RADD known as Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder

[6mm Remington]

I wrote this a few years ago and touched it up and tweaked it a bit recently as the disease is still in me even thought I thought I was cured. You will be able to tell by the end of the story that I still have it and there is no cure. It's long but I hope you might enjoy reading it and see the humor that I am poking at myself and the rest of us that are infected with this disease!



I call it RADD or Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder:

Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder
As I mentioned previously, we finally have a name for the disease that I feel many of us are afflicted with. It is called Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder or RADD for short. It is a very powerful disease with no known cure. So far the only temporary relief has been found through therapeutic shopping. This is where more firearms are purchased in the hopes of quieting the anguish and grief brought on by reading our hunting and shooting magazines, or the frequent trips to the sporting goods store. So far though nothing has appeared to work and once a person is inflicted it appears to be a life-long illness.

As it seems that I went first in admitting that I have this illness and we now have a name for it, maybe by telling my story others will be helped and we will also understand that we do not have to suffer alone. Hopefully they too will share their story and together we might find some solace in knowing there are many others in this group.

Hello everyone my name is David and I am a Rifle Addict and this is my story. As you read my story, you will come to the realization that this disease is even more than just an addiction to firearms but also encompasses fishing, trapping, hiking, boating, snowshoeing, and in essence everything and anything to do with the great outdoors. I feel that the name RADD appropriately fits pretty well and besides that I like the name. I’ll try to tell this in a chronological fashion as I think it might make it easier for the layman to understand how this disease progresses and how severely it effects each of us.

My addiction started as young as the age of three or four when my parents, my grandparents, and aunts and uncles would take me fishing with a fly pole in small creeks and streams near where we lived. It was obvious that I was enjoying it by the look on my face when I would land a whopping 6 inch long brook trout. This then progressed to the age of 5 when my father could no longer come up with reasons that I could not join him and his friend when they went out frequently to check their trap lines. They trapped fox, badger, coyote, and bobcat. This is where the rifle addiction first started. We had .22 rifles with us on these trips to shoot rabbits with, and rabbits were what we used for bait. The .22’s were also used to dispatch the animals that they were fortunate enough to catch. I shot a lot of rabbits with that .22, and was making some shots that my father and his friend envied! We used the cottontails for the baits and turned in the jackrabbits at the mercantile as they gave us 25 cents for each jackrabbit so they could use their hides in gloves and such. The money made from the jackrabbits was then in turn used to buy a hamburger and play a couple games of pool at a small town bar in Reed Point Montana at the end of our tough day on the trap-line. That in turn lead to another addiction called billiards, but that is another story.

At about the age of 8 I was given my first BB gun which was a lever action Daisy that held the BB’s in a large tube surrounding the barrel. I do not recall the exact amount of BB’s it would hold, but it was as I recall quite substantial. It had to number between 200-300 BB’s. Now the Daisy rifle was spring loaded and the energy to shoot the BB resulted from cocking the rifle. It non-the-less had ample power to kill grasshoppers, starlings, magpies, dirt clods, and other big-game I could conjure up such as a tree stump. I remember finding out just how powerful the Daisy was when another friend of mine who was the same age and I decided to have a BB gun fight in the woods near the river where we lived. This particular river was the Stillwater River near Columbus Montana.

Being above average intelligence, or so we thought, we decided that there should be some rules of combat laid out so we wouldn’t hurt each other, and maybe even lose an eye! We agreed that we would try not to shoot the opponent any higher than the middle of his stomach area so that we hopefully would not take one in the eye or the face. Our FIRST and ONLY battle started with a bang or a pffff quite literally. I saw right away that I had quite an advantage over my opponent/enemy. I could literally shoot my BB gun all day where as he had to reload his after about 30 shots. Once I figured this out, I really pressed the attack. My friend was running through the woods trying to reload his BB gun all the while wishing that he had a white flag to wave as a sign of defeat, but alas he had none. I continued pressing the attack and he eventually got loaded back up and got back into the fight again. I also discovered that when he was running away from me, a well placed BB right in the soft spot behind his knee would put him down momentarily on the spot. Oh sure he would get up almost right away and continue to run in an attempt to get to a position of cover from which to fire back, but it sure slowed him down a little bit.

