FWIW, what I'm saying is true... I'm too dumb to set the right date in the trail cams.

quote:

Originally posted by Dick Wright:
Thanks, Evan.

I have the scope on it and will take it to a gun show today at the local club. "Display Only" With luck there may be one person there who knows what he's looking at...

Don't bother chasing deers this fall... Finish Butch's gun. Really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

I'm test firing that rifle this weekend. It'll be hard to stay out of the woods after I've seen a couple of nice bucks in trail cam pics from the property I hunt. I have only two weekends to chase them this November.

Evan,

Done the checkering yet?

If you have any Red Box laying around you will have fun test firing.

Somehow I doubt that Butch would get mad at you for taking a couple of weekends to chase deers.

Good luck.

More pics please as you make progress.

When you're done you might want to send the gun to me for further testing before Butch gets it.

Mr. Wright what a wonderful job you've done. Thanks for bringing us, (well at least me), that can't, along on the journey.

Thanks Dick and good luck if you get out hunting this year too. No checkering yet, but that should be coming soon. Nor do I have any red box on hand, but I do have several lots of black box that should shoot. I won't clutter your thread with pics of the rifle here but you can expect a post when I'm done for sure.

I've had a chance to shoot the gun twice in the last week. I found that CCI 20 gr. Gamepoint bullets shoot very well. Out of half a dozen three shot groups, four were one holers. The other two were two-in-a-hole and one shot leaking out to make something between 1/4" and 3/8". This at 50 yds.

CCI also has 20 gr. FMJ's (full metal Jackets) in .17 HMR that shoot O.K. and to the same point of aim but give me a little vertical. If I were going to use them a lot I could probably get rid of the vertical with the tuner. That's what it's for.

My 50/100 yd. range runs thru a small, heavily wooded valley that runs down to our lake. Think black timber with really soggy footing. Old age makes it really hard for me to get down to the targets. Glorya (much younger) normally hangs the targets for me. I will try to bribe her to go get the targets so I can post them.

I really love shooting and carrying this gun. Even with the big scope (Weaver 4 X 16 variable with target knobs and a dot) it only weighs 7-1/4 lbs. The light trigger makes it much easier to shoot accurately.

A lot more shooting will probably wait till spring. Deer season starts Sunday (the 15th) and the above shooting was done while sighting-in deer rifles.

That 20" twelve point is lurking somewhere back in the cedar swamps... I hope to meet him. Actually, he's chasing does right now.

I shot our two deer rifles just before opening day. That done, I shot the .17 one more time...

I wanted to make sure it maintained it's point of impact and I wanted to see if it would shoot another small group.

I put three shots inside the 1/2" bull on the target and decided to quit whilst I was ahead. Lots of stuff to do getting ready to hunt.

The group was about 1/4" and I was happy.

I'm beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with me...

In every deer camp there's always the legend of "The Big One", the monster buck who lurks in the shadows, unseen but having his way with many does.

This one is no legend... I have pics and the neighbor saw him this fall. My chances of seeing him are slim. A buck like this wil travel in a five mile radius during the rut looking for does. Do the math and that's a lot of square miles.

I would so love to just see him. But I don't want to shoot him... I'd rather know he was there... alive and well but, still, the stuff of legends. This was not the case fifty years ago.

The 10th or 11th biggest buck ever taken in Clare County hangs on my living room wall. This per Commemrative Bucks of Michigan. I was very lucky and, somehow, I think that that is more than my rightful share. Most hunters never get to see a buck this size in a lifetime of hunting.

But I sure would like to see him... especially if I had a camera.

I don't know about Michigan, but I would assume the deer there are very similar to the ones here in Minnesota. My experience with them as a hunter and a landowner of 140 acres of very prime deer hunting land, is that during the first part of the rut when does aren't standing yet you will see big bucks everywhere. But during the height of the rut when does will stand, and especially after the first shots are heard by the big bucks that have heard them before, they become very nocturnal. They sleep during the day, and run around having an orgy at night.

It's prety much the same here. After the frenzy of early season things calm down and the deer will come out during the day. A couple of days ago the deer were moving till there was a couple of shots nearby. Didn't see another deer for two days.

Dick, I finally got registered on this site and enjoyed the pictures of the riffle as you progressed thru the build. What a awesome piece of walnut.
Don

I finally got to shoot the gun in competition yesterday. There was an egg shoot at the Isabella County Sportsmans Club which is just west of Mt. Pleasant, MI.

Course of fire is... you shoot at five eggs at 100 yds. and wait till the eggs are replaced. You do it three times for a total of fifteen eggs. Ties are then broken with a shoot-off at smaller targets. You can use any front rest on their good concrete benches but have to hold the butt stock in your hand.

I hadn't shot in two years and only got two eggs out of five the first round, Thereafter I got my act together and got four eggs the second round and five of five the third round.

This is the first year they are allowing .17 cals to shoot, formerly it was just .22's. I was surprised when I hit my first egg with the .17 HMR... Instead of just breaking, it disappeared in a yellow mist. Quite spectacular.

My set-up worked very well. I set the scope at 16X. The fine cross hair and smallish dot were perfect. After I got it sighted-in all I had to do was hold it on the left side of the egg (There was a pretty good left-to-right blowing.) and touch it off... "POOF". Fun, fun. This gun is capable of much better than "Minute of egg". The scope is a Weaver 4 X 16X with a competition crosshair and dot.

Michiganders... Google "Isabella County Sportsmans Club" and click on "Ranges" when you get their front page. Come to the next match. They are fun with a good range, great new benches under a roof and nice people. I shot with two nice guys who were more than willing to help an old gimp.

