Email tried again, hopefully it went through this time.

Got it and I thank you!

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
Got it and I thank you!

I'm glad to hear that it made it.

Check will be on the way Monday-23rd Hope the hunt is wonderful--If I win all the rifles i am holding tickets now, i will have to add on to the house. If i win none it is money well spent.

1. 465 H&H
2. "
3. "
4. "
5. "
6. Jorge
7. "
8. Marc S
9. Mark 6.5x55
10. baboon
11. talentrec
12. "
13. CFA
14. "
15. Palmer
16. "
17. "
18. "
19. Matt Norman
20. Hogkiller
21. "
22. JJS
23. "
24. "
25. "
26. "
27. Frank Beller
28. Anon
29. Anon
30. Fjold
31. "
32. Ann
33. ChopperGuy
34. "
35. "
36. "
37. "
38. BobC
39. MikeB
40. "
41. JoelC
42. "
43. Cable68
44. "
45. Arts
46. "
47. "
48. "
49. "
50. "
51. "
52. "
53. "
54. "
55.MightyJoe
56. Mstarling
57. Redlander
58. "
59. Charles Helm
60. "
61. "
62. "
63. "
64. Invader66
65. "
66. Coues
67. "
68. "

Received through noon on 5/26/2005

Several of the guys have asked that the rifle be re-auctioned if they win to raise more money and one asked that it go to Russell if he wins... Thanks Lady and Gentlemn!

We're getting there.

Send a few bucks and support the AR Zebra Hunt!

Check for 2 on the way. I know what you mean, I
spent 3 tours in SE Asia as a Marine and came home to----. Thank You and others who come up with ways for us, the protected, to say THANKS

TTT

Gratuitous bump to the top.

I know there are a bunch of you who havent bought your raffle tickets yet. It is only $10 bucks a pop. Dig a little deeper and lets get Russ his Zebra. (even if he is a officer instead of a NCO)

Russell,
I am looking forward to hearing how a nice medium rare Zebra tenderloin tastes.

Judge G,

Check is coming tommorow for two more tickets.

Hog Killer

Judge G:
You should expect a letter and check within the next week. Come to think of it, isn't that one of the five biggest lies? A check's in the mail.

I'm going to take a picture of the rifle this morning when I get to work to show the case, etc. Thanks for the support, so far!

Semper Fi...

I'm putting a check in the mail for 2 tickets today, May 26....just saw the posting.....thanks!!

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
Russell did well, got promoted to Lt.Colonel, in fact. He's got to go back next year, too.
Let's support "our" guy on his trip of a lifetime.

Awwwwww, Hell. I didn't know you were going to sell a rifle to do this, or I'd have stopped you.

I have to point out, before anyone feels sorry for me having to go back, that... I don't. Here's the story, accurate as of "today." This information is "good" as of about three weeks ago.

In the Reserve and Guard (I'm in the Reserve), you can be mobilized for up to 24 months in any five-year period, under a presidential "call up" which is, I'm told, what we're under at the moment. I (and my unit) pulled 13 months for what is now known as "OIF 1." That leaves 11 months left for a mobilization. "The Army" (as a collective entity) is standing firm on requiring EIGHTEEN MONTHS for a mobilization. Subsequently, the Army is... how shall I put this?... "requiring that you volunteer" for 18 months. It IS, however, a VOLUNTEER arrangement. All but three of us (and I wasn't one of the three) volunteered to waive our 11-month limitation and make ourselves available for mobilization by agreeing to accept an 18-month obligation.

Now, if anyone thinks less of me for not volunteering for an 18-month tour, fine. I'm up for pulling 11 months, but it would be back at the same exact place in the Sunni Triangle, and I'm just not "hooah" enough to sign up for an 18-month obligation. I have my reasons, none of which you may understand, or care about. None of them, if you DO care, are cowardice or a lack of love for my country. If any of you see it differently, well... it's your privilege to disagree.

So, AS IT STANDS "TODAY," (and I keep stressing "today" because this IS "the Army" we're talking about and "it" can change "its" mind any bloody time "it" wants), I will be staying CONUS, drilling once a month (sometimes more), and doing my annual training. Next week, I leave for Milan Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee, where I'll be for about three weeks. Otherwise, I expect to "be around" for a while.

