The Raising of a Gun Nut

by Paul Moreland

As I think back to my experiences as an MK (missionary kid) who has suffered from the gun bug
since his child hood, but has been raised in an area which was not conducive to acquiring accurate
knowledge of modern firearms, it came to me that perhaps someone would be interested in
reading an account of my own long quest for knowledge of the shooting sports.

As a child back in the 60's I recall how my dad came home from hunting one day with a young
spike muledeer buck. That is the first memory I have of a firearm, the Remington model 600
carbine in .308 caliber he had taken the buck with. Soon afterwards we moved down to Brazil,
South America and my dad packed his rifles with the rest of our belongings which were sent by
ship. After arriving he found that the Model 600 was illegal to possess in Brazil because of it's
"military" caliber. It was no difficulty to find a collector who bought it from him. This was my
first lesson in the futility of gun bans and so called "gun control". No matter what laws are
passed, guns will be available. Brazil has very strict laws on guns as to what can and cannot be
possessed by a civilian. Even those who have a collector's license are limited to a maximum of 5
rounds of ammunition per firearm in their collection. None of this has done much to reduce the
number of guns in possession of the population. During the years I spent in Brazil I saw a large
number of assorted firearms, all of which were illegal for civilians to possess, and all in the hands
of the well to do and politicians. I have seen concealed carry permits issued for illegal firearms
and innumerable infractions of the innumerable gun laws. These laws have done nothing to
reduce the crime rate or to keep people safer, but I digress from my intended theme.

My dad had a couple of .22 rifles which he kept when he sold the "military" model 600
Remington. One was a fairly new Marlin 7 shot bolt action. The other was an old Stevens
Favorite which an acquaintance had threatened to "pound a bolt down the muzzle and throw it in
the cow pond" several years before. My dad being a prudent man told his friend that if the object
of the threatened action was to never see the gun again, he'd see to it that the object came to
pass, but without needlessly destroying the rifle. I'm glad he spoke up because that little gun was
the first gun I ever hunted with.

The area I grew up in is situated along the Belem/Brasilia highway. The city, Aragua”na, was
founded in the early 60's. By the time we moved there in 1973 it had grown to a huge town of
about 15,000 people. It was a jump off town where folks would come and then "jump off" into
the nearby rain forest to farm, ranch, log or search for gold or precious stones. The population
wasn't very stable, to say the least.

Dad obtained a lot within the city limits, but beyond 'most any other houses by a wide margin. It
was in that area I learned to hunt and fish, Brazilian style. Our new house was located on an old
pineapple plantation which had grown up to a thick stand of weeds and the tall grass which is
planted in Brazil for cow pasture. I raised chickens and large lizards would come out into our
yard to prey on them. Dad always left the Marlin in the utility room at the rear of the house so it
would be handy to get rid of these predators. This rifle was always loaded and none of us kids
ever dared to misuse it, nor did the thought ever cross our minds. Loaded guns are not a danger,
if they are treated with the proper respect. We were taught that a gun is always loaded, even if
you have removed all the shells. If you treat them with that respect, there should never be any
mistakes or tragedies.

The wide open areas around our house were an invitation to explore and hunt. My first personal
firearm was an old "monkey's tail" muzzle loader. It was small and light and perfectly worthless,
but I thought it was grand. I fired it a few times with the recommended load of a .32 SWL case
full of black powder and then tried to fix a few of it's problems only to find out that the gun was
falling apart and was unsafe to fire further.

My funds were limited (non existent) so I had to make do with occasionally borrowing Dad's rifle
to hunt with. Then came the day when we saw some of the neighborhood kids using home made
shotguns to shoot at the an£, a south american black bird. These were ingenious devices made
with great care. They had found an old metal chair in the dump, sawed off it's conical legs,
hammered the narrow end flat and bent over then drilled a touch hole with a nail. They would
load it with powder salvaged from the finger size firecrackers we could so easily purchase,
wadding made from burlap strings and some ball bearings, lead shot or gravel. Anything that
could be stuffed down the barrel. The first one was fired by one boy holding it out at arms length,
generally aimed at the birds and another kid would touch it off with a match. The birds suffered
no harm except perhaps some ringing in their ears.

This looked like marvelous fun, but even my untrained eye could detect several flaws. Especially
the paper thin walls of the improvised barrel. Later one of the kids smuggled out a full brass .410
shell which he placed in the end of a chair leg. The leg was strapped with a bicycle inner tube to a
pistol grip carved from a board and a primitive firing mechanism was attached. When the first
shot was fired the case opened up (split) and was retained in the "chamber" like a wedge. These
shells used Berdan primers which would usually come out on their own during firing and could
then be replaced by tapping a new one into place. The gun was then reloaded like a muzzle
loader.

