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February 18, 2024 - 12:44 pm
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Hi Forum,

My name is James Popoff. I just discovered this forum yesterday and am already using it, big time! I am retired from a professional career as a statistican and quantitative modeler in the commercial real estate and location analysis field. For the past 7 years for grins and giggles, and pin money, I have worked as a licensed medicare sales agent, introducing the newly-eligible and guiding others in the mysteries of medicare. Frankly, much more rewarding than my old job, which was a blast, but only made some people rich and not much else. I’ve been a firearms sporting enthusiast and collector since I was 16, and lately returned to my passion after a long hiatus for grad school, raising a family, and working a career. My current interest  lies in benchrest, and I both buy and build my own rifles. I also build 1911 pistols and AR10s and AR15s for fun, but doesn’t everybody? I’m an experienced and active reloader. I just joined SASS and recently bought my first SSA pistol, which I load and shoot black powder with. My link to Winchester came about because of the historical duo of the Colt SSA and the Winchester Model 1873, the gun that won the west. I just intended to buy an Uberti reproduction, new or used, for SASS duty when I stumbled upon my newest acquisition at my LGS, a genuine Winchester Model 1873 produced in 1890. Still seeking some answers about it on another thread in this topic area. Not to worry, I will only gently use my Winchester for CAS. I mainly joined SASS so my wife and I could play dressup and to enjoy shooting with others, as my benchrest hobby is pretty intensely solo. That about does it; I am a dog lover (“Dog people are good people.” It’s in the Texas Constitution, look it up).

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February 18, 2024 - 1:59 pm
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James – welcome!  There’s a lot to be gained by hanging around here.  

It sounds like many of us here, you have a diversity of interests.  I don’t dable in AR-10’s and the like, but my lever action interests are not only in Winchester, but include antique/vintage Marlins, Savage M1899’s, Whitney-Kennedys, Bullards, Burgess shotguns and Ross sporting and target rifles.  There are others in there as well but that’s the main focus.  I’m also an active shooter and reloader and load for quite a span of cartridges with a focus on obsolete chamberings.  

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February 18, 2024 - 2:07 pm
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James – let me add –

If you are able to figure out Medicare and help others through that process, you have impressed me as a man of intelligence.  I have recently traveled through the Medicare process and it’s been a long time since I’ve been that humbled by something.

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February 18, 2024 - 2:21 pm
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Welcome, James.  You will find a lot of friendly support here for all your interest, and most likely plenty of good info for any questions related to your interest in 1873’s.

I, too, started competitive shooting with an interest in BR, but pretty quickly turned to NRA ‘over the course’ competition.  That was in the 1980’s through about 2000.  Not much competitive stuff since.

But I have a passion for Winchesters and Colt SAA.  I gravitated to the 1892 and matching calibers in the Colts. I now have all those calibers covered in both, with authentic, original examples.  On my bucket list is to enter a SASS event (not yet a member) and shoot the entire event with my authentic guns.  I have only one model 97 shotgun, and it’s a short, 20 inch barrel.  I think that may not be allowed in SASS, so I may need an addition to my Winchesters.

 

Best of luck!

Nevada Paul

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February 18, 2024 - 2:24 pm
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Welcome! This place is a repository of knowledge…also overwhelming at times but necessary I’ve found out. I got into all this about 18 months ago and wow, this is a “lifetime” sport!

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February 18, 2024 - 2:41 pm
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  James,

 Welcome to the Forum. Leroy Merz has eight 1873 muskets for sale on his web site with several pictures each. I suggest you use it to compare yours against his. Just google “leroy merz winchesters” and it will take you to his site. I am not making a plug for Leroy, but his sight has useful pictures. T/R

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February 18, 2024 - 2:55 pm
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steve004 said
James – let me add –

If you are able to figure out Medicare and help others through that process, you have impressed me as a man of intelligence.  I have recently traveled through the Medicare process and it’s been a long time since I’ve been that humbled by something.

  

If so, the aims of the fed govt bureaucrats who intentionally designed it that way were fulfilled.  Most brilliant of all, the labyrinthine multiplicity of drug plans, which you can look forward to changing every yr; the drug industry, thanks to their friends in Congress, got exactly the system it asked for, & paid for.

