The Tahoe is new, the buck is big and Tank found out
his wife was pregnant. Why the glum, scared look?
Have you ever unexpectedly bumped into a long, lost friend? During this impromptu encounter, you end up spending more time reminiscing about the “good old days.” Before you know it, several hours have elapsed reliving both wonderful and heartbreaking moments, as only can happen with an old friend.
This happened to me recently. I was looking for a particular gun for an article, and the silly rascal was playing a game of hide-and-seek with me. Looking into the deep abyss of my safe, it was here where the chance meeting occurred.
Tank (center) with his biggest deer taken to date in WV
with his old friend, the Remington 700 .30-06.
“My” First Deer Rifle
Like most kids, the first deer I killed was with a borrowed rifle. I don’t remember whose it was, but it was a Remington 760 pump-action with “see-thru” mounts and a glossy Bushnell scope, one we later jokingly referred to as “the classic Amish Assault Rifle.”
The Remington 760 is very popular in the Pennsylvania woods. Back then, most deer hunters also hunted small game with pump-action shotguns. It only made sense to run the same action you were familiar with and believe me, those carrying Remington 760s knew how to run them as fast as any semi-auto rifle — which were illegal back then.
I kill a chunky “forky” (four point) with the borrowed 760. I was hooked! When you are young, time takes forever to pass from the current deer season to next year’s. This provides a young fella’ with lots of time to dream about the coming season and what gear he needs for next year. Naturally, I wanted my own deer rifle.
Guns
Being a proud “Boomer,” things were different back then. I received a Daisy 1894 BB gun for Christmas at age 5 and a .22 long rifle Harrington & Richardson bolt-action rifle for my 8th birthday. If this happened today, my parents would probably risk being charged with “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Like I said, things were different back then — for the better! I never gave my parents reason not to give me a gun. By them doing so, they showed me trust, one I never betrayed. It, in turn, made me more responsible.
Ever since kindergarten, the first two weeks of summer vacation were spent on my grandparents’ dairy farm. I was blessed by having room to roam and exposure to my uncles who were both hunters. After the afternoon milking and supper, it was time to hunt groundhogs. I had three years of supervision hunting them before getting my own .22 rifle.
Being an experienced hunter, my grandparents and uncles had no qualms about my hunting whistle pigs by myself. Along the way, my uncles taught me how to set double spring traps, baiting them with sardines, to trap sweetcorn-raiding raccoons.
Uncle Jerry taught Tank a lot about hunting groundhogs and deer. This was Jerry’s biggest buck — but Jerry died the following fall.
Remington 700
Picking a rifle was a no-brainer. The best hunters I knew were my uncles and they both carried Remington Model 700s. They must be the best if they carried them, right? Around this time, I started reading outdoor magazines and a common theme back then was the .30-06 being the best all-around cartridge there was.
Loaded correctly, you could take anything from ground hogs to grizzly using 100- to 110-grain bullets for vermin and up to 220-grain heavyweights for grizzly. Not that there was an abundance of grizzlies on the Pennsylvania farm, in my young mind it never hurt to have the potential to take one if necessary.
After getting my Remington 700 .30-06, I soon started handloading for it. And I did indeed use 110-grain Remington soft points for ground hogs and 180-grain Remington round-nosed Core Lokt bullets for bigger things — just no grizzlies.
Deer taken with the Remington 700 .30-06. Maybe it’s time to bring it out of retirement? The spike at extreme left was Tank’s daughter’s first buck.
The Man With One Gun
For years I carried the Remington .30-06 for everything. During summer, it was my 110-grain handloads for vermin and fall saw me carrying my 180 Core Lokts. All I had to do was adjust my Redfield 3-9X40 scope the required amount of clicks up or down for each load. I killed enough ground hogs to fill a pickup truck bed with that rifle, as well as several bucks.
I carried that rifle on the hunt when my uncle Jerry died in W.Va. and then killed my biggest buck the following year. Holding the rifle at arm’s length, I notice the dings, dents and scratches. I remember how upset I was when they happened. Now I’m glad they’re there, telling their tale of past hunts together.
The action of my Remington 700 is just as smooth as I remember. The trigger is sharp and crisp and the Redfield Scope still clear. After shooting imaginary deer on the wall, I wonder why I stopped hunting with the old friend?
