Best BBQ ever!

I don't know if I've mentioned my friend Jon Bushaw before but back in 2017 when we ran the ICCC convention he cooked for the early arrivals dinner. I don't remember when we first met but it was at one of the cabin gatherings, 2015 maybe. Anyway Jon is an artist with a smoker, his attention to detail makes his product absolutely unrivaled. So I was super excited when Jon announced he was opening a food truck.

Located in Swanzy, NH Jon is setup in a big parking lot. I've never seen him not have a customer at the window. I usually have to wait a couple minutes when I arrive and theres always somebody waiting when I'm done. He tells me his signature brisket always sells out.

And the brisket is fantastic! Here with potatoes and coleslaw. His slaw has a little bit of heat to it, and unusual flavor thats really great.

For Christmas with my mother's family I asked Jon to do sirloin, there were actually two of these roasts. The meat just melted in your mouth, it was so good.

This was Valentine's day at our house, 3 servings of brisket to share.

Anyway, if you're in south western New Hampshire, south eastern Vermont or north central Massachusetts you owe it to yourself to go get some BBQ from Jon. Tell him Curt sent you!

Caplock Muzzle loading basics - Equipment

A recent question on Reddit made me think about the minimum gear required to get into muzzle loading. For the sake of this article I'm talking about traditional muzzleloaders shooting roundball in a caplock gun. Flintlock is nearly the same, and I'll cover that in the future.
Inline guns will be similar in most cases but with some significant differences.

This post will be broken into two parts:
Pretty much mandatory. These are the things I won't do without, they're required for shooting.
Nice to have. Things that are handy to have but you could get away without having, at least at first.


Pretty much mandatory:

#1. A copy of "The Black Powder Handbook" by Sam Fadala and read it.  This is the most important piece of advice I can give. The most important piece of equipment you have sits between your ears and you need to fill it with good information. I don't 100% agree with everything Sam says in the book but he's safe and thats the most important thing.

#2. Roundball: Generally speaking you'll buy roundball that is 0.010 undersized from the bore which would mean .440 for .45 cal, .490 for a .50 cal and .530 for .54 cal. There are exceptions, my .45 flintlock is too tight for .440 so I use .437 which allows for a thicker patch. You'll need to experiment a little to find out what works best in your gun.

#3. Shooting Patches: Cloth patches take up the space between the round ball and the rifling allowing the ball to engage the rifling and spin. 0.015" patching is probably the best starter size. As with roundball this will vary, you might end up with 0.010" or 0.018" for best accuracy in your gun.

I use mostly precut patches because I'm lazy, sheets of patch material are also available. My dad prefers to use uncut patches and cut as he loads.

#4. Patch lube: Bore Butter is easily available and works pretty well. Its not a replacement for gun oil, it doesn't prevent rust particularly well, its a patch lube, not metal protectant although the tube might claim otherwise.

#5. Caps: #10 or #11 percussion caps. Which you prefer will depend on the size of the nipple, this will vary by brand too. I find Remington #11 the ones I like best, Remington #10 are too tall for my capping tool.

#6. Powder: While sidelock guns will shoot the replacements like Pyrodex, it'll be happier with real black powder. Goexpowder.com lists suppliers.

Swiss commonly regarded as is the best powder you can get, I find it fouls less and some folks say it gives better power. I got mine from the Maine Powder House for the same price I was getting Goex at a gun shop. I bought the Triple 7 when I was shooting the inline gun. I've never tried it in a sidelock.

#7. Powder measure: I like the type with the funnel built in. It'll be graduated in 10 grain units which is plenty fine for most shooting.

The smaller one didn't have volume markings when I first got it, I had to check it against the other measure and mark them myself.

#8. Powder flask: There are a couple choices, I've written about this before: http://curtsotherblog.blogspot.com/2017/10/powder-flasks.html
Short answer, I like the CVA the best. It dispenses powder better than the Traditions. I haven't tried any of the more expensive replica ones yet. You don't need a flask, you could pour directly from the powder can into your measure but the flask makes life a whole lot easier.