My cousin Phillip and I took all this in and decided those kids were nuts, but they had given us
several ideas. We went into a time of research and development with the intent of building a safe
and reliable shoulder fired smooth bore. We obtained a short length of pipe which we threaded
using my uncle's dies. We placed a cap on the end and then blocked off the threaded area
because of it's weakness, drilled a hole in the pipe, strapped it to a 2X2, loaded it with two inches
of black powder, a wad and some lead shot then fired it by means of a fuse we scavenged from a
firecracker. We took the precaution to stand behind a tree with our fingers in our ears when it
went off. The pipe shot back several feet and our target was sprayed with shot. We carefully
examined the pipe and found no visible damage. SUCCESS! We had found a reliable barrel
which would serve our purpose. I was able to scrounge some money and bought a longer piece
of pipe which I fitted with a 28 gauge full brass, Berdan primed shotshell. These shells were sold
unloaded and could be easily bought on the black market. The shell was fixed in the barrel with
some epoxy glue and then I ground down an end cap for the pipe, drilled a hole in the end for
access to the primer and fitted it over the end of the "chamber". My cousin did the same, but
didn't thread his pipe, nor fit the cap. The firing mechanism was built from heavy sheet aluminum
from my uncle scrap pile. We folded it into box shape and used some long bolts for the firing pin.
The mechanism was held to the stock with screws, I filled my mechanism with epoxy putty and
drilled a hole for the firing pin. My cousin filled his with an iron bolt held in place with molten
lead. My stock was fashioned from a heavy, dense Brazilian hard wood. My cousin scrounged
some scrap mahogany for his.

These marvels of modern technology were loaded by a half inch of black powder under a wad of
whatever we could find, then a charge of lead shot and another wad of stuff over the lead. We
arrived at the charge by going with 25 % of our proof load. We had quite a blast with these
shotguns ( pun intended ). Then mom caught on to what was happening and I retired my blaster
to keep her from worrying.

An american named Bill came to town who owned a large piece of land near the Araguaia river
west of our town. He came down to develop it and we kind of adopted him. As part of his
equipment he purchased a 32 gauge shotgun on my dad's permit. That is a gauge most US folks
have never heard of, but it is ( or was ) used in Brazil fairly widely. In fact you could buy
shotguns and ammunition in a much wider array of gauges in Brazil than in the US during the 70's
and 80's. Those available were: 9.1 mm (also known as the 40), .410 (also known as the 36), 28,
24, 20, 16, and 12. At first only paper hulls and full length brass were available. With the high
humidity the paper hulls were quick to expand and became unuseable. Bill bought some factory
paper shells and a dozen brass shells. When he would return to the U.S. to work as a welder in
Alaska he left the little 32 gauge in my care. I loaded the brass shells countless times and never
lost one. Bill lost one while tromping through the forest, but we never had one split.

At that time there was a limited choice of powders available. One could choose from a variety of
black powder brands and a few "white" powders as the locals called the smokeless powders
available. There was one brand called Tupan that I used extensively. It came with a little clear
plastic measuring tube with marks for the proper amount of powder by volume for the various
gauges and another mark for the proper amount of lead. I would use the mark for the 24 gauge
for powder, a burlap string wad, lead shot and another burlap string wad. This load kicked like a
mule but had lots of power. Most of our shooting was at short range and this load performed
well.

I have never learned to wing shoot effectively. We would go out meat hunting, not for sport, and
our intention was to put meat in the pot. It took me a while to learn to use the shot gun since I
was used to placing my shots carefully with the .22's. On one outing I noticed that the shotgun
seemed to miss a lot, like there was a big hole in the pattern. I called my dad over one morning
early and said, "See that little bird on the sandbar over there? (About 30 yards off) I'm going to
shoot right at him and he'll fly of scot free". Much to my surprise the little guy flopped over at
the shot and lay there on the sand bar. Dad got my point since there was an obvious hole in the
pattern evidenced by the splashes in the water and sand around the bird, but sent me out after it in
the canoe since our policy was, if you shoot it you eat it, no matter what. I paddled over and
picked up the little guy who was just starting to kind of sit up. Of the whole load only one pellet
had struck him, just grazing his head. After our prayer for breakfast I released him, seemingly
none the worse for wear. I can just imagine him flying home and saying "Martha, boy do I have a
story to tell. I've had one lousy day". After that I learned to pack paper scraps over the lead
which would break apart on leaving the barrel and allow the shot to pass through thus improving
my patterns dramatically.

Bill's wife divorced him, forcing him to sell off his beloved land. This happened while I was in the
U.S. at college and he gave the little 32 to someone else. I often wonder what ever happened to
Bill. I can imagine what happened to the gun since most Brazilians in our area believe that letting
the barrel rust inside builds up veneno (poison) thus making it more effective for hunting. A lot of
good guns have been ruined that way.

WRITE PAUL