Friends Galore!
Then I see all the lever guns, single shots, bolt guns representing just about every manufacturer in North America and am jarred back to reason. Curiosity, experimentation and the need to try something different are the culprits filling my gun room now.
Surely the man with one gun lives a simpler, quiet, if not boring life. But he sure is missing out on a lot of fun by doing so. And when I look at the gun that started it all, I am thankful for my Remington 700 .30-06. I think he’s deserving of a reward and need to take him on a hunt. After all, old friends are the best! And he’s responsible for all my other friends.
Today is National Medal of Honor Day which celebrates the highest military honor in the country.
The Medal of Honor is reserved for bravest actions in the face of the enemy. To earn the medal, a servicemember has to distinguish himself or herself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity while risking their life under fire and beyond the call of duty against an enemy of the United States.
First established in 1862, a year after the Civil War broke out, the Medal of Honor has changed over time, including in how and who can earn it – and today, the Medal of Honor is exceptionally tough to earn.
Private Jacob Parrott was the first recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Civil War. There has also been one woman awardee, Mary Edwards Walker, a contract surgeon who saved countless lives with her medicine during the Civil War.
Since the medal was established more than 150 years ago, 3,536 Medal of Honors have been awarded to 3,517 recipients (there have been some multiple awardees before the criteria were restricted).
The medal and how it was earned changed right before World War I. By that point, more than 60 percent (2,198) of the total Medals of Honor ever earned had been awarded.
The Civil War is by far the conflict with the most Medals of Honor awarded. During the four-year conflict, 1523 Union troops received the highest military award. Then, during the Indian Wars against Native Americans (roughly 1862 to 1911) 426 medals were awarded. In the Spanish-American War (April 1898 to December 1898), 110 medals were awarded. In the Philippine-American War (1899 to 1902), American troops earned 80 Medals of Honor. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899 to 1901), 59 medals were awarded. Finally, in the American-Mexican border War (1900 to 1919), 56 medals were awarded.
Over the course of many hours Brady utilized three helicopters (after the first two were rendered inoperable because of damage from enemy fire) to evacuate 51 seriously wounded men, many of whom would have died without prompt medical treatment. (Photo by Ken Scar/U.S. Army Cadet Command)
The story from World War I and onwards is very different. During the Great War, just 126 Medals of Honor were awarded. Then, during World War II, American troops earned 472 Medals of Honor. In the forgotten war of Korea (1950 to 1953), 146 medals were awarded, and 268 medals were earned in Vietnam (1955 to 1975). Since then, only 30 medals have been awarded (two in Somalia, eight in Iraq, and 20 in Afghanistan).
The Army leads the way with 2,467 medals. The Navy follows with 749, while the Marine Corps boasts 300. The Air Force, the newest service until the creation of the Space Force, has 19. Finally, the Coast Guard has one.
A big myth about the Medal of Honor is that you have to die to earn it. But according to the statistics, only about 19 percent of the awardees received the highest military award posthumously.
Another interesting fact is that U.S. citizenship isn’t a requirement for earning the medal. To this day, 764 awardees were born overseas and not all of them later became U.S. citizens. However, one must be serving in the military to get the medal.
Today, there are 63 Medal of Honor recipients alive.
By law, recommendation packages for the highest military award must be submitted within three years of the action in question. This statute of limitations encourages timely reporting of actions worthy to be recognized with the medal.
But Congress, though a specific act, can bypass that requirement and green light Medals of Honor for actions that took place decades ago. Recently, successive administrations have been using this window to correct past mistakes and the Pentagon has been re-reviewing records of past conflicts and upgrading awards to the Medal of Honor.
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Italian Infantry Weapons of WWII
Chimpanzees look like cool, friendly, wise, placid creatures. They’re not. They’re actually bloodthirsty monsters just like the rest of us.
There is a commonly held but flawed presupposition opining that, somewhere out there, some people are innately good. That just has not been my experience. There are certainly fine folks of character wandering about. I strive to count myself among them.
However, underneath, I would assert that we all come from the factory broken. Absent a little divine grace, we’re all predictably dreadful. Should you be covetous of examples, I would put forth Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein, Hillary Clinton, your typical two-year-old toddler, and whoever invented digital pop-up ads.