Remember DON'T EVER pour directly from the flask into the barrel. If there were a hot ember in the barrel that made the powder ignite you'd have a big charge of power right in the danger zone. Always dispense from the flask into the powder measure and then pour into the barrel from the measure.

#9. Ball puller: This is like a screw that threads onto the end of your ramrod to remove a ball or bullet when you've forgotten to load powder or if the powder got wet. You WILL forget to load powder, don't go to the range without this. In accompaniment, if your ramrod is threaded at both ends TC sells a T-handle you can thread into one end, when pulling a ball the t-handle really helps. Otherwise you want a brass or aluminum range rod with a t-handle. Trust me on this one, I've been there...

The ball puller is also useful if you're worried that your powder might have gotten wet. If you look back at yesterday's story of hunting with my Renegade .54 I pulled the charge on the second to last day of the season and I'm glad I did, there was significant water in the barrel.
Once in awhile you'll get a patch stuck down the barrel, the threaded screw can grab that patch out too.

Nice to have:

#10. Capping tool: The capping tool helps putting caps on, especially if you've got big fingers. I consider this a requirement while hunting.

#11. Short starter: I don't carry one while hunting but they're handy on the range. Pretty much a requirement for target shooting where sometimes a mallet is required to start a tight bullet.

I have several sizes, the one on the left is .45/.50, the center is .54 and the right one is small and the rod is brass. I got it in a box of stuff I bought from a picker.

#12. TC #13 cleaner: Theres a lot of tribalism around cleaning, I generally start with hot soapy water and move on to a patch soaked in #13.

#13. Cleaning Jag: Swabbing is aided by having a brass jag in the appropriate size.

Usually the ramrod end will be flared enough that you don't really need a jag but that is not always true. I have a variety of sizes but I always find myself grabbing and not finding the right one. I buy more every year.

#14. Nipple Wrench: You don't need a nipple wrench per-say, I've removed many with just a small open ended wrench but they're handy, especially in the field. This one is a TC model. The topside has a threaded insert with a pin for cleaning nipples should you need to.

This tube type will rip right apart if you use it on a seriously stuck nipple. So if you're going to be working on old guns I'd suggest the short revolver type from vendors like Track of the Wolf.

I hope this list helps those of you just getting started. I'm thinking that this should be the first of a series of muzzle loading basics video. Drop a note and let me know what you'd like to read more about.

Deer hunting: lessons learned

So yesterday I talked about my 2019 success shooting ducks. Duck hunting for me is a pretty new thing going back maybe 3 years, as I mentioned I've been hunting for around 30 years now and the vast majority of my time in the woods will have been deer hunting. In those 30 years I had zero success. I'd seen a couple deer but never even pulled up on one. I did have the potential for a shot once but the deer was running directly away from me which is a lousy shot option.

So opening day 2019, snowing like crazy. This is first of December and very unusual for us. There was probably 4" on the ground when we first went out. I was hunting with a group of guys who drive deer and, as I had a doe permit and had never shot a deer before they were kind enough to give me a bunch of choice spots. So it was that after lunch I was stationed at the output to "The Dungeon". A dense section of woods alongside a highway. Buddy Ben called on the radio to say he was on a hot track and coming right for me. I stationed myself halfway up a hill, there were tracks in the valley and tracks on top. I figured from where I was I could adequately cover both.

I was wrong.

Three deer came blasting along the ridge. I pulled up on them but I was only maybe 10 yards away, I couldn't find them, even in the 4x scope on my Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun. Finally as the third deer came by I figured I'd better try. I got a good idea where she was and pulled the gun up again. This time all I could see in the scope was brown, I yanked the trigger.

By the time I put the gun down there was no deer. "Oh rats." I clambered up the hill just to be sure.

Well son of a gun...

The shot went in her behind which is normally a terrible shot but I'd gotten lucky and it had bounced forward making this a humane kill, it lasted maybe a minute after the shot. I'd gotten doubly lucky, if she'd taken another step she'd have gone off a cliff onto the highway...

We recovered the remains of the slug a few days later. Not much left considering it started out as an ounce of lead.