I am focusing on "living." I have put in for elk in Arizona, deer in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and I am looking at a Spring bear hunt in Manitoba next year. I also have an elk/muley combo in Idaho next year that I've been paying on for quite some time now. I'm not dead and I'm sure those guys who got killed would, if they could, tell me to enjoy the fact I came home alive with all my fingers and toes in place. This is what I've been doing. I'm doing all those things I couldn't do while I was gone. I'm doing all those things I couldn't do if I was dead in the ground. I've never been much of a "group-hug, let's-sing-Kumbaya" kind of guy... but I AM trying to enjoy what life I have left that God has seen fit to let me have. It's all borrowed time, a fact I think about quite a bit lately.

Anyway... "subject to change"... I'm not going back next year. My unit has been alerted, to report 3 Aug 05, but it's a matter of mobilizing a unit identification on paper. Our new commander, who didn't go with us previously since he wasn't around, is going to fill the slots from our subordinate units with members who have not been mobilized yet or who have at least 18 months left with which they can be activated. Failing to fill all of them, he'll go to our next-higher command, which will try to fill them. That failing, it keeps going up the ladder until all the slots are filled. One way or another, our "unit identification" (the simplest way I can put it without getting into Army-ese) will get mobilized. I, however, will not.

There it is. Judge... damn, man, I wish you weren't selling a rifle for me. Something like this I'll never be able to pay back.

You folks here are just too much, sometimes. I just don't know what to say... except, obviously, "thank you, friends."

Russ

quote:

Originally posted by M1Tanker:
Russell,
I am looking forward to hearing how a nice medium rare Zebra tenderloin tastes.

Gosh, Bill, I don't think I'll be able to tell you. I'm a "well done" kind of guy. (I know, I know... gourmets everywhere are cringing.)

By the way... do they have ketchup in Africa?

Russ

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
Several of the guys have asked that the rifle be re-auctioned if they win to raise more money and one asked that it go to Russell if he wins... Thanks Lady and Gentlemn!

You folks "have done broke" the nice meter! It's flat busted.

Russ

Here are a couple more pictures of the rifle (one, in maker's case).

JudgeG!

Let me be #3. Thank you for 1971!

465H&H

JudgeG
Mailed a good old Postal Money order to you on the 17th for two tickets. Still haven't seen our name on the list. I would make a remark about the snail mail but they just happen to sign the paycheck that is making it possible for my husband and I to return to Africa this September. If it doesn't show I will credit card it. Thanks

JudgeG:

You have a check on the way from me. Looking forward to the drawing!

Ken

Ernest:
I'm in for a couple of chances. Thanks for doing this.

KBI:

I haven't received anything from you unless you used another "handle" or my latest update above includes you. Come to think of it... I KNOW that I haven't seen any P.O. money orders as of yet!

E.G.,

Please count me in for 3. I will mail a check.

Thanks!

JudgeG,
A personel check is in the mail today. If moneyorder shows up just add on two more.
Linda

Here is the true story on the rifle:

On July 6, 1919, the recently returned from war, Major Charles Dixon, V.C., M.B.E, ordered this rifle from Holland & Holland, Bond St. during a visit to the hallowed establishment.

H&H often bought actions (and even some stocks) from German and Austrian makers and did so on this occasion. Duty, however called, requiring Sir Charles in Kenya immediately. He made inquiry as to when he could expect the rifle and discovered that H&H would need several months to modify and complete it in their usual style.

Dixon opted to pick up the rifle "as is" and take it to Africa as his primary sporting arm. Therefore, it has a mixture of German and English proofs (i.e., it is marked as a .375 Express (English), with a Mannlicher logo. That, and a MasterCard, make the rifle priceless.

Major Dixon arrived in the monsoon heat and rain of British East Africa in January of 1920. Mombassa was the situs of the small attachment of the King's Own 3rd Hussiars, the detachment which Dixon commanded. His primary duty was survey and establishment of boundries changed in the Arusha region when Queen Victoria gave the Kaiser Kilimanjoro for his birthday (the exact dimensions having never been firmly established prior to the recent hostilities between the cousins.. or WWI, if you prefer).

Disregarding the weather, Sir Charles immediately gathered his surveying equipment and made haste for the volcano regions. He was a graduate engineer from Oxford and was eager to put his training to use for reasons other than war (at which he was quite good, having singlehandedly taken four German machinegun nests in a furious half-hour at the Marne.. interesting, he did this in his underwear after his uniform was shreaded from him by a combination of barbed-wire and rose bushes.. the machine guns and wire being emplaced in an abandoned garden of a British ex-pat).

Of course, Dixon carefully, in preparation for Africa, packed his .375 Express (in the case marked CD and included in the auction) with the dual purpose of sport and feeding his mini-expedition. He also took a pre-Searcy .470 with him, but seldom used it because a proper Englishman would never so lower himself. (Butch is older than you think, guys. Actually, Butch's grandfather worked for Westley-Richards and made "trade" rifles on the side.... but I know nothing more about Dixon's use of that rifle or the eventual location/condition, etc. of the same. Butch, do you know what happened to it?)