See you there.

I'm finally getting to shoot in local matches again. The Bay County Conservation & Gun Club has a rimfire BR league that shoots every Tuesday. This is my target from last week.

It's amazing how much one forgets... The first two targets I just held on center and touched it off. On the third target I decided I'd get better results if I watched the wind flag. I watched the flag and held off a tad on the last target and got the best results.

The club is less than an hour away and it's all country two-lanes... a nice drive. I'm keeping a full set of bench equipment in the back of the Porsche this summer. I hope to catch up on the shooting I've missed the last couple of years.

What a beautiful rifle! And she shoots as good as she looks.

quote:

Originally posted by Dick Wright:
I'm beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with me...

In every deer camp there's always the legend of "The Big One", the monster buck who lurks in the shadows, unseen but having his way with many does.


This one is no legend... I have pics and the neighbor saw him this fall. My chances of seeing him are slim. A buck like this wil travel in a five mile radius during the rut
looking for does. Do the math and that's a lot of square miles.

I would so love to just see him. But I don't want to shoot him... I'd rather know he was there... alive and well but, still, the stuff of legends. This was not the case fifty years ago.

The 10th or 11th biggest buck ever taken in Clare County hangs on my living room wall. This per Commemrative Bucks of Michigan. I was very lucky and, somehow, I think that that is more than my rightful share. Most hunters never get to see a buck this size in a lifetime of hunting.

But I sure would like to see him... especially if I had a camera.

FWIW this is my big buck taken in 1981. He has been on my living room wall ever since.

A bit confusing here. Somehow I got the picture in the middle of the quote. ???????

FWIW this is my 50 & 100 yd. range that is just outside my office door. Twenty years ago I cut a narrow path thru thick woods to make the range. I shoot up a small valley that runs down to our lake. The hills on both sides and the trees make for a very protected range... a good place for load work-up and testing.

You can see both targets and my Wind Probe and part of a wind flag... old benchrest shooters always use wind flags.

I was literally standing in front of my office door when I took this pic. I've had deer walk right in front of the targets while I was shooting.

I just noticed the shortened magazine. Wow! It does wonders for the overall look of the rifle. I'd like to do something similar with the protruding .22 Magnum mag on my 452. My pics and/or tips on how that was done?

quote:

Originally posted by mightymouse:
I just noticed the shortened magazine. Wow! It does wonders for the overall look of the rifle. I'd like to do something similar with the protruding .22 Magnum mag on my 452. My pics and/or tips on how that was done?

There are good step-by-step instructions on www.rimfirecentral.com. Click on the CZ/Bruno forums and find them on "Sophia's answers to frequently asked questions" which is a sticky.

Just looking at the long magazine drove me nutz. Follow the instructions and it will work well.

This is what the bottom metal looked like when I had it done. The DIProducts trigger guard, the shortened magazine and modified trigger made all the difference. It is shown here in the original stock. Since I took this pic I have blued the trigger.

I also installed a YoDave trigger kit to lighten up the pull... a lot. I've shot benchrest rifles for many years and the original trigger on this gun just did not work for me.

You get an awful lot of content for the money with a CZ. However, if they did this to the trigger and the trigger guard, the price would be a lot higher.

This pic may be duplicated somewhere else in this long thread. It seemed appropriate to put it here again.

Thanks for sharing your project with us! I think it would be kinda neat to re-do this picture in a couple months: (is that tree still there?)

quote:

Originally posted by Dick Wright:

Since no one commented, that is a beautiful north woods buck you harvested there.

The rifles are awesome too.

quote:

Originally posted by jpl:
Thanks for sharing your project with us! I think it would be kinda neat to re-do this picture in a couple months: (is that tree still there?)

quote:

Originally posted by Dick Wright:

The tree is there. All I have to do is wait for the leaves to fall and the sumac to turn red.

The void you can see thru the trees is the fifteen acre lake we have on our property.

quote:

Originally posted by matt salm:
Since no one commented, that is a beautiful north woods buck you harvested there.

The rifles are awesome too.

Yes, this buck is special. If I were writing an article for one of the magazines, "How to get your big buck this fall" I could do it in one paragraph... "Spend every daylight hour possible in the woods and get very, very lucky. You might see one like this in a lifetime."

How many of those articles like that have you read? Some guy bolviates for a couple of pages... The above covers the subject nicely.

I was incredibly lucky to see and get this buck. He was following a doe and I couldn't see the horns well in the thick brush but I could see that he was a shooter. When I shot he dropped behind a small rise and I didn't see the horns clearly till I got to the deer at which time I got an advanced case of buck fever. I lost my camera (found it later.) on the way back to deer camp when I went for help. He was way too big for me to handle by myself.

Since then I have seriously felt that this deer represented more than my rightful share. I honestly don't know if I would shoot another one even if I had a chance... probably not.

This is about hunting with the .17... not big deers.

I just found this pic in one of our trail cams and liked it. It was taken a couple of years ago and the cam caught me wandering down a two-tracker that leads to my deer blind. I had no idea that the picture was being taken.

You can tell that I'm carrying the little CZ... see the tuner on the barrel.

I think that I'm most at home in the cool Michigan woods this time of year... no bugs, wonderful colors and there's lots of activity. The deer are starting to rut and there are a lot of wild turkeys on the property. You never know what you might see.

This is both my rifle and my friend's. (Project two - Kyle's rifle.) I took this just before he picked up his gun. He brought it back later and I blued the trigger and made his magazine fit a little higher up into the action.