I was winning this battle we were having by a large margin because of my much greater volume of firepower. We both were taking some casualties though and were quickly finding out that a BB shot at what I would guess was roughly 300 fps or so really hurt when it hit you in the leg, the butt, or somewhere else. I remember the battle quickly coming to an end when my “friend” accidently shot me in the mouth after I had taken cover behind a tree and had lain on the ground to make as small a target as possible. I peaked around the tree to try and engage him again, and he hit me in one of my upper front teeth. The BB did not touch any part of my lip which might have slowed the impact somewhat. It did not knock the tooth out and it did not break the tooth, but the pain I felt I would be the equivalent of having the dentist drill out a cavity in your mouth without deadening the gums first. It hurt! We never EVER engaged in another battle of this type again. WE decided that it was not that much fun after all.

It was about the age of 9 when I got my first bow and arrows. Oh let the adventures begin! I had one of those cheap fiberglass long bows you can still purchase for the beginning archer today in various stores. They aren’t very powerful and I would guess that the bow I had took about 15-20 pounds to pull it back, but not more than that. It would shoot an arrow quite a ways though. I remember stalking deer and other animals back in the river bottom behind our house just practicing for the day when I would finally be old enough and would either have a rifle or a bow to actually hunt with. One day I was with another friend of mine who also had a bow similar to mine. We were shooting stumps, attempting to shoot ground squirrels, and any other kind of vermin we might come across. All was fine and dandy until my Norwegian Elkhound found a skunk and started barking at it and trying to get at the skunk. The skunk of course was not going to take this lying down so he began fighting back by the only means that a skunk has. The air was soon filled with the aroma that only a skunk can make and boy was it powerful! My dog was barking at the skunk and circling it all the while getting sprayed with that wonderful fragrance.

My friend and I decided that we needed to save my dog as “we did not want my dog to get hurt”. We each shot the skunk with our arrows that only had practice tips on them as that was all we were allowed to have at the time. This was probably a good thing. I have to mention at this point that we each had only ONE arrow apiece! We were not very well equipped for killing anything, but we had to try for my dogs sake and try we did.

I remember shooting the skunk and then my friend shot him as well. We then had to approach this still very alive skunk and recover our arrows so we could shoot him again. As you can probably imagine we both ended up covered in skunk perfume. After just a couple of arrows each we were able to kill the skunk so he would not be getting into anyone’s chicken coop again and by golly our dog was now safe too. It’s really kind of amazing when I look back at this, but did you know that you can smell so bad that at some point you cannot actually smell yourself any longer? I didn’t think that was possible but it really is! We were pretty proud of ourselves so we carried the skunk home to show my mom what a great job we had done getting rid of one of those pesty buggers. I somehow don’t think she needed the visual of the trophy to verify what had taken place as she could smell us coming from several blocks away. Mom surprisingly was not very happy.

 

[6mm Remington]

This was not quite the end of adventures with my little fiberglass bow. One day I was back on the river and was messing around like any kid does pretending I was hunting. I used to love to sneak as close as I could to the whitetail deer just to see how close I could get. Of course I would never shoot at one with my little bow as I would have gotten my bottom side warmed up a whole bunch! I wish I would have used more sense when it came to the neighbors cows though. My grandparents had registered Herefords while those folks next door raised them awful Charolais. I spotted a group of about 20 head of Charolais just on the other side of our fence on this day, and I used the wind and cover to sneak to within about 30 yards when they caught sight of me and took off running. The neighbor’s cattle were pretty spooky just like most range cattle are, but our Herefords were more like overgrown pets.

