Several More Posts at 35 Whelen Woods

 I have a number of posts up at 35 Whelen Woods, from bullet reviews to a new post about the 7mm-08 Remington.

New 35 Whelen

Last summer I was browsing an online firearms site and came across a new, in the box, Remington CDL Special Edition 35 Whelen. After a bit of dickering the rifle was on its way to my home.

The photographs of the Whelen in the ad had looked great, so I was really anxious to see it... And sure enough, the rifle was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

I love quality wood stock rifles for their look and feel. The only problem is that wood stocks are not as well suited for hunting as are synthetic stocks; not if you hunt like I do. After a couple of seasons my wood stock rifles are chipped and scratched... Miles of cross country hunting in thick difficult terrain does that. Even worse, the temperature and moisture extremes I put my rifles through make it hard for most wood stocks, even pillar bedded and free floated ones, to hold zero. I speak from experience.

... Keep Reading

Gravel Pit Winter Trout

I wrote previously about the trout I stocked in a flooded gravel pit. You can read the article HERE with details about the gravel pit.

Winter has now locked the pond in under 28 inches of ice. It's nearing the end of January, but so far the fish are thriving. I don't expect them to survive the winter so we've been doing some ice fishing.

... keep reading

Remember

Closing Time: Leonard Cohen

First Trout of the Year

Stocking your own rainbow trout can be a hoot!

They have thrived. In three months some of the fish have grown to almost a foot in length, and they are active and healthy. On quiet evenings after a windy day, the surface of the water is constantly being broken with jumping fish, some launching completely into the air.

More at Whelen Woods.

Wind Farms: The Greatest Con of All Time

James Delingpole dishes up a real treat in a savage piece that hits hard at the horrifically greedy and corrupt interests that have shoved Wind Power down our throats:

How about that all you idyllic villages from Cornwall through Northamptonshire to the Fens and thence up north to the humpy Howgills and beyond who’ve had your views blighted, your peace disturbed, your property values trashed, your avian wildlife sliced and diced, your livestock frightened and your community cohesion disrupted by wind projects you never wanted, which you fought hard to prevent, but which were dumped on your doorstep anyway?

How does it feel to know that – having wasted all that time, money and heartache trying unsuccessfully to fight those greedy developers and selfish landowners through the biased planning process only to be overruled by some sinister Inspector Blight figure from the Planning Inspectorate – you’ve belatedly been vindicated by the wind industry itself?

Read the whole thing.

The New Rifle Scope

I recently decided to replace the scope on my favorite hunting rifle. There are so many options available today that the task could have been tricky, but since I knew exactly what I needed from my new scope, the task of eliminating contenders was actually quite easy.

Here's how it turned out:

4 Outstanding Whelens

Over the years a surprising number of firearms have been chambered in 35 Whelen ... usually on a limited run basis. Some have been budget rifles, but more often than not high quality rifles have bore the Whelen stamp.

I decided to do a search of what is available today and found four very interesting and high quality rifles being manufactured at this time.

Here they are:

Barnes TSX .358

I found that under 57 grains the groups opened up and over 57 grains they opened up. The bullets are seated about 0.04" off the lands. If I got any closer the cartridges were a bit too tight in the magazine box and didn't load smoothly.

Keep Reading>>

My First Ever Bedding Project

I prefer wooden rifle stocks over synthetic ones, even though high quality synthetic rifle stocks make for more accurate shooting. Recently I made the decision to upgrade the wooden stock on my favorite rifle, a 1988 Remington Model 700 Classic. The rifle is chambered in 35 Whelen, my favorite caliber.

My Favorite: Remington M700 Classic in 35 Whelen

The Remington M700 Classic is an accurate rifle; but it is a one shot deal.   The stock is light and thin and has a pressure point at the forend, so the zero moves after the first two shots.  Two shots are generally enough to heat the barrel and begin to change the harmonics.

What this means is that if you let the barrel cool completely after placing a shot, the accuracy is outstanding for the next shot.  But, the barrel must be cooled all over again.

Keep Reading>>

Hunting 2015 and New Blog

They say it's better to be late than never, so I've decided to post about my 2015 hunting season.

Suddenly, and actually to my surprise, the breaking of branches was right beside me ... the moose must've picked up the pace. There was a screen of small spruce about 15 yards to my right, and just like that the branches began to move .. and there he was walking right past me.

