of long guns. My elephant rifles have been consigned to the safe for some time, and in a shotgun I tend toward the 20 gauge. When the opthalmologist told me I had a tear beginning in one retina, he said it was time for me to stop rapid-firing 12 gauge shotguns with full power loads. I took his advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote about the advantages of the 20 gauge shotgun for various sporting and defense purposes a while ago, in Backwoods Home <\/em>magazine, here: https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.<\/a>com\/consider-the-20-gauge-shotgun\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remembering my recently deceased friend John Taffin I was reminded how over the years, he shot the hell out of super-powerful handguns like the .500 Linebaugh and hot-loaded .44 Magnum, and wound up with injured hands and wrists. In his writing, he warned the rest of us about it, and set an example by publicly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8725,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724\/revisions\/8725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}