To this day I have no idea what I was thinking or why I did this, but I raised my bow and took a shot at the lead cow as she was trotting broadside to me. Imagine my surprise, shock, sick stomach, fear, and anything else you can think of when my arrow hit that cow right behind the shoulder midway from the top of her back to bottom of her chest. I cringed in horror and started running for home but made it only a few steps when for some unknown reason I had to stop and turn around and see what happened. Fortunately the combination of the distance, my very weak bow, and the very tough hide on the cow kept the arrow from penetrating. There was only enough energy for the arrow to barely break the skin and hang there for a couple more steps after it hit her before it dropped to the ground. The cow would live to see another day and was fine, but I don’t think I would have fared as well had that arrow killed that animal, and my parents had to buy a beef from the neighbor. I guess one good thing that would have come from this if anything could, was the fact that my grandfather had a butcher shop in town and his slaughter house was only 100 yards away from where this incident all took place. I sighed a very heavy sigh that day and never told a soul about it until now. Even as I write this I have a knot in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it. That was the end of the hunting adventures for a while!

I was still about 9-10 years old when I was back with a friend fishing one of the small creeks that ran through our place. We were using lures and were not having much luck on this day. Boredom began to set in and of course we started messing around because we were not catching any fish. I remember having on a three barbed lure at the time, and I believe it was a red and white Daredevil (how appropriate). I let out about 6 feet or so of line and began swinging my pole to the front and slapping the water with the lure and then pulling it up just as hard and as fast and slapping the water behind me. Oh what great fun. I remember doing this for several strokes and so was my friend. That is until the lure slapped the water on my back side on one of my strokes and when I pulled very hard on the pole to pull the lure over my head and slap the water in front of me, the line looped under itself on the up stroke and that was enough for the lure to hit me in the middle of my back. It buried two of the three prongs on the lure as deep as they would go! My friend pulled the lure out which was quite difficult with the barbs on it and we never said a word about it, certainly not to our mothers.

As I mentioned earlier at about 5 my dad was unable to keep me at home when he went to check his traps. A few years went by and now that I was ten years old he figured I was old enough that I could trap muskrats and raccoons in the woods behind our house. That seemed relatively safe enough, and my dad figured that I was probably not going to put too much pressure on the rats or the raccoons. He also figured that this adventure would be relatively free of any kind of mischief that I might get into. He was correct in that I did not hurt the Muskrat population or the racoon population very much, but somehow the drama just seemed to keep following me. I'm not sure to this day why it is like that!!

One day as I was checking one of my Muskrat sets I was in for a surprise. I caught something that I certainly had not targeted and that creature was a very large and a very angry Mallard drake! At about the age of 8 which I was at the time, ducks are really a fair sized critter with a lot of spunk as I was to soon find out.

All of us who enjoy hunting and fishing and eating the animals we harvest and yet we are still the most caring people when it comes to animals. That is why I would bet that most of us have pets who are a part of our families, and why we as sportsmen took it upon ourselves to tax our equipment, and donate thousands of dollars, and many man hours each year to support our wildlife and to make sure there is always a place for them so that our children will have the same experiences we have had.

So back to the very angry duck. I was upset that I had caught this duck in my trap and I could see that his leg was broken. I did not intend to hurt him and all I could think about was taking him home and fixing him up. Now came the tricky part. How the heck was I going to get this very agitated duck out of the trap without him getting his pound of flesh out of me? I don’t remember all the details very clearly as it happened so long ago now, but I remember it was quite a battle that took several minutes before I was able to pin him in the water somehow and use my other hand or foot to release the trap. I do recall there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground, and it was in the 0-10 degree range so it was cold. I got wet and can tell you it was very cold that day!

The Mallard also got his pound of flesh out of me too. Who would have ever thought that they could bite the way they do and it also hurts like @#$% when they peck you with their bill!! Trust me on that one. We fought for what seemed like hours but I'm sure was only a couple of minutes before I was able to get the upper hand. It seemed strange to me but once I had him wrapped up in my coat with just his head sticking out and began carrying him home, he seemed to relax and I truly believe he understood that I really didn’t want to hurt him. That’s my story but he probably was just exhausted from the battle that had taken place.