Keep Reading

Paperclip Mountains

... getting it:

Itty-bitty pundits thinking it’s clever to mock Americans’ opinions are finding the joke is on them. Cozy in their seat of judgment, blowing each other’s horns, protected by a glass screen. Ask yourself: just who ARE these windbags? And what do they build? Towers of paperclips? Lists of Twitter followers?

Go Pro Turtle

Mark Steyn: Must Read

... a few tidbits:

So please don't insult Neville Chamberlain by comparing him to Obama. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, because conspiracies are generally a comforting illusion: the real problem with Obama is that the citizens of the global superpower twice elected him to office. Yet one way to look at the current "leader of the free world" is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?

[...]

But President Obama knows better than you. So he organized a summit dedicated to creating and promoting a self-invented phantom enemy. Conveniently enough, the main problem with "violent extremists" is that its principal victims are Muslims. No, no, I don't mean the thousands of Muslims being slaughtered, beheaded, burned alive, raped, sold into sex slavery, etc, etc, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and so on. The Muslims most at risk are right here in America. Just ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson:

[...]

I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security on the basic Thatcherite principle that if you create a government bureaucracy in order to deal with a problem you'll never be rid of the problem. But I underestimated the creativity of our rulers: The DHS was set up because 19 Muslims flew planes into skyscrapers and killed thousands of people. Thirteen years later, the head of the DHS thinks his department's priority should be to "give voice to the plight of Muslims" who have the misfortune to live in America.

The whole thing ...

Karma

Emergency crews have now cleared the area at Circle Drive (westbound) at 108th St. and traffic is flowing normally. The collision involved 4 vehicles.

A 52 year old man has been charged with driving while suspended. A 41 year old man has been charged with driving without due care and attention, and a 24 year old man has been charged with driving at a speed too fast for conditions. All 3 are from Saskatoon. There were no injures.

Saskatoon City Police

Why Moderate Muslims Have Such a Steep Hill to Climb

There is an entrenched view among many Westerners that Islam has been hijacked by radicals. The view is based in Western "hope" that Islam is a peaceful religion ... that it is like other religions ... and that its foundations are basically respectful of human rights.  This notion is grounded in "progressive" ideology, not historic or theological fact.

Why "progressives" so stubbornly cling to such a benign view of Islam is unclear.  I suppose it's part wishful thinking or a result of humanist sentiment, or perhaps due to the influence of writers who assure us that Islamic doctrine is, in fact, peaceful.

Yet, if one is to judge Islam by its works, the picture that emerges is anything but comforting. Historically, Islam has persecuted non-Muslims virtually each and every time it has held a plurality. Where Muslims dominate(d), but did not persecute others, was generally a result of colonial or dictatorial powers that held them in check. There are few exceptions. It is a fact which stands to this very day. Even in Turkey, which is often held up as a positive example, non-Muslims have lived a tentative existence (and not that long ago suffered horrifically under the Turkomans). In fact, recent events in Turkey see it sliding ever more into the arms of Muslim fundamentalists.

Another "moderate" Muslim realm so often held up as an example of Muslim "peacefulness" is Indonesia.  True, Indonesian Islam from the time of the Dutch East Indies, tended toward a live and let live Islam that blended local animism and Muslim tenants.  It is interesting to note though, that even during the colonial era, fundamentalist Muslim insurgencies were known for the there murderous ways and zealotry.  As in Turkey, modern Indonesia is witness to a slow inexorable slide toward fundamentalism and its accompanying human rights abuses.

Essentially, it is a general rule that whenever Islam becomes the dominant religion, non-Muslims become targets of persecution. Finding exceptions to this rule is a challenge.

There may be any number of reasons why Islam is so uncompromisingly supremacist, but one reason stands out among all others. That is the fact that the foundational texts of Islam are supremacist in the extreme ... to the point of advocating violence as the main form of enforcement. To read about Muhammad, whose example all Muslims are required to follow, is to read about a brutal chauvinist who used murder, deceit, theft and all kind of barbaric means to pursue his agenda. Furthermore, he took the chauvinism common in his time and expanded on it, making Christian chauvinism of the era pale in comparison.