It took the good Major 13 weeks to arrive at Mjobutti's Mine, just short of the snow capped peaks at the border. While enroute, he had taken 3 adult male lions for sport, not to mention hundreds of animals and, alas, one elderly (and very lost) Japanese Shinto priest for the pot. Dixon particularly liked impala liver, but didn't care for the somewhat stringy holy man.

About three weeks into the trek, at 20 feet, and at full charge, Dixon had also killed a juvenile lioness which had, the evening before, killed and eaten a Massai youth who was, at the time of his death, herding oxen belonging to the Dixon party. (Rumor is that the youth was playing pocket pool and not watching out very well when the attack came). Sir Charles indented a small mark under the cheekpiece to memorialize his encounter with the savage beast (the lion, that is).

While there were more famous hunters of man-killing lions and leopards of Africa, none seems to have been more successful in so short a time. Dixon's stay in Africa was only for three years. The rifle now has eight (8) imprints non-conspicously dotting a line of three inches, all out of sight under the cheekpiece, invisible, unless you know where to look. The dots (and Saeed's American Express card) make the rifle more than priceless.

Among the lions killed by Sir Charles were the Webitejo'ass pair that killed and ate four entire Boer familes, totaling 32 people and the James-Smythe lion (so named for eating the Second Earl of Bothe in front of his wife and mother-in-law as they tried to enjoy a picnic upon the slopes of Mt. Arusha. The earl, notoriously a penny pincher is reported to have said as his last words while the lion drug him away, "That port cost four pounds and I did not get to drink a drop... poor me! And I am dead!)

The rifle was returned to "Jolly Old" along with the remains of Dixon in 1923. Records are scarce about his demise, but it appears that Sir Charles, shortly after killing his eighth maneater, chose to hunt buffalo with a Marlin model 1895 in .45/70. The only witness to the death, a young, ne'r-do-well Texan known as Ray, though extremely drunk while making the report and not particularly know as trustworthy, claimed that Dixon made several good shots on an old Daga Boy, but that the bullets just seemed to bounce off the shoulder of the buffalo. Dixon's last words were quite ironic: "I should have had a V-8" (Some believe he said ".458", however). In any event, his heirs have made quite a fortune from suing Campbell's Soups for wrongfully using Dixon's final statement.


The former Sir Charles Dixon being thoroughly stomped, made his final trip home in a 14x14x6 inch ironwood box carved by a Zulu priestess named LaTonya (who had five singing brothers in a group called the Jackson Five, but they broke up when one of the brothers got arrested for child molestation in Dar es Salaam. It seems that the fellow exposed his breast to children visiting the old slave bacaroons while gyrating to the tune of I DID MY WAY.

The petty remains were escorted all the way from Africa to the gravesite by a Dutchman named van Tonder (who allegedly dumped the bones, hair and busted teeth in the hole and smuggled the container back to East Africa. Word is that his son, Pierr'e, with the thingy in the wrong place (thingys follow e's, not before them), now uses it to store cigars for his safari client in the Selous region of Tanzania. A picture of such a client being formerly posted in Mickey Mouse gear and an American Flag, smoking a Cuban and drinking Oban and btw, the cigars did taste a little salty.)

The widow of Sir Charles waited a scant fortnight to re-marry, bringing with her a dowry of 250,000 guineas (the money, not the fowl... though she did have some chickens near her barn in Stratfordshire). She had four sons by her new spouse (the same besotted Ray fellow who "witnessed the Victoria Cross winner's death). All four of her and Ray's boys emigrated to the U.S. and became rich in their own right in the condum business making especially small sizes for Democrats. One of those condum makers who now goes by the name of Don, the Administrator, sold me his grandfather's (albeit, once removed) rifle (the subject of the auction) in trade for a lifetime memberships in both the Republican party and the I LOVE "W" and DICK CLUB, INC. Also included was a bottle of Enzyte.

Another child later moved to Cuba and invented the automatic cigar cutter, but after his invention accidently castrated a bastard child of Batista (who was practicing to perform circumsicions, the dictator being a wantabe bris guy).. changed is name to Rojo and moved to back to America where his son now flies for the U.S. Navy with some infamy.

The other children were killed in WWII, but not before one sired a child with a Chilian woman, that child being somewhat a weird dude who periodically shoots himself and likes to powder his head.

