Today was my off day, so I spent the morning at the office studying. About noon my wonderful wife suggested we go ahead and eat lunch and that I not return to the office! So after lunch I grabbed my beloved SA 5.9 and headed out to a church members place to do a little walking and looking for hogs, etc. About 2 miles into the woods it began to rain... hard! Now of all the things I've done with my M-1's, I've never taken even one of them out in the rain. There I was way down deep in the woods, wading along in about 8 inches of water and the thought occurred to me, "It was made for this." So I decided to just keep walking and looking... unfortunately I saw now hogs.
Upon arriving home I started to attend to cleaning my rifle. But I had to tend to a few matters with a church member. Then my brother dropped by the house. He was on his way to a job site down state so my wife and I prepared supper for him. It was a pleasure to see him enjoy himself. We served him a huge ribeye that we had grilled last Friday. Then my wife wanted to go walking so we took walked our normal 4 mile route.
Finally tonight about 8 p.m. I finally got back home and was able to see to cleaning and drying my rifle. What amazed me is that in spite of being in a heavy driving rain for well over one hour, when I took the rifle apart, there was very little moisture to be found. The wood inside was dry. The metal was nice, clean and dry. I had expected to find a mess. All the Lubriplate that I had applied to the metal was still in fine shape. It now sits on the table. Tomorrow I'll put it back in the stock. I may even take it with me while out visiting church members. Some of them really appreciate a nice rifle. And occasionally we've even been known to fire a few rounds at old scrap harrow blades.
I know that this is not a tale of daring do... of big game shot or a match won. But I thoroughly enjoyed simply walking along in the woods with my rifle. Even the mosquitoes were not able to spoil things. And I learned something. With a pair of good fitting boots, some crackers and a canteen of water, a M-1 and a clip of ammo one can have a pretty good time walking around and looking to see what comes up. Sincerely. BruceV.