The last Saturday of the season I hunted with the same group of guys and Buddy Ben once again sent me deer. This is muzzleloader season, you might remember my Thompson Center Renegade. 

This time I was better prepared, pulled the gun up at maybe 20 yards and fired and the deer ran off. I'd cursed myself earlier in the day by saying I had hit 100% of the deer I had ever shot at. A few seconds later Zack fired too but his was a squib, we joke that the bullet just fell out of the barrel. Those were lucky deer that day.

Fast forward to the day before the last day of the season. 

I hunted this one plot pretty heavy, we still had snow and I could tell nobody else was going in there although they had hunted it real hard during shotgun season. Previously I'd had little luck but recently I had learned where the deer were traveling and headed toward that spot. I cut a fresh track and started following. The deer were moving between sections with oak trees, eating the acorns. I found myself in a little glade and looked up to realize there were deer everywhere. There were probably 7 or 8 deer in a 40 yard patch. I was hunting for antlers when they realized I was there and scattered. For the next 2 hours I chased 3 of them. The led me on a merry run but finally, with the sun setting I had to break it off.

That night I pulled the ball out of the rifle and found that snow had packed in on top and melted but interestingly hadn't gotten to the powder.

I attribute this to a good tight, lubricated patch making a good seal in the barrel. Buddy Ben puts a piece of tape over the barrel of his gun to prevent wet powder. I think the plastic wrapped bullets the inline guys use don't seal as well as a patched roundball.

Which brings us to the last day of the season. I'm back in that same area and cut another fresh track. Theres new snow so I know this track is from today. I follow it for awhile until I run across what I can only describe as a deer super highway. We're close to where I had seen the deer the day before and I'm presented with a conundrum.

Do I follow the track I've been following or change over to the super highway? As I stand there pondering two deer run up the hill and stand within 30 yards of me, probably closer to 20. I pull up the old Renegade and with Saturday's failure in my head I aim low, the rifle is sighted at 50 yards, the ball is still rising this close.

The roundball goes in through the ribs on the left side of her body, through both lungs, out the right side and kept on going. I don't want to hear that a .54 with 50 grains of powder is underloaded, if they had been lined up better I'd have gotten two deer that day and been in legal trouble...

So anyway with my success I got a lot of other learning, Buddy Ben helped me dress out the first deer, the second one I did myself. I got to help cut up 5 or 6 deer and then recently we had the annual "Sausage Party".

The party is what it sounds like, get together, grind up meat and make sausage. We had something like 150# of grinds to which we added around 40# of pork fat.

I was unprepared for the volume of sausage we made. Theres hot, Italian, breakfast, garlic and garlic parmesan. I brought home 27#, there were 2 extra packages of hot and I snagged one of them. Angie made meatballs with a package of the Italian and called it the best sausage she's ever had. I'm glad about that, I was worried we'd be stuck with a whole bunch she wouldn't eat.

In view of today's challenges I'm sure glad to know we've got a freezer full of sausage...

One for the hunters

Look, I know not everybody is into hunting, if you're not just pass on by this one. I don't do many hunting posts or talk about hunting very often. This is the first of a two part series so if you're anti-hunt you should probably skip tomorrow too.


I've hunted, off and on, for 30+ years now. I got my first hunting license when I was 13 which would have been 1989. My very first hunt I shot a rabbit which was the biggest accomplishment I'd have hunting for the next 10 years.

In 1999 I shot a moose but other than that I'd shot mostly squirrels and a few partridge. I'd started shooting squirrels a few years back because of spending a lot of hunting seasons shooting nothing and because the little pine squirrels (called red squirrels in Maine these are not the same big red squirrels you see outside of the northeast.) can be very destructive if they get into the camp.

2019 was the year I started to get serious about hunting, its the year that I realized a lot of what I thought I knew about hunting was wrong and the year I started to pay attention better. My success started at camp in October when I got my first duck. I won't show the picture, its too gross, I didn't get a clean kill and didn't know how to wring the duck's neck. My follow up shot made a mess of him but I still got the duck and we did eat it.

