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Richard, Dad, and I took our annual spring vacation recently, and it was quite a trip. We worked, we worked some more, then we worked some more. And yeah, we did manage to fit some playing in... by working harder to get done sooner!
We made it to the Georgia property without major incident, on Friday afternoon. Setting up camp and getting settled in was about the only thing we managed to accomplish, but that was plenty for this tired crew. If nothing else, we were a full day ahead of our original schedule, and just being here was good enough.
My camper, where Dad and I slept.
We got the turkey hunting report from Wes and Ashley, both of whom had been hunting, but neither of whom had bagged one, though they'd been hearing a few gobblers. Derrell came up from his place and said howdy, then headed back to bring up my new rifle, which I bought from him then and there -- a Savage 110 "Package Gun" in 30-06, which replaced the Winchester Model 70 which had hosed me so bad on my last trip up here. This was a new rifle, unfired since leaving the factory, and I was anxious to replace the El Cheapo scope with a Burris I'd brought, and burn some gunpowder at the range.
Here's the Savage 110 I'm talking about above. In this pic, it's wearing a Burris Fullfield II 3x-9x scope on Weaver extended rings.
A close-up showing the extended rings which I used to mount the Burris scope. I could just barely make the factory rings (not pictured) fit the length of the scope's tube, but then that big knurled ring on the eyepiece hit the Weaver base, so when I found these I knew I was in business.
Saturday morning, we launched the boat. Then we drove around as close to Richard's spot as we could go in a two-wheel-drive truck, unloaded the pieces of his prefab deer hunting chateau and all was in order.
While Dad and Richard made a trip to town to stock up on groceries, I unpacked a considerable amount of gear we'd packed in the back of Dad's truck. After I got done with that, I dug out my gun cleaning goodies and attacked the Savage. I was quite disappointed to find that the factory scope rings wouldn't work with my Burris, as the long action wouldn't let me mount the scope far enough to the rear. I swabbed the bore out and reinstalled the Simmons 3-9x that the factory had installed.
That afternoon, Richard, Ken, and I headed out to try the fishing. I'm happy to report that I caught the first, the biggest, and the last fish -- mostly small-to-medium-sized catfish. A good way to start the trip!
- Russ Chastain