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February 18, 2024 - 2:56 pm
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Hey Gang, thanks for the welcome! Nevada Paul, I like your dream, but at the SASS matches I’ve witnessed, they positively abuse those guns! They thrash them in the name of competitive speed! Best enter with Italian repros, unless you plan on being slow moving traffic, like I am. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Just imagine that old dude driving at the limit at rush hour! I do believe your shotgun is legal; you can visit the SASS website and download the current .pdf rulebook to confirm. Steve004 the hardest thing about medicare for me is the daily conversations with folks who literally, month to month, have to decide which meds and how much of them is it safe to ditch so they can afford the Kraft dinner, and a little milk to make it with. Nobody I’ve talked to will admit to eating dog food, but I know it has to happen, a lot. Don’t get me started! Anyway All, I sure hope I can give back what I get, cause I’m here to soak up the experience and the data. Y’all tell me to shut up if I carry on too much!

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February 18, 2024 - 4:19 pm
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James, thanks for the insight.  As long as my guns are not handled by anyone other than me, I think I can resist the temptation to beat them up in the spirit of competition. If I get bitten by the bug, I could use replicas at some later time. I don’t move fast enough any longer to really be competitive in any case.

And as for the ‘constitution of Texas’, that must be an interesting document. It may be worth a read!  I had a friend in college (in Texas) who claimed that it was in the Texas Constitution that anyone eating bar-b-q, regardless of age, could legally be served a beer. Seems right.

Nevada Paul

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February 18, 2024 - 4:41 pm
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Hey Gang, thanks for the welcome! Nevada Paul, I like your dream, but at the SASS matches I’ve witnessed, they positively abuse those guns! James Popoff said

That’s what I observed in the one match I attended.  But in any other competitive event, like BP silhouettes, with folks talking & milling about, & even if you yourself are trying to move along at a more leisurely pace, it’s difficult to concentrate on pampering your own guns–you can get distracted & accidents happen. 

Some extremely helpful & friendly folks on the SASS forum, such as my late & much lamented friend John Kort.

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February 18, 2024 - 9:24 pm
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Welcome! But I can honestly say two things, I hate the incessant Medicare commercials and whoever is making them I wish nothing but bad things, and as a combat vet, I want nothing to do with any AR platform, in fact I find the lack, of art and style in most of todays firearms a serious disturbance in the Force. But hey I also have a passion for Pre 46 Walthers and other pocket pistols of the Imperial era, but hey that’s me.

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February 18, 2024 - 11:13 pm
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@Steven Gabrielli I did not have the honor to serve, so I cannot appreciate the qualities or lack thereof for combat of the AR platform. Nor do I desire to play tactical games and train with the weapons at my age. I’m a simple sort, basically fascinated by the engineering concept of direct impingement. I love it love it love it when my suppressed 308 goes ka-chunk, so fast that unless you’re tuned to it you completely miss it! I build guns that I can use in long range target competition, and that is another fascination for me, the load development, the parts swapping to coax more performance, the beauty of 0.10 minute of angle 3-shot groups is what keeps me in the game. I have two hummer barrels right now, a 7mm Remington Magnum made by Tikka, and a 308 Winchester made by Faxon. I’m hoping I’ll uncover a third with my new Winchester in 44-40 tomorrow. I also hear the siren song of the historical period of which you speak. I collect and buy and sell Lugers and Luftwaffe and Heer pistolen, and, of course, wider Europe was also fertile ground at that time for some really Great pistols, such as from Beretta, CZ, FN, Radom, Astra, even FEG, all of which were used by German officers and armed administrators throughout the Reich. As to medicare, alas but marketing departments are everybody’s enemy. I spend a good deal of my time just setting peoples’ expectations back in line with reality. Not always easy to do when they have become convinced that they ‘deserve’ something, and I seem to be a blockhead standing in the way, or a crook who is trying to cheat them out of it, when in reality they have been suggestively misled by jerks. People seem to think that because medicare is provided by the government that it must stand apart from any other business and be guaranteed forthright, honest, and pure. They don’t apply their critical faculties to those they encounter around the medicare scene the way they naturally do with, say, a TV auto sales pitch, a vacuum cleaner salesman at the door, even the hand-scrawled sign that says “Please give, I have a wife and children” when they’re waiting at the light. Whenever I call the company on it, they shrug and say “The others are doing it. If we don’t follow suit they’ll walk all over us!” Jeez, I should shut up.

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February 19, 2024 - 5:35 am
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Moving to new thread at “Winchester Shooting and Hunting/Progress In Ladder Testing Black Powder 44-40 Rifle

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