Now now, a M95 Steyr is a 100 year old dainty little straight pull fishing rifle suitable for use by little dainty women to defend themselves against marauding 20 pound catfish, prissy french poodles and other semi-dangerous game.

Mine throws a dainty .333" diameter 1.2" long 260 grain slug that somewhat exceeds the ballistics of a 45-70, 'cept mine is currently loaded down a goodly mite in consideration of my aging shoulder bones vs that solid steel butt-plate.

It is one of the guns we will be a shooting while the rest of the Texas crew is out looking for their armadillos and rattlesnakes and scorpions and long spiny cactus spines.

Make no mistake, that is one tough little Austrian broad and whomever made her mad is surely going to regret it ......  soon, too.



The gun was designed for Austria/Hungarian horse soldiers with the gun being able to be repeat actuated 5 times held with left hand while the reins hand (right hand) worked the straight pull action.  Calvary actually practiced doing this while galloping along at a full gallop.  

Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  
Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  

Pull, action stays open, slam in new clip .. Push <BANG>

... Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  
Pull ... Push ... <BANG>  

(repeat as needed)

The clips are Mannlicher style stripper clips of 5 rounds which are easily loaded from the top when the bolt was left automatically left open when the clip ejects out the bottom, a loading activity you also had to practice doing at a full gallop.   A new clip frees the bolt automatically so it can be pushed closed when the new clip is rammed home in the action.

Power-wise, the requirements for the round was to be able to take down a horse with a single body shot.  The gun can be pointed and fired single handed, with the wrist being somewhat at risk from recoil forces and not a good idea to do unless your life depended on it.

Recoil from Nazi era mil-surp ammo was cheerfully noted as "Brutal" in all modern references, but that was with wimpy Nazi 205 grain pointed spitzer bullets.   Mine are considerably heavier.

   But as MM knows, I always load down into the more dainty range of things .....

As I noted.. There ain't no wheels on the little critter, therefore it qualifies as a "hand held cannon"...      
One of these days I should figure out why some of these kids, (20 years younger than I am), JOG and OldPoop for example, call themselves "old" and moan and groan about their aches and (probably imaginary) pains.       I should probably change my handle to ancient. Indian.....  Darn little whippersnappers......  

OK back to business guys ...  

So now were going to Texas in  April ?  ,  then

Kentuck in April   then  --- ,

Arkansas  (Iron Mountain) in April  ,   then

do the Blue-Ridge in  ?  May  ?  

Well  ,  I'm glad that Hay season don't start till June !  

Kinda looking forward to CatFish cooked on a big flat limestone rock .  

We could include Daytona bike week in March --- just saying !  

By Spring I'll be chompping at the bit to go somewhere .  

MM is like a boy in a candy shop,

"I want that, and that and that and one of those, too"

Dave will tell us when Spring has sprung up in his neck of the woods.    

Three miles from Ohio, I think I might touch me a new state.      

I'm waiting to see MM try to be in three places at once.



Dave, what do you guys use for catfish bait?   You know that 20 pound catfish has been eating bream and all sorts of other available things as his natural food.

Wow, I have always wanted to go fishing in a catfish farm.    Just stick a piece of floating fish food on each barb of a treble hook and then aim to snag you a big one.   Or, for the heck of it throw a spinner bait out with stinky pork rinds hanging from the hooks just to see if it makes it back in without picking up a fast tender youngster.

Can you feed them from your fingers?   (let them suck your fingers in then grab them by the gills, that is).

This might be a case for a Oldfeller Steyr sub-sonic at feeding time --- just shoot them using the red dot scope as they swim by.   Then treble hook them to bring them in to shore ......

Wait, I bet you got a rowboat, too, don't you?

M-80 fishing for bream and bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_An7Dj1w_gU

Of course I would never do this, personally, especially since M80s went unavailable in North and South Carolina like 40 years ago .....



...... wonder where the boys got theirs ......

Yep....it is OK to take a catfish as long as they are eaten.  I have been feeding them for years - so I guess this counts as my "livestock" on the farm.  (Same rational applies to the Turkeys that keep eating my grass seed).

I went for a ride yesterday after church.....I expected to be gone for just a bit - the ride turned out so nice I was gone for about 3 hours and 115 miles.  This really is nice riding weather up here right now.....it isn't 90 degrees in the middle of the day anymore!  When I got home I was cutting brush, and although I was working hard I barely broke a sweat.

There really are some very nice roads around here.  In KY the roads tend to be curvy and follow the ridge tops or creek valleys.  The same holds true for the parts of Indiana and Ohio that are along the hilly areas draining down to the Ohio River....once you get to the flat plateau areas the roads tend to be straighter and a bit less exciting.

So, MM is interested now .... he wants to flat rock some catfish Indian-style.    

I want to catch me a multi-pound catfish on an ultra-lite bream rig that I have.
(hee hee, that'll be fun on the can-I-actually-do-it sort of fun)

Now to fire up MM's gun lust a bit, I have two of those dainty little Steyr rifles, one red dotted and one scoped.    And two sets of bullets to figure out which is more accurate (in which gun).

The red dot Steyr is my running rabbit gun.   Rabbits are stupid and if no one is chasing them they run away by bits and spurts --- for a little while, anyway.

So yeah, we can do a short extended weekend trip to see Dave, actually we could do that just about any time he wants to have us.

(weather and football games permitting)