Knife Review: CRKT M4 Stag

Santa Clause brought me a great little knife that I've been meaning to blog about.  It's the M4 Stag made by Columbia River Knife & Tool (CRKT).  It's a really well made, great looking, handy little knife, that retails for under $50 online.   The blade is spring-assisted (if you can get your thumb under the thumb studs on the sides of the blade) which makes for quick one-handed opening.  One-handed opening took me a little practice, and some tootling from my knife-nut of a little brother.  But, when you get your thumb under the stud and pry outwards, the blade quickly flies out and locks with a satisfying snap.  The handle is made of stag (antler) which I really love and the steel (8Cr13MoV) is a Chinese made stainless.  A little web research tells me that this grade of steel is typically used in budget knife lines of quality knife manufacturers.  I'll have to report back, after I get more use out of this knife to let you know how well it holds and edge.   Dimensionally speaking, it's what I'd consider the perfect size.  Closed, it is 3.75" long.  Open, it is 7" long.  The blade is 3.25" long and slightly less than 1/8" thick.

One really cool thing about this knife is that, in addition to a locking liner, which you push to the side to close the knife, it also features what CRKT calls their LAWKS manual safety system.  Shown above, this manual safety system is a simple physical lock that prevents the locking liner from disengaging.  This is a neat little feature that comes at no expense to the operation of  aesthetics of this knife.

I have but one gripe about this knife; while it sits comfortably, clipped in a pants pocket, it is very uncomfortable when you try to fish other items out of that pocket.  The stainless steel bolsters, though attractive, flare to a jagged point which catches the back of the hand when digging into the pocket. However, overall, the knife feels great in the hand and will be great for cleaning squirrels and other critters taken in the field.

New Rail Grip for my AR

While I was visiting my little brother, down in at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, I picked up a much needed piece of equipment for my AR-15.  Because my Mossberg is a flat-top, I needed to raise my scope much higher off the receiver than is typical with rifles. The piece I needed is called a "rail grip".  It simply raises your top rail by about an inch so that when you shoulder the rifle, the scope aligns comfortably with your eye.  Without a rail grip, you're left to using ridiculously tall scope rings, that just look silly.  One of the tactical gun shops that my brother took me to last weekend has the rail grip I needed for a mere $15.  Now I am finally ready to get this rifle to the range!  (If only this cold weather would break)

Rabbit hunting - Patuxent River State Park

I got out hunting this morning, despite strong winds and temperatures just barely reaching up into the twenties.  I had been meaning to check out some of the swamp lands and field areas in Patuxent River State Park.  Rabbit hunting is something I really miss from my upbringing in upstate New York.  There, cottontail rabbits were abundant.  My buddy, Pat, and I used to hunt them on his father's land with his dog, and it was not uncommon for us to bag seven or eight within a couple of hours (His Beagle slurping up the gut piles as quick as we cleaned them - that always used to gross me out).  Here, in Maryland, its a different story.  We have so many foxes that take care of the rabbits on their own.  They leave very few for the small game hunter.  I usually see a red fox, at least, every other week.   Nevertheless, I did enjoy getting out with my Winchester, Model 12.  It's my favorite pump-action shotgun to carry.  Based on its serial number, mine was made in 1954.  It's a beautiful little 20 gauge; gifted to me from my father many years ago.  Thanks dad!

Although I saw many rabbit tracks, I also saw a whole lot more fox tracks.  Fox tracks are very easy to identify, because their feet fall, very nearly, in a straight line.  This is why they appear to lope along, when you see them crossing fields.  I recall my father explaining this to me as a young boy, as we knelt in the snow, examining tracks, high on a ridge in Deerfield Ravine.  Each hedge row that I poked along, exhibited a set of fox tracks that dipped in and out of the briers. Among the fox tracks were also evidence of the many small birds that I pushed along the hedges.  Their wings made small serrations into the snow where they swooped in and out of their feeding areas to pick at seed pods in the birdox.  Although I couldn't get a photo, I was pretty excited to see my first Oriels.  They're a beautiful bird.

I, of course, stopped to take a few obligatory pictures of my Model 12.  There is something so intrinsically beautiful about the wear of a well used rifle or shotgun; when the blued steel is worn to a silvery grey patina at the areas most find comfortable to hold the gun.  As my father always says:  "If these guns could talk, what a story they could tell."  I bet.  I like to think that some of the stories would be those of my father and I knocking partridge out of the sky when I was much younger.