Compare this to Christianity. Anyone at all familiar with Christian foundational texts (culminating in the New Testament), understands immediately that Christianity is by and large a pacifist religion. Christian foundational texts focus on spirituality and are almost completely devoid of political guidance. Christian foundations can best be described as "turn the other cheek". Muslim foundations can best be described as "smite the unbelievers."

To understand the difference between the two, one must understand the historic context in which each came into being.

Christianity came into being under the reality of Imperial Rome. Early Christians could not conceive of life apart from Roman dominance. As a result, the religion offers virtually nothing in the way of political instruction. Literally, it leaves the "sorting out" to God in the afterlife. For example, the ordering of punishment for "sin" is a matter to be dealt with between the sinner and God when the sinner dies; very little earthly “legal” remedy is offered. Roman law was so over arching, that to suggest any form of material reward, sanction, or other, would have been to challenge Roman law and order. Furthermore, there was no chance, even remotely, of expanding Christianity using the sword ... so early Christians expanded the religion using the persuasion of ideas, good works, and a message that promised eternal life based on belief in Christ. Early Christians focused on the example of their prophet, Jesus Christ, who set about as pacifist an example as could be. His primary tenet was, "the greatest of these is love".  His most violent act, the driving out of money changers from the temple.

Contrast this with early Islam, where the founder initially had no powerful and dominating Roman empire to contend with. Muhammad and later Muslims were able to expanded their faith solely via the sword. After a fragile start, Muhammad plundered his way to dominance. Muslims became the masters of their destiny and their religion became law where they lived. Muhammad died ruler of his realm; a realm that expanded bloody year after bloody year. As a result, Islam needed not be pacifist, it needed not to moderate, it needed not to compromise. It moved far beyond spiritual matters and became a way of governance, of economy, of war, of life, and death. Islam, became a road map for all aspects of life and governance ... today we call it Sharia.

Critics will no doubt recall the violent excesses of the Church of Rome, and they will be correct in doing so. Christianity, despite its pacifist foundations, has been used by political forces over centuries to enact all sorts of violence. Once it became the dominant religion in Southern Europe, it's pacifist nature was quickly circumvented for any number of reasons, but none of these reasons could either then or now be justified using foundational Christian texts. As a result, Christians have always struggled back to their pacifist and peaceful roots. Why? Because their foundational texts are such, and they find more than ample reason there for coexisting peacefully with others. In fact, it is a great theological stretch for Christians to march to war. When they do, they do so largely because their foundational texts deal almost exclusively with spiritual matters and don't cross over into governance, offering little guidance on political matters. This fact is critical to our discussion.

Moderate Muslim reformers have no such reality. There is no "peaceful" Islam to return to. Muslims who value modern notions of human rights and liberty must work counter to their prophet, they must, in fact, reject his example. They have no "Jesus" to follow. Their prophet is a barbaric sadist. Their early texts are a prescription for human rights abuses, for war, and for utter and total domination of others. There early deeds are conquest, pillage, and the subjugation of all their neighbours. Islam was born of war and violence. Since there is no peaceful Islam for reformers to go back to, it can be argued that truly devout Muslims are those we Westerners wrongly call radicals ( al quaida, ISIS), for they seek the supremacist Islam of Muhammad and are truly not radicals at all; while in reality the actual "radicals" are those who seek to reform Islam into something more compatible with Western ideals of liberty and freedom.  Islam that conforms to Western notions of human liberty is radical; Islam that is violently supremacist is traditional.

That is why Muslim apostates like Wafa Sultan, Hirsi Ali, and others, argue for "transformation". They understand from experience and education that there is no peaceful Islam to go back to ... the concept of "peaceful Islam"  in the Western sense of "peace", is a myth, a construct of ignorant Westerners, deceitful Muslims, or worse yet, delusional but well-meaning secular Muslims who after 1400 years still can't admit to the violent core of their faith. It's time that Westerners realize that while individual Muslims may be peace loving, their religion is anything but.

When Your Government Becomes the Prince Among Thieves

All in the name of protecting us, no doubt:

Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment. “Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”

Beverly said that after being contacted by The Intercept, Gemalto’s internal security team began on Wednesday to investigate how their system was penetrated and could find no trace of the hacks. When asked if the NSA or GCHQ had ever requested access to Gemalto-manufactured encryption keys, Beverly said, “I am totally unaware. To the best of my knowledge, no.”