And, if you don't believe any of the above, please send me a 1st class ticket to Arusha and $40K and I'll check it all out with my new girlfriend Monica (while doing a little lion hunting of my own in those plains just south of Blojobbe in Ovelophisland).

Buy a ticket or 10!!!!

Slighty tongue in cheek, I remain,
Semper Fi and... hoping you all take this is good fun and the spirit intented,

Lordy, was that well done, Judge G. Now if I could just sort out what is truth and what is fiction. Alas------

quote:

Another child later moved to Cuba and invented the automatic cigar cutter, but after his invention accidently castrated a child of Batista (who was practicing to perform circumsicions, the dictator being a wantabe bris guy).. changed is name to Rojo and moved to back to America where his son now flies for the U.S. Navy with some infamy.

And don't forget the part about marrying the great-great grandaughter of Brunhilda one of the original Valkyries from Richard Wagner's Idillic opera! 11 days....jorge

quote:

And, if you don't believe any of the above, please send me a 1st class ticket to Arusha and $40K and I'll check it all out (while doing a little lion hunting of my own in those plains just south of Arusha.

Buy a ticket or 10!!!!

Geez Judge! I was reading this while trying to talk on the phone to New Zealand and up until you mentioned Butch's grandfather you had me hooked. Don't post this kind of stuff during the day, I'm trying to get some work done!

Check for 4 will be off to you tomorrow. Thanks for doing this Judge!

John

Wow, what a history!!!

JudgeG

Money order for the four tickets on way as promised if a little late!


***

I am not at all surprised at the history above nor its connection to AR members.

Dixon was my Great grandfather's good friend and was his bestman at his wedding in 1911. They served together in the East Africa campaign of 1915. Unfortuantely Dixon never acknowledged this in his official memoirs as my great-gran-daddy was Queen Victoria's out of wedlock love-child and eldest to boot and such things were kept hush-hush in those days.

So when I win the rifle it will just be returning home.

Geez! They must grow a particularly strong variety of weed in Georgia!

465H&H

Judge G,
Sent you a check........

I am his witness on the history of that fine firearm, Ern says it, I back him up, that's the way it works in our camp, Lord help me! ...

With that documented History, you are looking at a sho nuff collector item, maybe valued in the 10 diget numbers, like 10 dominoes, 10 rounds of ammo, 10 bites of popcorn, some real value there...so you can't go wrong...

Get in there, buy a ticket, send old Russ on the hunt of his life, he earned it and did it for us and our loved ones, show our gratitude in this small way..they are kicking a$$ over there, that keeps them out of our back yard, May God bless and protect each and everyone of them.....If you have ever ducked a bullet then you know from whince I come...

Alright already--I'll take 2 more. In mail tue am.Tell the col. he has already paid it all back.

Check from Carrollton in tomorrow's mail

Excellent rifle and tall tale.

Mike

1. 465 H&H
2. "
3. "
4. "
5. "
6. Jorge
7. "
8. Marc S
9. Mark 6.5x55
10. baboon
11. talentrec
12. "
13. CFA
14. "
15. Palmer
16. "
17. "
18. "
19. Matt Norman
20. Hogkiller
21. "
22. JJS
23. "
24. "
25. "
26. "
27. Frank Beller
28. Anon
29. Anon
30. Fjold
31. "
32. Ann
33. ChopperGuy
34. "
35. "
36. "
37. "
38. BobC
39. MikeB
40. "
41. JoelC
42. "
43. Cable68
44. "
45. Arts
46. "
47. "
48. "
49. "
50. "
51. "
52. "
53. "
54. "
55.MightyJoe
56. Mstarling
57. Redlander
58. "
59. Charles Helm
60. "
61. "
62. "
63. "
64. Invader66
65. "
66. Coues
67. "
68. "
69. JKeith
70. "
71. KenW
72. KBI
73. "
74. Eric Ching
75. "
76. John in SC
77. Kathi
78. "
79. Bravo Five One (Sam)
80. "
81. "
82. JKS
83. "
84. "
85. "
86. Keith Benthall
87. "
88. Patrkyhntr
89. "
90. "
91. "
92. "
93. "
94. "
95. "
96. "
97. "

Received by noon on Tuesday, May 31, 2005

If your "purchase" total is incorrect, please let me know, otherwise, this is the paid-in results so far.

Judge G sent check today from way over here in Waycross for 2 tickets Thanks.

Judge

Check for 2 out in todays mail from Carrollton...

Mike

Check goes out tomorrow am, the time slipped up on me!

Check for 2 is on its' way