Monday, July 22, 2013

Camp Liberty- A Call To Help Those Who Have Served



A gentleman came in, saw my Wounded Warrior Program shirt and asked if I was involved in WWP. I said I gave money, but was not active in other ways. The WWP shirts we proudly wear in the store were purchased for us by our owners to show our collective support for these soldiers.

The gentleman asked if I had heard of Camp Liberty. I had, just the other day in fact, for the first time.

I like to try to help those who have served our country.  Maybe we agree or disagree with our leaders in relation to our foreign policies, but these men and women didn’t make these policies, they just did their jobs as best as they could and are suffering from injuries as a result.

WWP helps returning veterans on a national level and that is gratifying. But we often do not see the local, close-to-home help that goes on.

Camp Liberty is a Manchester, Michigan based project on 137 acres of land. I could try to explain it here in detail, but they have a website that will give you their info directly. In a nutshell, they have teamed with a leading cognitive therapy organization to provide rehabilitation services to those who have “hidden injuries” like concussions.  It easy to see and recognize injuries such as paralysis, amputations and burns; but internal, cognitive injuries are a hidden problem.  Camp Liberty exists to help those with these hidden injuries and Camp Liberty needs our help in order to do so.

Check them out here…  www.camp-liberty.org.

Please consider donating generously of your time and/or money. Lastly, do not forget to include our soldiers in our daily thoughts and prayers.

Hunting- The Chi Energy Blog



“That’s so cruel!”

It is a response that any hunter has heard many times from others when the others find out that the hunter kills animals.

And let me digress a minute and talk about Killing game v taking, harvesting, bagging, etc. I kill game. That is what it is. To sugar coat it by saying I take game, harvest game, bag game, reduce game to possession (honest, I actually read that last one somewhere, WTF?) is a dishonor to the animal. If I am not willing to call it what it is, then I am ashamed of what I do and am not giving the proper respect to that which I kill. Similarly, I do not do buck poles nor do I parade the buck around on my hood for all to see doing so shows a lack of respect for the animal and can be offensive to those who are not comfortable with hunting..

Now back to the issue at hand. Is hunting really cruel? No. Not when done ethically.

What is ethical hunting? Hunting is ethical when; you use a weapon which is capable of a quick kill, you practice with said weapon until your skill is sufficient, you do not take shots that you have not practiced (and how many deer hunters actually practice shooting moving targets?), you make every effort to find any game that does not drop where shot, and you use as much of the animal you kill as you can.

Is ethical hunting any more cruel than Mother Nature?

The other day I heard a cacophony near the boulder wall behind the house. Investigating, I saw a mother wren and a not-quite-ready-to-fly youngster on the gravel. On the wall I saw another youngster with its back end partially in the jaw of a snake. The young bird was carrying on mightily as the snake held on. The snake was unable to swallow the bird and was holding on until the bird became too tired to fight so it could turn the bird around and swallow it.

Yep, this is more humane than shooting a deer.

I saw part of a time-lapse video of a pack of wolves killing a mother bison and her calf. The mother fought to protect the baby as the wolves circled and slowly wore her down. It was an all-day affair to finally bring down the mother. The terrified calf succumbed sooner. The wolves took bites and tore at the animals as other wolves surrounded and distracted them. Finally, as the animals were down, the wolves started eating on them as other wolves were still finishing the kill.

Yep, this is more humane that shooting a deer.

What about store-bought meats? Are the animals raised in a good environment? Are they treated well? Are they penned and unable to move freely?

I get teased while playing volleyball. I tell people that when I hit a spike I try to project Chi energy into the ball. Others laugh. I am serious. Part of Chi energy comes from food. I have read, and tend to believe, that meat from poorly treated animals has poor and/or less Chi than free range, well-treated animals’ meat. I think a deer or other animal that is killed quickly and then handled well will have better meat than will a mistreated cow.

In the end, there are some people who will never agree with me. This is America and I love that they can have their own opinions just as I have mine.  I only ask that they do not try to impose their beliefs on me just as I try to respect their beliefs by not parading the dead buck around.

Hunting season will soon be upon us. I hope you all get a chance to get out into the woods and that you have a safe, successful, and ethical hunting experience.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Frog Lube- The Barry Manilow, McDonald's Blog



“Hey,” Mrs. Blog Sarge exclaimed. “Why do these muffins smell minty?”

I tried to ignore the question. I didn’t want to admit that I had baked my guns with Frog Lube on the cookie sheet. She persisted and I finally came clean. Maybe I should have lined the cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

It did not go well.

The directions said to heat the parts to maximize the metal treatment by the product. What better way to do that than by stripping the parts, baking them at 150 for a few minutes, wiping them down liberally, re-heating and then buffing dry? I suppose that letting them sit in the sun would have worked also, as would have simply employing a hair dryer.

Anyway, I was listening to Barry Manilow and it made me think to blog about Frog Lube. So you wonder, how in the hell I got to Frog Lube from Manilow. Easy. Barry wrote a jingle for McDonalds that got him his big break.  (I bet you remember it. “You deserve a break today, so get up and get away…”) That lead me to think of greasy food, which lead to lube, which lead to Frog Lube. Easy enough, right?


Still, the fact remains that the Frog Lube stuff really works. Tactical Corporal and I did a scientific experiment. I frog lubed a phosphate finished AR bolt group and left a nickeled one alone. Then, we shot the heck out of both. The Frog Lubed phosphate BCG cleaned up as easily as the nickeled one. Plus, it smelled minty fresh

The product is advertised as being non-toxic and made of USDA food grade ingredients. It does have a minty smell as stated, and is much less offensive to those to whom Hoppe’s #9 smells bad.

I’ve been using it now for several months and have found that it is all I need. I use it for cleaning in the normal fashion. I then wipe the gun as dry as I can; following with a thin film which I let sit on the parts in the sun for a few minutes (or take a blow dryer to them). After letting them heat a bit, I simply wipe the part dry with a towel.

The lube treats the metal and apparently wicks into the pores. When firing, the Frog Lube will seep to the surface as the gun warms and will keep the gun running, but the surface retails a dry feel. Dry metal will be less prone to accumulate grit and other contaminants.

Better yet, the more you use Frog Lube, the easier it is to clean the gun the next time. As the surfaces get treated over and over, they become less prone to having crud stick.

Frog Lube also sells a solvent product. I use it for initial cleaning to help get the old petroleum lubes off guns and after that I only use it when the gun I am cleaning is really dirty. The solvent is great for this, but is not normally needed for routine cleaning of parts that have already been treated with Frog Lube.

We have the solvent, lube, paste and cleaning kits in stock now.

Happy shooting!