One of the things I like most about hunting, is finding old/odd things.  Be it, glass bottles, turtle shells, antlers, or the ruins of an old farm house.  Today, I found an old tin shack.  I don't know what this shack was used for, but it did have electricity run to it.  Perhaps it was a hen house.  Maybe a bee house?  Not far from this shack, was an old stone foundation wall, from a barn.  And near to that, the remains an old farm house, with a foundation and tall chimneys as the only evidence of what once was.  

Boppin' around Camp Lejeune

Well, Pat took me over to New River Airbase and showed me some of the toys he gets to play with.  The truck pictured below is a P-19, its a Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting (ARFF) truck.  It holds 1000 gallons of water and 300 gallons of foam.  It weighs 24,600 lbs.  ... and  according to Pat, it's not fun to drive.  Apparently it's quite old.  This one was made in 1985.  I think it's pretty awesom looking!

We hit a couple cool gun shops in the area, visited the Marine Corps Exchange (MCX) and headed back home to grill up some burgers in the back yard.  Pat's quite the grill master, and he cooks with charcoal; what a purist.

Catching up

I made it down to my brother's place in a little under seven hours. I enjoyed the drive and the transition of the geography. There is quite a difference in topography between Maryland and North Carolina, it was interesting to watch it change from behind the wheel. I saw a lot of neat sites and wished I had the to stop and explore/take pictures. I did stop once to take a quick picture of an old, rusted out car, sinking into the ground, wrapped in the rays of the setting sun, but quickly hopped back in the truck when a van pulled over to watch me. Yikes.

It was great to finally see Pat and his lovely wife, Alyse again. It has been nearly two years, and we had a lot of catching up to do. Pat's buddy, Connor came over and it was a lot of fun listening to these two marines tell their stories and jokes. I brought down a couple cases of National Bohemian beer for Pat, and I think we nearly polished off a whole case last night. Good times. Today Pat's going to give me the nickle tour of Camp Lejeune and then we'll check out some tactical gun shops and hopefully get some mountain biking in. 

"Road Trip!"

This morning I'm driving down to Jacksonville, NC to visit my little brother.  Patrick is a Corporal in the Marine Corp stationed on Camp Lejeune at the New River Air Station.  I haven't seen him since he finished boot camp a couple years ago. This trip just, kind of, formulated out of thin air last night as I sat on the couch texting back and forth with him.  I'm off on Monday and so is he, so it works out perfectly.  I've just got to throw a mountain bike in the back of the Tacoma, fill up, and hit the road.  Can't wait to catch up with Pat, take a bunch of pictures of him and hopefully, get some riding in; just like we used to years ago.

Enough chitter chatter, time to hit the road.  Google Maps is telling me it'll take six and a half hours to get there!

Test

Just a test.  As you can see, I'm in the process of overhauling the template I use for my blog.  Bear with me! 
Mike

Photo bombing my blog today...

Day two of mobile blogging in DC

Like the title says, today is day two of my mobile blogging venture in northwest DC.  My company has sent me downtown for a couple days of training and as such I've packed my mobile set up with me: GX-1 camera, ipad & SD card reader.  It's a decent set up.  I use the photogene app to process my raw images and convert them to jpg.  Then I use my Blogger app to actually write my post, insert the images and publish the blog post.  However, I do loose a lot of creative control using the Blogger app.  The biggest drawback to using the app, in my opinion, is not being able to edit the HTML to resize and position my images in a pleasing way.   Typically, when I blog, I arrange the images much the way I would if they were on display in a gallery (Not that my images of bloody dead squirrels would be drawing the masses for a viewing - well, maybe?!).  But using the Blogger app limits you to stacking images on top of each other.  Although I must give the Blogger app developers a thumbs up for finally allowing more than one image to be inserted in a blog post.  As a photoblogger, that was very frustrating.

As I draft this post, it's 7:30am and I'm sitting on a 4000 series railcar, riding the green line from Greenbelt, down to the Gallery Place Metro station where I'll get off and walk about six blocks to my training center, down F Street in NW DC.  The subway ride is mostly underground so I'm saving this draft to publish when I get top-side.  I'm going to include just one photo in this post.  And let this post serve as a precursor to the photos I will post throughout the day.  The snapshots I'll take on the street on my walk to class.  The architectural photos I'll take during my lunch hour.  Perhaps the subway scenes I'll capture on the way back to the Greenbelt Metro Station.  Stay tuned for a tower of today's images in the following post.