So I get home and come into the house with this 4 pound Mallard drake in my arms. I told my mom and dad what had happened and how I had rescued him. I was quite upset I had unintentionally hurt this duck. To my horror, my father suggested that we cook him up for dinner! There was no way that was going to happen! I was pretty upset that he even suggested it. My plan was to fix him up not cook him up!

We did not have a very large house when I was a kid and we lived out in the country next to my grandparents. A creek ran behind the house about 70 feet away. It was a fresh water spring and the creek would never freeze completely solid in one small are near the house. My grandparents had some domestic ducks that they fed, and of course that meant that there was a large contingent of wild ducks that would also make this home and would spend the whole winter here. I cannot imagine a better spot for my duck to be.

So next thing you know we are in our living room and we have this duck on the floor and are holding him down. We are attempting to bandage up his leg and make a splint for it. My mother got a wooden clothes pin and we pulled out the metal spring portion so we had two equal lengths of wood. We used those as a splint and straightened the ducks leg out and set it as best that we could. We then used some medical tape to secure the wood splint knowing that it would resist the water for what we hoped would be long enough so that the ducks leg would set up solidly before the splint eventually fell off.

WE had gotten him fixed up and were just about to take him out back of the house and put him in the creek with the rest of the ducks when he somehow got loose. I have to tell you that it’s pretty exciting when you have a full grown mature Mallard drake flying in your house!! There were duck feathers and poop everywhere! I believe that a duck tends to poop quite a bit anyway but when they get overly excited it really kicks in.

After we chased him through the house for a few minutes we were able to finally put the grab on him and get him outside to the creek. He seemed to settle right in with the other ducks and started eating on the corn we had put out for them. At this point we all were pretty tired and it had been quite day.

The duck stayed all winter near our house and was quite content to be with the mixture of wild and domestic ducks we had there in the creek. His leg healed pretty quickly and the tape eventually fell off and the splints dropped away. His foot was not quite like it should have been but we truly had tried our best. His leg did not quite heal perfectly. You could pick my duck out of the rest of the ducks very easily. When you looked at their feet under the water you could see right away that this guys one foot pointed in a little bit instead of pointing straight with his body. It would be like a car having too much toe-in on one of the front tires. He could walk fine on the land but when he swam in the water it was pretty funny to watch. He would paddle with both feet but because he was so out of alignment so to speak he would start to go in a circle. He actually learned how to compensate for this and would stop kicking with the bad leg for a few strokes and would use only the good leg. That would get him going straight again! He could swim just fine, but it was just that he couldn’t do it very fast any longer.

 

[6mm Remington]

That spring my duck stayed all summer and into the next fall and winter. He never left to migrate to the north and stayed in the creek near our house all that next summer. There really was no reason for him to leave as we fed the domestic ducks and the wild ducks helped themselves to the feast too. Finally that next spring he left and did go north.

It was truly amazing when he returned that next fall and spent all winter near our house in the creek again. You could spot him immediately with his one bum leg. He left again when spring came but he never made it back the next fall and we don't know what ever came of him. I still felt good that we had given him a chance again to live with his kind.

We advance forward a couple years now and it’s time for me to get to hunt my first big-game animal ever! Oh my! My first season we were going to Roy Montana to hunt deer and antelope on my grandfather LeRoy’s place. What was special about this was the fact that my grandfather put me through his hunter’s safety course as he was the instructor! LeRoy had done this for hundreds of other kids over the years.

For my first season ever, I would be using my 6mm Remington which was chambered in a Remington Model 600 Centennial that my father had given to me. The very first day we were out we were driving a two track on my grandfather’s place when we came over a little rise and all of a sudden there were about 20 head of antelope maybe 70 yards in front of us. By the time we got out of the truck they had already ran out of sight around a hillside.

