Bienvenu Y'all!

I was digging through my site statistics this morning, and I found an interesting URL. Somebody at D-Day-Overlord.com had referenced a pic of the Mooseboy, his Garand and a doe:

From Stuff

I got on the site:

DDay-Overlord.com


. . . and read what they all were saying about us. Some folks had a real problem with the idea of hunting deer with a Garand. However, I decided to sign on to the forum and post a response. I think the story of the Garand and Mooseboy's namesake makes the endeavor worthwhile.



Greetings from Cincinnati, Ohio.


My name is William Allendorf, my son is John. John was the boy in the picture with the doe and the M1 Garand. I found that your forum had a lot of traffic on my website, and I just got curious.

My French is lousy, so I am running this through Free Translation.com. I have no idea what the finished product will be. I did this once with a German-English conversation, and the correspondent wrote back after a simple dinner invitation:

"Why do you want me to wear the German hat when I touch your monkey?"

Allow me to apologize in advance for any misunderstandings that may ensue.


First off, let me tell you about the M1 Garand. It was purchased from the Director of Civilian Marksmanship, an organization that provides de-commissioned rifles to properly vetted individuals so as to preserve and encourage good marksmanship among the populus. I got my M1 at a steep discount from the market. Mine was about $400 American compared to $800 for the same model on the open market. In order to get my M1, I had to be a member of a rifle club sanctioned by the National Rifle Association and I had to go through a proficiency class and shoot 50 rounds.

To be honest with you, the Garand spent a few years in the back of the gun safe until my son, John, "Mooseboy" was looking for a new deer rifle. He had started with a Marlin 336 in 30-30. He was big for a 14 year old, and it dawned on me that the Garand was made for him. For one thing, he was the size of an average WWII recruit. The gas operated semi-automatic action and the heavy weight would tame the recoil of the 30-06. John took to the rifle and shot a 1-inch group with it offhand at 100 yards on his first time out.

John was named for my buddy John Durrell. John Durrell landed in Normandy at Omaha on D-Day +14 days. He was in Belgium during the Bulge and stayed in action until January 21, 1944. He froze his feet, carrying his wounded Sargent back to an aid station. The Sargent had a head wound, but they slapped a bandage on the Sarge and shipped John back to the states. He nearly lost both feet, but they turned around in the Spring, and he ended up with nothing more than a severe case of chronic foot fungus we call "Athlete's Foot." John and I camped together for 15 years before John succumbed to heart failure at camp in 1997. One night he went into his tent and never came out.

The Garand has matching serial numbers, and was manufactured by Springfield in 1942. The only maintenance I had to do with it was:

1) A good cleaning with Kerosene.
2) Grease all the appropriate places with Lubriplate
3) Spend several hours with fine steel wool scrubbing the stock with "wood floor cleaner"
4) Rub polyurethane into the stock.


I generally shoot the following load in the Garand: A 165 grain Hornady Interlock SP bullet over 42 grains of Hodgdon H4895 in Lake City brass. It is pleasant enough for my wife to shoot.


Hunting:

We are a hunting family. I attempted to translate the forum page, and I saw a lot of misunderstanding of how and why we hunt. We hunt whitetail deer for sport and food. Our farm is 100 km from Cincinnati, Ohio in Bracken County, Kentucky. The state has recognized a tremendous overpopulation of deer in our area. In our hunting zone, Zone 1, we are allowed unlimited female deer (Doe) and 1 male (Buck) with visible antlers. Buttons (what we call young bucks without antlers) are included with the doe.

We can afford any sort of food we want, but we prefer venison and wild game, and my family also enjoys the lifestyle. We eat every bite of the deer. Nearly every meal we have at home has venison in it in some for or other. This morning, breakfast was biscuits in venison sausage gravy. Yesterday we had venison breakfast hash. Today we will watch the television and watch our poor Cincinnati Bengals (NFL) lose while eating Cincinnati Chili made with ground venison. Venison is extremely high-quality meat. It is just terribly lean. We often have to add 1 -2 ML of beef fat to our recipes to keep it from being dry. Roasts are cooked with a strip or two of bacon on top. Venison is devoid of all the steroids and antibiotics they put into commercial beef.

I have two freezers stocked fully with this year's take of 5 deer. Mooseboy turned 16 this year and was allowed to hunt on his own. He now has a 30-06 bolt-action rifle, a Winchester Model 70. He also took a doe with his black-powder muzzleloader. My other son, Angus, was out for the first time. He is 10 years old. He shot a doe with a Marlin 336 in 30-30. I shot two. The first was a nice 8-point buck with a 30-06 Winchester M70 bolt action. The other was a button buck with a Remington 7600 pump in 35 Whelen. The 35 Whelen is simply a 30-06 cartridge widened out to .35 caliber.

Some folks may wonder why a Garand for hunting? Why a semi-automatic? Why a mult-shot rifle? I can say this much: out of the 20 or so deer we have taken on our property in the past 8 years, only a few have required more than 1 shot. However, outside of the muzzleloaders, all of our rifles have a magazine for multiple shots. You shoot, and you reload, and you attempt a second shot as quickly as possible. Most of the time, your sights come to rest on a dead deer with his feet in the air. You just want to be ready for a second shot. With the Garand, we use 5-shot enblocs instead of the customary 8. In most of our other rifles, we carry 3 rounds. After three, it is about time to sit down and rethink your strategy-- something is wrong.

I would invite all of you to look at my website: http://www.blackholecoffeehouse.com for more pics of the farm, the deer, and the Garand. I also have a weblog (BLOG) at http://blackholecoffeehouse.blogspot.com. I am an amatuer outdoor writer. I am on the pro-staff for Heirloom Tukey Calls and Deer & Deer Hunter Magazine.

I will publish this letter in original English on my weblog.