If anybody else did this, they'd be in jail.

Canadian Judges are Cop Killers

Shawn Rehn's adult conviction record:

Note: The date refers to when the case was adjudicated and the location refers to the court where the matter was heard.

1999-04-01 (Edmonton): Break and enter, Theft. Sentence: 60 days in jail, 1 year probation, $921 to be paid in restitution.

2001-08-27 (Evansburg): Assault. Sentence: $200 fine.

2001-05-14 (Calgary): Possession of property under $5000 obtained by crime. Sentence: 60 days in jail.

2001-05-14 (Calgary): Housebreaking, Theft. Sentence: 5 months in jail.

2001-05-14 (Calgary): Obstructing a Peace Officer, Breach of conditions (2 counts). Sentence: 15 days in jail.

2001-06-21 (Edmonton): Fail to attend court. Sentence: 45 days in jail.

2001-12-15 (Edmonton): Assault with a weapon, Careless use and storage of a firearm (2 counts). Sentence: time served on 1 day in jail (had spent 7 months in custody), 10 year ban on firearms.

2003-03-04: Operation of a motor vehicle while disqualified. Sentence: $400 fine.

2004-08-04 (Edmonton): Operation of a motor vehicle while disqualified. Sentence: 60 days in jail.

2005-04-13 (Calgary): Possession of property over $5000 obtained by crime. Sentence: 1 day in jail.

2006-03-15 (Calgary): Possession of property under $5000 obtained by crime (16 counts). Sentence: 2 years in jail.

2006-03-27 (Edmonton): Possession of property over $5000 obtained by crime, driving while disqualified. Sentence: 5 months in jail, 18 month driving ban.

2007-11-08 (Calgary): Theft under $5000. Sentence: 1 day in jail.

2009-08-14 (Edmonton): Failure to comply with recognizance. Sentence: $200 fine.

2010-10-26 (Edmonton): Possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm, Possession of a prohibited firearm. Sentence: 3 years in jail, 10 year ban on firearms.

2010-10-26: Refusal to provide breath sample, Escape lawful custody, Possession of controlled substance, Possession of property under $5000 obtained by crime (10 counts), Possession of stolen credit card, Breach of recognizance. Sentence: 5 years in jail (minus 2 years for time served).

2011-06-06: (Edmonton): Break and enter, Theft. Sentence: 2 years in jail.

2011-08-19 (Drumheller): Possession of a prohibited or restricted weapon, possession of property under $5000 obtained by crime, Breach of recognizance (2 counts). Sentence: 3 months in jail.

2013-08-07 (Drumheller): Assault. Sentence: 1 day in jail.

Shawn Rehn's outstanding charges:

2013-10-11 (Edmonton): Fraud over $5,000, Breach of condition recognizance (2 counts).

2013-12-14 (Fort Saskatchewan): Breach of recognizance (3 counts), Resisting a peace officer, Possession of stolen property, Possession of controlled substance, Use of imitation firearm.

2014-09-03 (Edmonton): Possession of a prohibited/restricted weapon, Possession of a prohibited firearm, Escaping lawful custody, Possession of stolen property under $5,000, Possession of controlled substance, Possess break-in instruments, Breach of recognizance order (2 counts).

2014-10-28 (Edmonton): Fail to stop vehicle/evade officer, Dangerous driving, Breach of recognizance (4 counts), Disqualified driving, Driving without insurance, Display unauthorized plates.

2014-11-12 (Edmonton): Fail to appear.

2014-11-28 (Edmonton): Fail to appear.

Cop Killer

Source

2014: The Year the Planet Roasted

In what can only be described as a crushing defeat for Global Warming Deniers, NASA has concluded that the Earth's fever of death and destruction broke new records in 2014, shattering the 2010 roast-fest by two one hundredths of a degree:

According to the Nasa global temperature database 2014 was technically a record “beating” 2010 by the small margin of 0.02 deg C. The NASA press release is highly misleading saying that 2014 is a record without giving the actual 2014 figure, or any other year, or its associated error.

In reality of course it is no record at all as the error of the measurements is about +/- 0.1 deg C showing NasaGiss’ statement to go against the normal treatment of observational data and its errors. Talk of a record is therefore scientifically and statistically meaningless.