Mergansers are often called "fish ducks" because they eat fish and are reputed to taste like fish. I marinaded this one in Italian dressing for 3 days before grilling it. I probably should have pounded the meat to tenderize it a little but other than being a little tough it tasted fine.

Ben and I started hunting ducks together a few years ago before I had my gun license and I had no luck but 2019 was way better.

These are wood ducks, I shot the drake at the top, Ben got the other two. The two drakes and another hen he shot a different day are getting mounted. Wood ducks, often called "The gentleman of the marsh" are really beautiful and pretty delicious.
Interestingly wood ducks are named for what they eat.

Those acorns taken from the gullet of a wood duck.

My final score for waterfowl season was 2 ducks, the woodie and a mallard hen.

Other than the ducks we're having mounted the meat got slow cooked in the dutch oven.
I also scored 2 Canada geese. Geese are much tougher birds than ducks and require heavier shot. Both of the ones I shot needed to be shot twice because I'd had the gun loaded for ducks when I fired. I'll be more careful about that next season. The geese I shot are both at Ben's house waiting to be made into jerky.

I mentioned I learned a lot this year, one of my big lessons that I need to improve my sneak. I started learning this with the merganser. I found that if I could stay behind some weeds I could sneak up on them pretty easily. I also learned that I'm not a very good shot with the shotgun. This is a practice thing and I just need to spend a bunch more time shooting.

Up next: Deer season and more lessons learned.

ChowdaQ XII

Have I talked about ChowdaQ here? I don't see that I have, at least not in the last few years.

I started driving a diesel Mercedes full time back in the winter of 2003, that was my '83 240D "Hammie" that I bought in New Jersey and drove home. Thats a story in itself. Anyway to keep that car on the road I joined the email discussion list on MBZ.org. Back then our main parts supplier was Rusty and at some point Rusty held a customer appreciation BBQ that got nicknamed the RustyQ. Its worth noting that we often referred to Rusty as "Q" in homage to the character in the 007 films as Rusty was the man with the stuff. There were then a bunch of other BBQs, IowaQ, the OkieQ and probably some more I don't recall.

All that was far away from me in New England so I decided we should hold a Q. After much discussion it got nicknamed ChowdaQ. The first ChowdaQ was set for the fall of 2005 or so, I don't recall exactly. The plan was to get together in a park near my apartment and have burgers and whatnot. As is typical for me I really hadn't prepared and the day dawned rainy and gross so I shot of a quick note to cancel and we headed out for breakfast. I didn't spare it another thought but 2 guys did, separately and without seeing each other, show up. Fred, who ended up being a great friend, drove out from near Boston and another guy who never forgave me, came from Connecticut.

Anyway the idea of ChowdaQ then languished for a few years until I met Dwight. I'd taken a welding class in RI and he came out and took my friend and I to lunch. I think it was then that we rehashed the idea of ChowdaQ and without Dwight it certainly wouldn't happen. The first "modern" ChowdaQ was in 2008 and I've always referred to it as ChowdaQ I. The original abortive attempt gets the title of ChowdaQ 0, "the ChowdaQ that wasn't".

The MBZ email list is long gone, with Okiebenz taking over but the ChowdaQ lives on, "The last of the MBZ Qs."
September 2019 was our twelfth annual ChowdaQ. These days we've got a pattern pretty well established and a pretty good attendee list with some really cool cars. The site is Goddard State park in Warwick, RI. Robert Goddard was the father of modern rocketry, the park is the old family estate. Its a great place for a picnic.

I haven't had a Mercedes since we got Angie's Golf. This year my Jetta came incognito. Somehow I ended up with a whole bunch of MB hubcaps...

I think a lot of people come just for the food. Karen makes the Chowda. This is RI chowda, made with clear broth. I always take a picture so Wilton on the email

I cook in the dutch ovens with my old Coleman 413E, this year I did pork tenderloin, I watch the sales at the grocery store all summer for this. I aim for the meat to cook a minimum of 3 hours to ensure its nice and tender.

