6/29/10

Sunday morning I awoke around 0730 h and thought, “Oh good, Larry won't call for another hour and a half.” I went back to sleep. At 0930 h I woke up again and thought, “Hmm, Larry should have called by now.” I checked to see if my phone was off and called him. He was just about to leave for the gun show. We arranged to meet at my credit onion so we would only have to pay for one parking garage entry. I got dressed, put in my eyes, and shaved my teeth then headed out. From the credit onion we headed to the convention center. Apparently they had complaints about their “No in and out” policy for parking because they now have hang-tags with an expiration date. We went in to the arena and began walking the show. We started on the opposite wall from where we usually start and worked our way through. On one of the first rows I saw a very “Viet Nam era” looking AR-15, just exactly the style I would want, and had a look at it. I picked up the price tag and had to ask if there was a “one” missing. It was “only” $650.00 or so. While I was asking about that, Larry pointed out a Druganov. OK, it was a Romanian Druganov clone, but still. I looked at its tag and was shocked to see $625.00! “I’m buying this!” I said and took off to the nearest ATM. I took out an additional $200.00 to cover the difference in what I'd brought with me then headed back. Fortunately, common sense took over and I “tried out” the gun before plopping down the money. First off, let me say that a Druganov is so friggin’ cool that I will probably buy one some day, even if it is just “to have.” OK, here’s what I thought about it. It was very nose-heavy. The length of pull (distance from your shoulder to the trigger when the gun is in position) was way too short to be comfortable. And the scope sat in a weird position and was difficult to use. I set it down and said, “We just got here. We’ll walk the rest of the show and come back. If it is gone by then, it wasn't meant to be.” The whole rest of the show I was thinking about that gun. I alternated between, “Damn, that’s so cool!” and “But there’s XXXX wrong with it.” On top of the items listed above, 7.62x54 ammo is all corrosive primed. I'd have to clean the hell out of the thing each and every time I shot it. Of course, I'm the kind of guy who does that anyway, but still. So, we walked the rest of the show. I saw a few items which piqued my interest but I had the .45 Colt lever gun at the Travel Agents’ booth in the front of my mind. Eventually we found them and I looked at the gun again. I didn't stop to talk to them though. Another row over from the Travel Agents we found a lever gun in .454 Casull! It wasn't a carbine though so I only gave it passing consideration. Finally, we saw a bullpup AK-47 which really caught my eye. I like bullpup rifles and it is hard to argue with the economics of an AK. We decided to skip the last row, because it would have put us on the wrong end of the building, and went to lunch at the Dairy Queen down the road. After lunch we came back and hit that last row. Then we began the real head scratching. Did I want the lever gun in .45 Colt? Did I want the lever gun in .454 Casull? Did I want the bullpup AK? Did I want the Druganov? We went back and looked at the bullpup AK. It was truly awesome. I wanted it bad enough that it removed the Druganov from the running. Well, that and the other arguments against the Druganov. Oh, John had called earlier and put in a vote for the lever gun in .45 Colt when it was still the “Druganov vs Travel Agents’ gun” on the fight card. Anyhoo, I set the bullpup AK back down and we went to see the Travel Agents. We exchanged pleasantries and he asked what he could sell me today. I told him I'd been looking at the lever gun there for the last five shows. He said, “Hand that over,” and began to look at the price tag. He thought about it for a moment and said, “How’s four and a quarter sound?” I was willing to pay $450.00 for it, although I was going to offer $400.00 to start the haggling. Unfortunately, I was already tired, I liked the gun, and it was in my price range. I said, “I’ll take it.” Yep, the bullpup AK was forgotten that quickly once I had my hands on that little lever gun. By the way, it is a 16” blued Rossi Model 92 carbine for those who would like to look up what one looks like. I sat down to fill out the paperwork. When the time came to pay, I didn't have a five so I handed the man four hundreds and two twenties. He thought about the change for a bit and just handed one of the twenties back to me! Woo hoo! I got the gun for $420.00! We spent the next half hour looking for the reloader guy with .45 Colt ammo I had seen earlier. Once we found him, I bought 100 rounds of flat-nosed lead ball, and 100 rounds of jacketed hollow point ammo. We then began to look for/at some of the guns Larry was thinking about buying. We wound up at a booth where he bought another CZ 52 pistol. By now we were both plumb wore out so we left. I stopped at Academy on the way home and bought two 100 round plastic storage cases for the 200 rounds of ammo. At the house I cycled several rounds through the action and found it needed some oil pretty badly. I hadn't noticed how “crunchy” the action was until I worked some oil through it. Upon inspection though, it doesn't look like the gun has been used much, if at all. I think it had just sat for so long it was just dried out. I haven’t gone to shoot it yet but that’s just because I was so tired after the show. I'll probably toss it in the trunk with some ammo later this week and see how I like it. Don't get me wrong, I like it already, but we’ll see how I like the way it shoots. Anyhoo, I guess that’s all I have for today. Anyone who wants to follow along on the journey which is Nadine, check out “Nadine's Tale” on Blogspot. I'd link to it, but I don't know how.

Pic of the Rossi...