Anthropomorphizing animal behavior to fit a human construct is a timeless fallacy. A more accurate comparison would be to depict humans as animals.
Human Nature
I’m not sure where you stand on the whole kinship to monkeys thing. I have my own opinions about how we all got here. However, anthropomorphizing human character traits onto the animal kingdom will not take you to a happy place.
The adorable kitten that seems so entertaining as it chases the spot from your laser sight around the room? That little monster is just trying to catch some defenseless creature so it can rip the very life out of it.
The puppy who so enjoys its new squeaky toy? That thing is, in its mind at least, killing a bunny rabbit with its teeth. We live in a pervasively broken world. The animal kingdom is dirty with examples.
The War
Chimpanzees are cute … from a distance. I cut my teeth on Saturday morning Tarzan movies. There was a time when I coveted such a pet myself. However, it turns out that chimps are actually bloodthirsty killers, just like the rest of us.
In the early 1970s, Mike, the alpha male leader of a pack of chimps in Tanzania, was reaching the end of his use-by date. As a result, this previously coherent pack of primates fractionated into two clans. The researchers who were studying them titled the two groups the Kasakela and the Kahama. I have no idea what those names mean.
The separation was not instantaneous. It took about eight months. Eventually, the Kahamas consisted of six grown males — Hugh, Charlie, Godi, De, Goliath and Sniff — along with three adult females and their associated offspring. The Kasakela retained eight adult males — Figan, Satan, Sherry, Evered, Rodolf, Jomeo, Mike and Humphrey — as well as a dozen females and their kids.
There was plenty of space. You might think that these two tribes of chimps, all descended from common progenitors, might just stake out some territory and live in harmony. Perhaps they’d host play dates for the little guys or engage in the occasional supper club among friends just to maintain the family ties. Nope, that’s not the way things went at all.
Over the next four years, the Kasakela clan engaged in an intentional and focused campaign of extermination against the Kahamas. Hugh and Charlie of the Kahamas also undertook deep penetration missions into Kasakela territory, sowing mayhem. They used all manner of improvised weapons in pursuit of their martial goals. Sharp stones were particularly in evidence.
This is Ham, the first primate in space. I’m not
sure he actually volunteered for that mission.
Details
Chimpanzees are fiercely territorial. During the course of the Gombe War, male chimps on both sides aggressively patrolled the periphery of their communities, raiding as the opportunities arose. Then, on January 7, 1974, things got seriously kinetic.
Six adult Kasakela males, along with one female named Gigi, ambushed Godi while he was out feeding and beat him to death. Then, they fell upon De, wounding him so severely that he succumbed in short order. After that was Goliath. Hugh followed soon thereafter. They then attacked and killed Charlie, followed by a female named Madam Bee.
In each case, the Kasakela chimps operated like a cohesive unit, systematically isolating their enemies so they could attack on favorable terms. Eventually, Sniff was the only remaining Kahama male. However, roughly a year later, a Kasakela war party encountered him alone and killed him as well. Along the way, the Kasakela murdered one female, ran two off, and kidnapped three who were brought back to Kahama lands as war booty.
Once the Kahama tribe was liquidated, the Kasakela moved in and seized their territory. However, other neighboring chimp clans were stronger and more numerous. In short order, the Kasakela were pushed back into their original boundaries.
Jane Goodall, the legendary chimpanzee expert, was on hand to document these events. In her memoir “Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe,” she wrote, “For several years, I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge.
Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind — Satan, cupping his hand below Sniff’s chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi’s prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé’s thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes.”
Ruminations
I wish the Russians would leave the Ukrainians alone. I’d also be happier if their Arab neighbors could just stop firing rockets into Israel. It would be nice, while we’re dreaming, if we Americans got along a little better, too. Then, I wouldn’t have to sit on a pistol every time I zip into town to pick up a gallon of milk. However, that’s just not the world we live in.
I carry a gun because people are bad. It turns out that chimps are born sinful as well. So are lemurs, frogs, tigers, elephants and bacteria. We push back against that darkness as best we can, but it also behooves us to be prepared. That’s why the founders included the Second Amendment right there after the First.
