Snapshots

This fall the Ruffed Grouse Society will partner with Waterfowler.com and apply the innovative technology behind the latter's online migration mapping project to offer daily updates on the progress of the woodcock migration. As with the Waterfowler.com migration map, field reports from RGS members and online users will provide data, reported by postal ZIP code, which will fuel the Global Information System-based mapping.

The accuracy and value of the mapping project will rely on the number and quality of the field reports filed. The input form asks users to gauge the observed activity level of migrating woodcock as either "light," "medium," "heavy" or "peak."

Users can report woodcock activity and see the migration map without becoming RGS members, but the full functions of the map as well as state-by-state reports and other features of the recently redesigned RGS Website (www.ruffedgrousesociety.org) are available only to members. Not surprisingly, you can become a member on the site.


This year the firearms that were built collaboratively by members of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild for the group's 22nd annual raffle are a pair of 7mm rifles. They are based on the card-playing theme of "A Pair of Sevens," and they will be presented with hard-sided travel cases and an elaborate display case coffee table on the same theme. The ACGG team wanted to highlight custom guns intended for the field, so they've subtitled the raffle prize "A Set of Using Rifles."

Each rifle is built from Mauser actions modified by Jim Dubell, with one chambered for 7mm Mauser and the other for 7mm Remington Magnum. The stockwork was done by David Christman and the engraving by Diane Scalese.

A total of 4,000 tickets at $20 each will be sold, and the winner will be drawn at the close of the Firearms Engravers & Gunmakers Exhibition, to be held January 26 to 28, 2007, at the Silver Legacy Casino, in Reno. For more information on the raffle or the exhibition, visit the Guild's Website at www.acgg.org.


California-based Safari Press has produced The Limited Edition Collection, 1985-2005, a 72-pages-thick glossy bibliography that is one part celebration of company history and one part catalog. Within it are all of the beautifully made and illustrated limited-edition hardcovers of the publisher's first 20 years, including series encompassing African Hunting, Big-Game Hunting, Sporting Firearms, Hunting at High Altitudes and Wingshooting.

The bibliography includes them all as a reference to Safari Press's accomplishments, though many of the original limited editions are out of print and so noted. Of special interest are SSM Contributing Editor Douglas Tate's signed editions of Birmingham Gunmakers and British Gun Engraving (sold out); Contributing Editor Michael McIntosh's and Jan Roosenburg's The Best of Holland & Holland (collector's item); Ed Muderlak's Parker Guns, the "Old Reliable"; Don Masters' The House of Churchill; and Marco Nobili's Fine European Gunmakers.

The Limited Edition Collection is available for $10 and is offered in the company's latest catalog or by contacting Safari Press, 800-451-4788; www.safaripress.com.

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