Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrino
Dusty - I wish this were true; however, with the number of people who either could not or would not afford it, there are a lot of CM barrels out there without a chrome (or anything else for that matter) lining and many of those same people are sitting on and using a horde of Wolf, Tula, etc. ammo that isn't the "preferred solution". Extend that to all of the surplus (WWII or earlier) firearms being snapped up by a desperate public and add in surplus ammo from "god knows where/what storage conditions" and a lot of neophyte "riflemen" need to relearn everything about weapons maintenance that our grandparents took for granted.
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P, you are so right on that issue. Case in point, we had some southern country boys hunting with us up in the mountains a couple years back. These guys supposedly had all kinds of huntin', fishin', n' trappin' experience under their collective belts, so I naturally assumed they were as proficient at maintaining their firearms as they were employing them. Boy did I overestimate them. We had heavy snow roll in on us for a few days and they got tired of sitting around camp and went out into the blizzard to find some elk. This should have been my first clue that they were not all that they claimed.
When they returned soaked and freezing several hours later I watched them toss their rifles onto the cots in their tent and then go about cleaning themselves up and settling down by the fire. I asked when they were going to wipe their weapons down and so forth. They looked at me like I was some kind of city boy freak. One of them complained that his bolt was acting sluggish and if I had any suggestions. I inspected his rifle to find that it may not have ever seen any kind of maintenance since he owned it. The others were as bad if not worse.
That evening I broke out my big maintenance box and gave them a class on weapons maintenance. They looked stunned as if I had just unveiled the mysteries of the universe to them. In all their years of shootin', no one had ever learned them about keeping one's weapons cleaned. One of the guys' dad was in camp with us and that 80-something old farmer ripped into his 50-something son for being a dumb-shit and forgetting everything that had been taught to him when he was a kid.
I still can't believe the condition of those rifles. The barrels were pitted inside and out and there was rust all over and inside the actions, bolts, etc.
