OP
OP
Confederate
Member
Not all people live in states that give out concealed weapons permits. Before permits were so easy to get, people had to carry their weapons illegally. In these anti-gun states, we still do. In most cases, park rangers don't press people to see if they're armed, but it's easy for people who have permits to drift into states where permits from other states aren't recognized. That means people with permits from other states have to avoid parks in states where their permits aren't recognized. Or they have to carry there anyway. It happens.
I became a believer in Bigfoot years ago while going to school in Provo. A huge storm rolled in and caught everyone off guard and the park rangers flew helicopters into the Uinta Mountains to see if anyone had been caught. While flying through the tops of the mountains, they spied two sets of footprints running along a high mountain ridge with steep sides running to the top. The shape of the footprints were vaguely human, but the larger set was well over a foot in length. The other set was smaller, as though it was a young one. To produce them, one would have had to have a helicopter, then lowered print-making templates one at a time at the proper distance. And since the prints ran along the top of the ridge for quite a distance, it would have taken a long time and cost a lot of money. The snow along the surface also would have been blown by the helicopter blades. The copter filming the tracks was able to get some pretty good photos of the footprints and many rangers and others, in the scientific community, were convinced that these prints proved the existence of Bigfoot, despite the obvious problems of there being no bodies. Paulides, who himself has become a believer in Bigfoot, gave this address:
Check out his address and tell me if he sounds like a loony.
Yes, and this was Paulides' first suspicion. But then there were problems. As one of the oldest researchers told him, "The more you know, the less you're going to understand." Now his address (above) was to a group of UFO buffs. I'm not a part of any group, but in the 1970s I saw two UFOs that flew over Washington, D.C. It was at night. My mother and I were taking a walk and there's a place in Virginia overlooking Washington. We had stopped to lie in the grass and shoot the breeze when suddenly two disk-shaped objects came out of nowhere. Neither had any lights blinking on them, as all aircraft are required to -- in fact, we lived on an Air Force base and also in Virginia Beach, where there were many aircraft. My dad was a naval aviator and he didn't even blink when we told him about our experience. He and other naval aviators have been seeing UFOs for years. "I think we've all chased Venus at one point in our lives," he said, grinning, but there are other times things aren't Venus and which can't be explained. One of my dad's friends was NASA astronaut Pete Conrad, and you'd be amazed at how many astronauts have seen them. My mother wanted to report the two UFOs we saw, but I vetoed it. The truth is, and I understood it at the time, the government isn't interested. What I didn't know but learned later, UFOs are spotted all the time over D.C. I thought at the time that maybe we'd seen something unusual. Not so. But that's just my own experience. I've never seen a Bigfoot, but those damn prints on the Uinta Mountain ridge is what made me a die-hard believer. The estimates as to the weight of the big one was well in excess of 300 pounds.
I wouldn't carry a gun for protection against Bigfoot. I'm not saying that. But I think it's wise to be armed everywhere it's practical, but especially in the wild. There are no cops out there and you can blow a whistle until you're blue in the face. And YES there are many disreputable elements who can operate with impunity. But Paulides isn't into that.
For most places, I'm happy with a 6-shot .357 Magnum. It's been amazing people since its introduction in 1934. The Highway Patrol hadn't been terribly successful using the .38 Spc. Even the .45 automatic lacked the power to punch through automobiles. Out of 2-inch barrels, the bullets wouldn't even penetrate the cars of that day. The .357, however, has been outperforming expectations on all fronts since those early days. The 125gr JHP has been used against human beings and even to bring down deer. The 158gr JHP also has a stellar reputation hunting deer-sized game. The gun-makers thought they could do the same thing with the .40 auto, but it was just the opposite. So to say I'm a fan of the .357 is putting it mildly. That's why I'm stunned by the manufacturers continually putting underlugs on the barrels. It seems that if Ruger can pack any more steel onto a revolver that isn't there, that they'll find a way to add it.
That wasn't the way it was when Bill Ruger was running things. The company eliminated the Security-Six (below) for a handgun that was nowhere near as good! (Apologies to GP-100 owners, but they're boat anchors. Very good if you're shooting in a dingy, dank range somewhere, but who wants to carry it for long ranges?) At least shooters should have a choice.
Good enough for me. Hot loads should be fine. Charter Arms Bulldogs, not so much.
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