This one was quick and ugly. The Beast has been hibernating in its cage for many months, but there was no hesitation when the latches flipped open.
I was booked for an out-of-town appointment for the evening, so I had hustle home from the office, prep the targets, set up the camera, find a spot 10-12 yards from the backstop, take my aim and fire away.
Two shots did about as much cut tree trunk damage as any hundred of the .17s …
I can’t claim to have any practical need or sensible use for a man-portable quasi-cannon, but the Marlin 1895M lever action rifle chambered in .450 Marlin is as close as I ever need to come to owning a portable cannon, and this one is mine.
Here’s a calm and peaceful– bucolic, even– “before” picture of my water-filled targets as a stand-in for the slow motion video I’m trying to get edited and uploaded. They do NOT look like this “after” …
Almost every time this rifle crosses my mind, the possibility of selling or trading it also occurs to me. The raw, shocking, brute force of the recoil is very intimidating, and even out in the woods and pastures it can shake windows and sound more like field artillery than a sporting carbine.
I can get myself wondering if it’s worth messing with.
Yes, those are some of the things I think about when I think about it, and I do know that if trading or selling ever became a necessity, this would be the easiest to let go.
But.
When I’m actually holding this hunk of finely finished hardwood and satiny black steel and when I shoulder it and take easy aim with it and when I pull the smooth, light trigger and when the thunder-stick-to-end-all-thunder-sticks shoves me back at the cheek and collar-bone and when something downrange jumps or jerks or peels open or explodes in a mist of vaporized liquid, then all I can do is smile and laugh and give it a friendly look and a good, solid shake with an energetic, enthusiastic, approving grunt or adrenaline-buzzing, stress-busting shouts.
And then all I can think about is how much I like this gun and how glad I am to own it, and … how much I like to hear the Beast roar.
Speaking of which, here are two slow-motion videos of The Gun-a-Day Great Pepsi Bottle Massacree, circa “ought’leven.” In the first, there’s a fascinating “first one left standing” effect. The bullet was going so fast and hit so hard that the neck and cap disappeared, and the rest of the bottle barely moved. I like the “wait for it” sound effects at the end, too. The lever action cycles, and we’re ready for shot number two …
The “first is made last” in video two, and the “narrative” documented is so much more than could have been planned or arranged. Many things happen, and the slow motion timing makes it possible to track fluttering debris, wood chip “snow fall,” water mist and run-off (complete with sounds of running gurgles and falling “raindrops,” and, maybe best of all, the “dance of the dead” Pepsi bottle which was flipped back with just enough water in the bottom to act as a counter-weight, bringing it back to stand up again on the flat surface of the old railroad tie. One of those happy, wonderful serendipities of life caught on video …
These clips were made with my iPhone 4’s regular video editing tools and the Nexvio app, “Slowmo.” Yes, a bit of stubborn-ugly goes a long way! Tried to use iMovie to put these two clips together as one, but something wasn’t right. More to learn!
Gun-a-Day 