The last couple years we've done quahogs. If all you've ever had before at steamer clams these are so much better its crazy. These are "little neck" clams so they don't have the big neck like steamer clams do. They're buttery all by themselves and delightful when dipped in butter. 2019 was windy so Roy used his VW camp mobile as a wind break and we taught him how to cook quahogs.
Mary brings a ton of fruit and Fred brings salad so theres always something for everybody.

Kari is a potter and makes prizes that we give out.

At the end we pass around a hubcap for donations which, in the last couple years has paid for everything.

Anyway, if the good lord is willing and the creek don't rise you'll see us back in September for ChowdaQ XIII.

Back to the Philippines

Long time readers might remember that I went to the Philippines back in 2015. In August I went again. I was pleased to get the same flight schedule as last time but in the intervening years my employer has updated their policy so that flights of more than 6 hours allow us to book premium economy. I flew Japan Airlines (JAL) and, while I was impressed with them last time, the premium economy experience was even better.

Premium economy gets you lounge access but JAL doesn't have a lounge at BOS so you get entry to the British Airlines lounge which is pretty great. I had a bite to eat and a couple of glasses of wine which was lovely to relax me for the flight.

The seats in premium economy were like first class seats on domestic flights in the US. The seats weren't lay-flat but they laid out pretty good and included an eye mask and noise canceling headphones that, for being free, were pretty good. I even got a couple hours sleep which is unusual for me.

Our office is in Taguig which is part of metro Manila. We're in a big office building, the first 4 floors of which are a mall. For breakfast many of the mornings I opted for a taste of home:

If you're not from near-Canada you might not recognize Timmy's but its a Canadian staple. After a few breakfasts I actually switched to Starbucks, I did that for a couple reasons:
1. Starbucks would do coffee with no sweetener. I had a helluva time convincing the workers at Tim's that I didn't want sweetener in my iced coffee.
2. Starbucks has oatmeal. I can only eat so many egg sandwiches...

This cooky building is "SM Aura" and is actually a 6 story shopping mall. The end bit that goes up purportedly has dining facilities on top but I didn't go up there. Filipino's love their malls and I discovered that the part of the mall I was most interested was actually underground. So in this 6 story mall there are 4 stories up and 2 stories (plus the car park) underneath. There reason I like the below stories better is thats where the grocery store and the bookstore are. Its where the regular people shop. The stores up top are the same as we have in the US and just bore me to tears.

I did go to another mall I didn't get a picture of "Market Market" which is much more asian and clearly priced better because it was PACKED. They had a big outdoor section for fresh produce and then inside had market stalls. At one point I was wandering in market stalls and realized I'd gone into a bad place, there weren't many people and those that were there were staring at me. My technique in those situations is the old "Fake it until you make it", just plow on like I know what I'm doing and hope things get better on the other side. They usually do and they did this time.
I really wish I'd gotten a picture of "The American Store" which was what we would call a dollar store...

My favorite Manila restaurant is "Mary Grace" which is decorated like generic granny's house with (I guess) Filipino granny's food. This is beef tapa which is dried beef thats been rehydrated and is served with a sweet sauce. This was breakfast so it came with egg and, of course, rice. This was one of my favorite meals during my 2 week trip.

I went to several grocery stores and one of them had ice cream freezers at the beginning of the checkout lane. This one was coconut milk with chocolate in the center.

This is coffee with coffee jelly. If you've ever had boba this is similar.

The "jelly" is actually more like "jello" made with coffee.

This is gelato. I found a Gelateria which, considering our recent trip to Italy, was really nice.

Snacks! If I'm honest my favorite part of travel is buying snacks. Korean snacks are apparently really popular in the Philippines, the Pepero in the picture is Korean. Its a lot like Pocky but with a pretzel stick instead of short bread. I'm not prepared to say that I like one better than the other. :)

Speaking of snacks I ended the trip buying all the varieties of Kit-Kat I could find in the Tokyo airport. I think I ended up with 17 or 18 different kinds of Kit-Kat including:
Green tea, wasabi, hot pepper, banana, dark chocolate, melon and marscapone cheese, grape, peach, apple, and strawberry. The variety is amazing although I'll admit to liking some a lot more than others, the banana, for instance, I quite like.