My dad and I were about 100 yards from the pickup watching where the antelope had run, and my father’s friend who was hunting with us was about 70 yards to our right. We stood there for just a couple of minutes watching when this very same group of antelope came running back around the hill from the exact same place we had just watched them leave from. Why they did that I will never know.

Before we could gather our senses most of the 20 head had gone past us and were running towards my dad’s friend and continued on past him. At the tail end of the group were three head that were lagging behind by about 50 yards. There was a buck and doe in the lead that were running close together, and about 50 feet behind them came the last buck. My father and I both pulled up to shoot at the bucks as they were running past us at 60 mph. The antelope were only about 70 yards from us and I guess we both figured we could make this shot. What the heck did I know I had never shot anything, let alone an animal streaking along like a bolt of lightning.

Someone was helping guide our shots in that moment and the whole event on this particular morning. When my dad and I fired it sounded like only one shot had gone off. Three antelope went down in a heap! I remember jumping up and down saying I got him I got him over and over. We realized after it was over that I had gotten two antelope with one shot. My 100 gr. Corelokt bullet had hit the buck in the ribs right behind the shoulder. It went through him and hit the doe just as she caught up to him and was on the far side of this buck I was shooting at.

After going completely through my buck, the little 6mm bullet hit the doe towards the middle to the back of her ribs just a bit too far back. The bullet stopped just under the hide on her off side. Both my buck and the doe required a finishing shot each. Even though the buck was finished he just didn’t know it yet. My father’s friend had not even had the opportunity to fire a shot and there his antelope lay on the ground! A lot of years you can draw multiple tags but this year we each only had one either sex tag. My fathers friend was gracious enough to tag one of the antelope I had just taken with this one in a million shot. It was the right thing to do and I believe that the game warden would have agreed with that assessment. To say I was on cloud nine would be an understatement, and the 6mm Remington had just become the king of all cartridges before and since! I did not know it at the time but the RADD disease had already begun to fester in me like a bad case of Giardia.

My dad purchased a reloader the next year and we started making our own rifle ammunition. My dad started loading 160 gr. Partitions in his 7mm Remington Magnum and he bought me some 100 gr. Hornady’s for my 6mm. For whatever reason my 6mm DID NOT like the Hornady bullet and my groups were more like a close range shotgun pattern than a rifle group. My dad then bought a box of NOSLER 100gr. Solid-base boat-tails to try out and they shot great. He also taught me how to load my own ammunition which only made my disease to worsen considerably. To me it adds so much more to the hunt to take game with ammo that you have very carefully crafted for your rifle and specifically for the animal you are hunting. The great Nosler bullets worked wonderfully on everything I shot. All I have purchased since has been Nosler and that is all I use to this day! You can tell this is only making my affliction much worse. The Noslers shoot in everything you fire them in and work on anything you shoot them at. Darn you Nosler!!

When I was about 17 I decided that I needed a larger caliber for elk and maybe black bears. There really wasn’t any choice to be made other than to get a 30-06 at this point to partner with my 6mm Remington. I had become entranced with Remington and their Model 700 about this time so I saved my money and bought my very first rifle on my own which was a Model 700 ADL in 30-06. I put a 6x Leupold on it with the duplex crosshairs. It was a great rifle that I eventually sold only because I became so enamored with Ruger’s single-shot and especially the #1B model.

I took quite a lot of game with my first 30-06, with one of those being a really nice 15” antelope that I shot just a bit over 500 yards away as he was slowly feeding. You probably don’t have to guess which caliber I chose for the Ruger 1B single-shot which I got to replace the Remington 700. It was none other than the 30-06! I absolutely love that Ruger and yet I still wish I had that 700 ADL as it shot great and it was the first rifle I ever purchased on my own. If I could ever find who bought that rifle or find who has it some day I would buy it back in a heart-beat. As you can see I am a very sick man like many of us and it is only getting worse.

