{"id":685,"date":"2006-02-04T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.50.194.231\/~vqplgdbg\/?p=685"},"modified":"2006-02-04T07:59:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T12:59:00","slug":"the-benjamin-sheridan-air-rifle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=685","title":{"rendered":"The Benjamin Sheridan Air Rifle"},"content":{"rendered":"

the first firearm I “owned” was a Sheridan Blue Streak<\/a>, chambered for 5mm. (.20 cal)<\/p>\n

Now owned by Crosman,these rifles were, at the time, the high end of pneumatic pellet guns. While all the other kids were wandering around with their Red Ryders (yes, I eventually got one too) I had an actual rifle. <\/p>\n

Now, I won’t say I wasn’t jealous- the other kids could just do one quick pump, and shoot. I had to pump and pump, and load it by hand with the tiny bolt action, and only then could I shoot- but the difference was, I could shoot crows out of trees sixty feet away, and everyone else could see their BB’s arc in flight before hitting the ground in front of the tree. <\/p>\n

When I got serious about squirrel hunting, I could pick squirrels out of trees with no effort. With my young eyes, I would regularly pick the bushy bastards off branches thirty feet out. Of course, it was a couple minutes before I could shoot again, because it took eight pumps to get the speed up to 900 fps. <\/p>\n

I used a williams peep sight because the buckhorns have always been hard for me. I also eventually got the scope mount and put a little weaver 4 power scope on it, as my eyesight got worse.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Mom was always a hoplophobe. The exception was the Sheridan. She could shoot that thing like an olympic biathelete, and her favorite target was wild dogs. We had more than our share of them, and she was bound and determined to keep them away from our Brittany Ginger.
\n
\nMom would set up in our dining room window, a couple encyclopedia volumes on the chair to get her at the right height, and shoot down at the side yard where the dog sat in her house. When Ginger went in heat, it seemed that all 3000 neighborhood strays would converge on our yard, shitting and pissing, and generally leaving a huger mess than even Ginger. Ginger herself was the klutziest dog I ever knew the Inspector Clousseau of bird dogs. If she wasn’t the fastest dog to find birds I ever knew, she would have been a remarkably useless animal (wouldn’t have stopped me from loving her, though).<\/p>\n

Anyway. Mom sits in the windoiw like Carlos Hathcock, pumps fourteen pumps in the Sheridan (At best I could manage ten) and lines up her crosshairs on the largest of the dogs trying to crawl into the doghouse with Ginger. <\/p>\n

She whispers in her best clint eastwood sneer “Take that, asshole” and squeezes the trigger. The sheridan is almost silent, and most of the noise is in the house. <\/p>\n

The impact of the 15 grain bullet travelling at barely subsonic speeds into the backside of the big dog isn’t fatal, and isn’t intended to be, the point is merely to encourage the dogs to leave, and that it does. The big shephard cur that she’s hit leaves the ground in the best vision of instant levitation I’ve ever seen, howling like a maniac, and before his feet touch the ground he’s bitten four other dogs and those dogs bite other dogs, and so on, and so on. THe dogs thus bitten start chewing on one anothers ears, necks, feet, tails (where applicable) and take off at a gallop towards the woods where they live, a ball of flying fur, mud, dogshit, and rainwater, howling and growling and biting to beat the band.<\/p>\n

Mom has begun to laugh so hard that she has fallen off her chair, I catch the rifle and gramma and my sister are pointing and giggling at the look on Ginger’s face, moments ago surrounded by a dozen or more suitors, and now left to dance alone. <\/p>\n

THe original rifle finally failed after dispatching hundreds of squirrels and dogs and the occasional distempered cat, and as the parts amounted to more than the value of the rifle, it ended up in the trash. A couple years later, I saw one at a local store on sale for $99, which was a deal, and I latched on. It’s above the window on hooks, and is still used to quietly send chipmunks to chipmunk heaven (lest they undermine my expensive foundation repairs) and keep whistlepigs at bay. In a couple weeks I’ll have a decent bullet trap, and I’ll be able to shoot it in the basement. One of the best ways to keep those skills honed in the off season is to keep pulling the trigger, and an air rifle and a basement range is a good way to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the first firearm I “owned” was a Sheridan Blue Streak, chambered for 5mm. (.20 cal) Now owned by Crosman,these rifles were, at the time, the high end of pneumatic pellet guns. While all the other kids were wandering around with their Red Ryders (yes, I eventually got one too) I had an actual rifle. Now, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}