Back to Rome

Our trip back to Rome really showed off how comfortable we had become traveling in Italy. First we tried to take a bus from the hotel to the pier but for reasons unexplained it never seemed to appear so we ended up in a taxi. Then a long wait for the ferry, at least the weather was nice so the ferry was very smooth.

Then an Italo rail trip from Naples to Rome. On our journeys in Italy we first rode Trenitalia, these are the green trains I mentioned before. They varied between the 1950s vintage train we took from Lamezia to Soverato, the fairly modern interurban train/trolley from Soverato to Reggio Calabria and the modern but slow and dirty Freccabianca from Reggio Calabria to Naples.

Italo rail is a whole different train company, these are the super modern red trains you'll see in most travelogs and they are vastly superior to Trenitalia. Faster, more comfortable, and they serve snacks like an airline does. 10/10, would ride again.

I don't have any pictures of the Rome subway but our second hotel in Rome (Hotel Tango) was near a subway stop so it was the easiest way to get there. The Roman subway is fantastic, easy to understand, clean, friendly. I apparently exude a "don't mess with me" vibe, as I've never ever been messed with on a subway. That was comforting as we had our bags and were obviously tourists.

Believe it or not this is the front door of our hotel. By this point we had gotten used to finding hotels by the little brass plate in the wall as an identifier. Opening this door was pretty hilarious using that big doorknob. Hotel Tango is actually a modern building inside of a much larger older building. We picked it because the rooms are all two stories which seemed cooler than it actually was. The inner building didn't have terrific sound insulation and the kids in the room next door to ours were a bit infuriating.

This is one part of the wall around Vatican City about 2 blocks from Hotel Tango which is another reason I had picked that hotel.

Look carefully in this shot and you'll find "The Godfather pigeon" who keep strolling around a restaurant we were eating in. He seemed very well behaved but the staff of the restaurant kept shooing him out in embarrassment.

I should have taken a picture of this pizza/calzone before we started eating it. As you may have heard pizzas in Italy don't come pre-cut, you end up just tearing it apart with your hands. This was half pizza, half calzone which is an idea was should totally bring to the US.

Angie scored us tickets to the Colosseum which is amazing. It starts with arriving off the subway at the Colosseo stop. As you exit the subway and your eyes adjust the Colosseum is right there across the street and its so big it amazes your eyes and it takes awhile to really sink in and for your brain to figure out what you're looking at...

 Our tickets included access inside to the underground portions. This is a reinvention of the elevator used to transport animals (like lions) from the underground portion to the floor of the Colosseum. Theres a NOVA documentary on the construction of this elevator which is worth seeing.

This is one of our guides, our tour package included a tour of the Roman Forum, a tour which we almost missed because we were busy filling our faces with more pizza. This part of the tour included the burial spot of Julius Caesar and the supposed birthplace of Romulus and Remus, the brothers who led to the founding of Rome. Having a tour guide was fantastic, both guides really added depth to our tour.

Angie in Vatican City. We didn't have time to tour the Vatican, this was the morning of our last day. We really needed another 2-3 days in Rome, probably at the outset of our trip, there is so much to see there.

Okay so looking back here are a couple pieces of advice:

1. Ignore most of the advice you see online, its ridiculous, specifically: Italians dress the same as you do, at least mostly. They wear jeans and sneakers, anybody saying otherwise hasn't spent any time in Italy or if they have they've only been in tour groups.

2. When going to a big attraction like the Coliseum get timed tickets. By that I mean get a ticket that has a specific start time. This will save you waiting through the miles long lines.

3. Naples to Sorrento has a local train but I couldn't find a way to buy tickets online. The ferry is difficult to get to in Naples traffic.

4. The Roman subway is terrific but you're limited in where it goes.

5. Not everybody in Rome speaks English but there are so many people that do that its rarely an issue. Everybody we met in Sorrento/Capri spoke excellent English.

5a. Few people in Soverato in the south spoke English but they all seemed excited to play the pantomime game. I think English speakers are fairly rare there and they were excited to see us.

In short if you're afraid of travel to Italy you shouldn't be, its easy. If we can do it you can do it too...