Now back to Remington. Darn those people but they came out with a 700 MTN rifle in get this the.280 Remington! Not only was it then and still is one of the most attractive rifles to ever have Remington stamped on the side, but to chamber it in the .280 Remington, well that was just brilliance personified!! I had to have one and eventually I did. It was a wonderful rifle that I used to take my largest elk ever, a really really nice 6 point bull with a 43” inside spread and 53” long main beams. He was gorgeous.

About this time though I was starting to feel the pull of the 98 Mauser, the Winchester model 70, and the Ruger MKII. Of course each of these has the Mauser style action, controlled round feed, and the rest of it. In addition to being all Mauser the Ruger has that wonderful integral scope base that is pretty hard to beat for just being absolutely tough! Ruger does build a heck of a rifle so I started to plan on getting one to replace my old .280 Remington. Then Winchester pulls a fast one and starts making Model 70’s again in the United States no less and better built than they ever have been. The metals are better and the quality control is so vastly improved. The trigger’s were improved and I’ve heard that they are quite good, but I have never ever read a single article critiquing the old Model 70 trigger. I’m still saving for that .280 that I just need to have again, but I have not quite decided between the Model 70 and the Model 77.

Well that hasn't lasted long as I was having a hard time finding a model 70 with the controlled feed. Even if I was lucky enough to find one, it only came in the Featherweight model and had a 22" barrel instead of a 24" like it should be wearing. That started me on another path as I have always thought it would be neat to own a custom rifle. One I had built just as I dreamed it! When my father passed away about 4 years ago now he left me $3000.00 from his Life Insurance. He told me that he wanted me to do something special for myself. He did not want me paying bills, buying something for the wife, or the kids. Dean wanted me to do something special for myself. He did not care what that something special was, the only criteria being that it was for me!

So this starts me looking for a Winchester with the controlled round feed. I'm also a sucker for walnut or laminate stocks, so if I found a factory rifle with either of those, that would be great also. I finally located a Model 70 Classic with the wood stock in .270 Winchester. It was pretty fantastic and looked like it had been shot only a box or two at the most. It would work. I had my gunsmith pull the barrel and he ordered a Shilen stainless match barrel in the standard contour that matches closely with what was on the Winchester previously. He chambered it in .280 Ackley Improved. I know I know, nothing wrong with the .280 Reminton, in fact it's one of the BEST EVER, but I thought it would be just a little bit extra special. Heck Nosler had already by this time made it legitimate too! My smith worked his magic on the trigger, coated the action and all metal parts with one of those matt black wonder coatings, and pillar and glass bedded the stock. I put a 4.5-14x40mm Leupold on it and I now have that dream rifle that I have always fantasized about. I took a nice cow elk with one shot at 450 yards last fall and a real nice fat whitetail buck also with one shot. I am ecstatic and I imagine my dad looking down is pleased with what I have done.

I also have noticed recently that even though I have an absolutely fabulous Ruger #1B in 6mm Remington I’ve been obsessing a lot lately over getting another 6mm only this one in a bolt action! I’m thinking of either buying a used Winchester or Ruger for the ground work and then having one of my two favorite gunsmiths chamber a new Shilen or Lilja 24”barrel in 6mm Remington. I would either go with a wood laminate that will be both glass bedded and pillar bedded , or a top of the line synthetic with the aluminum bedding block. It would wear a Leupold no doubt of what flavor I do not know at this point. I keep telling you folks about this Montana Rifle Company located in Kalispell Montana and OH MY you have to go to their web-site and take a peak! I am drooling as I speak! I might have to get one of those chambered in 6mm Remington!! Even as I am writing this I am beginning to see the ramblings of a very addicted person!

This is my story and I hope that by writing it others among us will see that they are not alone.

David AKA- 6mm Remington

 

[Droltack]

That was one hell of a good story!

 

[6mm Remington]

That was one hell of a good story!

Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it!

David

 

[7mm08mo]

Great read, enjoyed it very much. Remined my of my upbringing. Seems to me only hunters understand how you could want to save something you might want to hunt at a later date.