When I was a kid growing up, my favorite deer rifles were lever actions. Marlins and Winchesters. Later in life I got into Cowboy Action Shooting competition, and the lever gun I used there was a Marlin .357 Magnum carbine, loaded with .38 Special. One of the local clubs had a \u201clumber shoot\u201d where heavy chunks of wood needed to be blasted off the table, and there my choice of long gun was a Winchester Model 1892 lever action chambered for .38-40, which moved the wood nicely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time went on, though, and arthritis got deep into my hands and especially my fingers. Running a lever gun fast actually started to hurt. The same affliction hit my thumbs, and I couldn\u2019t cock the hammers of my single action Colt and Ruger revolvers as fast as before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, with a wistful goodbye, I simply gave up shooting the Cowboy Action game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you follow this blog, you know that my favorite gun game is bowling pin shooting. At the Second Chance\/Pin Shoot events, my two best years were with .45 ACP caliber revolvers, Smith & Wessons tuned by Al Greco and Andy Cannon. My single best was 19 seconds and change for five total runs of five pins each with the Greco Model 625. Alas, the arthritis twisted the middle finger to where the trigger guard of a revolver with powerful ammo beat the median joint mercilessly no matter what stocks I put on the guns. I still love shooting revolvers, but for fun I don\u2019t shoot them with anything more powerful than .38 Special ammo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the guns you love to shoot don\u2019t love you back anymore, simply changing guns is the most logical answer. The 1911 .45 autos I had been shooting since I was twelve have gotten me through pin matches very comfortably to date, and are still fun to shoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cImprovise, adapt, and overcome\u201d isn\u2019t just a clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a kid growing up, my favorite deer rifles were lever actions. Marlins and Winchesters. Later in life I got into Cowboy Action Shooting competition, and the lever gun I used there was a Marlin .357 Magnum carbine, loaded with .38 Special. One of the local clubs had a \u201clumber shoot\u201d where heavy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304","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=9304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9306,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions\/9306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}