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you come across a hidden gem, often in the most unlikely places.
For me, that unlikely place has been this forum. I can honestly say, with my febrile old paw place firmly on my flinty ol' heart, that I've encountered an wholly untoward number of gems on this site. Gems that have at first surprised me, and then, somehow, finagled their way into my very close and closed circle of friends. Y'see, as you get to my age, the likelihood is that the number of friends you have will be getting inexorably smaller, due to the advance of Chronos and the ol' Dark Wings thing - you all know what I mean, I'm sure.
I find it amazing, therefore, and for almost every one who has gone over here, to 'over there', a new friend appears here. Heck, you know who you are, in exactly the same way as those who find me an annoying old f*rt and wish I'd just go away, know who THEY are.
As you mostly know, although we DO have shooting sports over here in yUK, there are often times when lack of buyers means that one line or other of essentials that come form the USA are simply dropped and forgotten. So it was with the long, cylindrical round-nosed bullets that us old fa*ts shoot in our hundred-year-old Mauser rifles of one kind or another. The gradual disappearance the one-time King of the Hill 7x57 rifle for deer-stalking - the only real centrefire calibre needed by a REAL gentleman here in UK, has been slow but sure, and the disappearance of the long, old-style cylindrical bullets of .285" diameter has been inevitable.
So it was that around a year ago, ago reading of my plight, that a more-than-kind person on this forum, whom I have known a good while as a man with a sympathetic viewpoint, sent me almost a hundred of the correct bullets - long, and flat-based, so that I could continue to shoot my 1897 Boer War carbine and 1912 Mauser Model B with a modicum of success. Having let him know that they worked very well - within my own limitations, I hasten to add - he offered to send me some more - HUNDREDS more. needless to say, I demurred, these things are HEAVY, right? He ignored my protests, and sent them anyway, and I've received them within the last hour.
To him, I offer my more than grateful and heartfelt thanks - there is, of course, nothing that I can do for him by way of reciprocity, since over where YOU are you can all have what you like, and what you like is not what WE have.
So until I can think of a way to thank him properly, and in the hope that he's reading this now, please accept my grateful thanks. Here in yUK, when we have somebody starting up shooting, and needs something to shoot, and, of course the ammunition to shoot in it, there is often a small problem. It's called the British reserve, and it means that folks are loathe to say that they'd really like to have a few shots with your guns, simply because they know, even at an early stage, just how much those few shot might cost, especially in the more esoteric calibres like .338LM or even .300WM, let alone .577 Snider...what we do is to ignore their qualms, and tell them to get on with it, and then, later on, when a noob is looking at THEIR guns, they pass it on.
All I can do here, in this case, is to pass it on - something I do anyhow, and have done all my shooting life here in yUK.
Gems, Gentlemen and Lady, can be found in the most unlikely places.
He is one of them.
For me, that unlikely place has been this forum. I can honestly say, with my febrile old paw place firmly on my flinty ol' heart, that I've encountered an wholly untoward number of gems on this site. Gems that have at first surprised me, and then, somehow, finagled their way into my very close and closed circle of friends. Y'see, as you get to my age, the likelihood is that the number of friends you have will be getting inexorably smaller, due to the advance of Chronos and the ol' Dark Wings thing - you all know what I mean, I'm sure.
I find it amazing, therefore, and for almost every one who has gone over here, to 'over there', a new friend appears here. Heck, you know who you are, in exactly the same way as those who find me an annoying old f*rt and wish I'd just go away, know who THEY are.
As you mostly know, although we DO have shooting sports over here in yUK, there are often times when lack of buyers means that one line or other of essentials that come form the USA are simply dropped and forgotten. So it was with the long, cylindrical round-nosed bullets that us old fa*ts shoot in our hundred-year-old Mauser rifles of one kind or another. The gradual disappearance the one-time King of the Hill 7x57 rifle for deer-stalking - the only real centrefire calibre needed by a REAL gentleman here in UK, has been slow but sure, and the disappearance of the long, old-style cylindrical bullets of .285" diameter has been inevitable.
So it was that around a year ago, ago reading of my plight, that a more-than-kind person on this forum, whom I have known a good while as a man with a sympathetic viewpoint, sent me almost a hundred of the correct bullets - long, and flat-based, so that I could continue to shoot my 1897 Boer War carbine and 1912 Mauser Model B with a modicum of success. Having let him know that they worked very well - within my own limitations, I hasten to add - he offered to send me some more - HUNDREDS more. needless to say, I demurred, these things are HEAVY, right? He ignored my protests, and sent them anyway, and I've received them within the last hour.
To him, I offer my more than grateful and heartfelt thanks - there is, of course, nothing that I can do for him by way of reciprocity, since over where YOU are you can all have what you like, and what you like is not what WE have.
So until I can think of a way to thank him properly, and in the hope that he's reading this now, please accept my grateful thanks. Here in yUK, when we have somebody starting up shooting, and needs something to shoot, and, of course the ammunition to shoot in it, there is often a small problem. It's called the British reserve, and it means that folks are loathe to say that they'd really like to have a few shots with your guns, simply because they know, even at an early stage, just how much those few shot might cost, especially in the more esoteric calibres like .338LM or even .300WM, let alone .577 Snider...what we do is to ignore their qualms, and tell them to get on with it, and then, later on, when a noob is looking at THEIR guns, they pass it on.
All I can do here, in this case, is to pass it on - something I do anyhow, and have done all my shooting life here in yUK.
Gems, Gentlemen and Lady, can be found in the most unlikely places.
He is one of them.
