December 7th. I joined the Navy 33 years ago today in 1979. I'm front left.
I'm giving my dad my scoped Browning airgun for Christmas. It is an electric-cocking airgun, so it'll be easy for him to shoot without the 30+ pounds of cocking effort required on his existing Beeman air rifle. It's my favorite and best shooting spring gun with a Leupold 3-9×33EFR I got from their Custom Shop a couple decades ago. I'll give it to him in a matching Browning hard case. I got 10 of these rifles into the country from Liege in the early 90s. Took almost two years of paperwork and importation hassles to get them here. Browning had 80 made by Rutten in Belgium to test the feasibility of selling these models, based on the Airstar 200. Browning does not like to acknowledge these guns because they could not service them in the States and pulled the plug on production. They have the Browning Buckmark on the gun, and the receiver, box, and instruction manual are marked Browning. The head of research and development at Browning in Utah had one in the archives when I went to school at their facility.
Browning Electric Airstar 200 with Leupold 3-9x33 EFR
I have one that I sold my late brother, Chris, and when I get around to it I'll mount one of the outstanding new Nikon Prostaff 3-9×40 EFR riflescopes on it for my use.
My friend and vet, Dr. Chuck, just bought a superb Christensen arms Carbon Extreme II in .300 WSM. It has the smoothest barrel (carbon-fiber with a steel liner) I have ever put a patch through. He'll use this in Namibia in March 2013. In the picture below you can see the bottom half of the rings, which I lapped. Look how polished the metal is. Complete contact with the Leupold Dual Dovetail rings, and no scratches on the Leupold VX-6 illuminated 2-12×42 we put in them. His name and a gemsbock are engraved on his scope by the Custom Shop. I have one of these superb scopes for my HS Precision SPL, also in .300 WSM. Mine has a hard rubber recoil pad and is a bit punishing to shoot. I'll install a more effective recoil pad. I don't generally care for obnoxious muzzle brakes.
Hope your hunting season is going well and you're enjoying the holidays so far!
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