After reading about the Gombe Chimpanzee War, a Polish poet named Katarzyna Zechenter wrote “The First Civil War in Gombe 1974–1978.” In it, she said, “Still, I don’t understand, were these chimps so human, or are we such animals?” Indeed.
- Friends of Havana blame the U.S., but the Trump administration had to act before China turned the island into a military bastion.
- Declassified intelligence showed that Chinese signals-intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.
- “China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast.” — The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2023.
- President Donald Trump acted before the Chinese could base missiles in Cuba.
Cuban society, due to a U.S. naval embargo, is close to collapse.
Friends of Havana blame the U.S., but the Trump administration had to act before China turned the island into a military bastion.
America took control of Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, after the January 3 raid that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Then the U.S. stopped the flow of Venezuelan oil to the Cuban regime.
At the same time, the Trump administration, by threatening tariffs on oil suppliers, imposed a de facto oil embargo on Havana. The U.S. Navy has deterred vessels from unloading cargo in Cuba.
To get through the American picket line, tankers have been employing deceptive tactics. For instance, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, carrying gasoil, was falsely broadcasting that it was “not under command” and drifting in the Sargasso Sea for almost three weeks. In reality, the ship spoofed its location and probably unloaded 190,000 barrels in Cuba in the early part of this month.
A delivery from the Sea Horse, according to the Windward site, would be “the first confirmed arrival of a refined products cargo at the island since early January.”
As a result of the American actions, Cuba has almost run out of energy. The Cuban grid has collapsed three times so far this month, throwing the island into darkness.
“Why is the U.S. doing this?” asks Cambridge University’s Jostein Hauge on X, referring to the blockade on Cuba. “For no reason other than its dislike of the Cuban regime. Cuba poses no threat to the U.S.”
Really?
“China uses Cuba as a platform for many of its regional intelligence and security operations,” Joseph Humire, then executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told this author in 2021.
There is, most prominently, the Lourdes facility just west of Havana near Bejucal, once the Soviet Union’s largest listening station outside its borders. The Chinese are thought to have taken over the facility shortly after the fall of the USSR.
China now has more than just Lourdes. A December 2024 Center for Strategic & International Studies report identifies three more likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There is the Soviet-era Calabazar, and a second, Wajay, appears to have been built after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is also a new station, El Salao.
The CSIS report notes that unconfirmed accounts of China’s intelligence presence on the island began with the visit of China’s Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 1999.
The Chinese may have been operating listening posts in Cuba since 1993, R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College told Gatestone at the beginning of last year.
China and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2023, agreed in principle to establish a new listening site on Cuban soil. The Biden administration denied the report, but two days later declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals-intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.
Cuba is an ideal location to surveil America. “Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites.”
Moreover, Cuba is an ideal location for a Chinese military base. “China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast,” reported the Wall Street Journal in 2023.
China stated that the Wall Street Journal report was “totally mendacious and unfounded,” but it is nonetheless evident that China wants an enhanced facility on Cuba, just as it has established de facto military sites throughout Latin America.
Moreover, President Donald Trump acted before the Chinese could base missiles in Cuba.
So, whatever one thinks of the harsh consequences of the U.S. naval embargo — there is a worsening humanitarian crisis in Cuba now — the Havana regime, by allowing the Chinese to have the run of the island, does pose a threat to the United States.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
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Emily Perez
Emily Perez was a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army serving in Iraq who became the first female African-American officer in US military history to die in combat. After graduating from high school with honors, she entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. There she was an exemplary student and talented track star, becoming the highest-ranking African-American female cadet in the history of West Point. She was a Cadet Command Sargent Major.
Following graduation from West Point in 2005, she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 204th Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army.
Perez was deployed to Iraq in December as a Medical Service Corps officer. Perez was killed in action on September 12, 2006, while leading a convoy through Al Kifl, Iraq. She was killed when a makeshift bomb exploded near her Humvee during combat operations in Al Kifl, near Najaf.
Lieutenant Perez’s military awards include the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, and the Combat Action Badge. She posthumously received the NCAA Award of Valor in 2008. Her former unit honored her by naming a street “Emily’s Way” and a medical center the “Emily J.T. Perez Treatment Facility”. She is buried in West Point’s Cemetary. RIP Emily RIP.