First, this little note was waiting for me, when I got home .. from a friend who sent it on Friday the 13th, also the date of the event described and they knew I had gone south the day before and planned to be in the field in the 13th with RBL #13 ..
"THIS IS A FIRE RAINBOW - THE RAREST OF ALL NATURALLY OCCURRING
ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA.
THE PICTURE WAS CAPTURED THIS WEEK ON THE IDAHO/WASHINGTON BORDER .. THE EVENT LASTED ABOUT 1 HOUR.
[sorry, pic not attached, tw]
CLOUDS HAVE TO BE CIRRUS, AT LEAST 20K FEET IN THE AIR, WITH JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF ICE CRYSTALS AND THE SUN HAS TO HIT THE CLOUDS AT PRECISELY 58 DEGREES."
What they had no way of knowing was that the same afternoon in the field outside a little town called Neuveo Helvencia in Uruguay where we got in a bit of late afternoon sport I was able to witness two fire rainbows roughly twenty minutes apart (!!) and both were only witnessed by one other person in our group & some of our bird boys because only the two of us were in the necessary position for the refraction to be seen and all of the others were positioned back in the verdant foliage adjacent to the river bank and the sunset while sorta visible to them did not allow the special event to be viewed by them at all. Each lasted about ten minutes. It was spectacular and it was vertical rather than horizontal as was depicted in the not attached pic. It was to the N. of the sun by about perhaps 10 degrees which also meant that looking at it screwed your shooting up big time because of the temporary 'sun spot blindness'. Who cares? I thot it worth the price of admission all by itself and anyway I got in a five box shoot before the day waned completely. Our connecting flight from Buenos Aries to Montevideo was delayed by two hours and then one of the guy's luggage did not arrive in Montevideo with us from B. A., so that sorta screwed the original timetable for the first afternoon's shoot. Honestly, not a big deal. A pretty serious nasty weather system was departing that afternoon and it was quite pretty when we got to Neuevo Helvencia w/cirrus clouds coming in high, the old system's dark back departing and the sun lowering. Aside from the great sport afforded in Uruguay, they have skies & sunsets reminiscent of the S/W US or W. TX, but the hues are dif & deeper purples and magentas and greens are frequently visible, often spectacular, and they give the term 'BIG SKIES' a whole new meaning. These are their winter skies and the weather systems can be and sometimes are severe, but the post storm quality of light can at times simply defy description. We had strong winds most of the time. Makes for dove & pigeon shooting supreme, if you challenge the ones in following winds only and/or try the ones who take a 90 degree turn into the following winds and both jink and accelerate like a AA fuel dragster away from you. Big skies & big winds require big leads, [somewhere between a Suburban ~ a Greyhound bus] .. if you intend to connect. Mixed pigeons where we were, but not so many & teal & corn ducks near the water or rivers when we were shooting in those areas.
I ran 107 boxes of shells thru the RBL w/o a single misfire or hint of a problem. Shot Argentine made ACTIVE's, the plastic rimmed stuff w/steel insert in rim that we used to see here, that first afternoon. They were 25 grams of #7.5's. They seemed fine, no issues except shot size. I then switched to Argentine made Fiocchi #7's, also 25 grams and used them exclusively for the duration of the trip. Interestingly, none of the European Browning 425 20's that several of us purchased thru Litt specifically to take south for dove shooting several years earlier would shoot these Fiocchi's our outfitter had with 100% consistency from their lower bbls. I had to switch to shoot the upper bbl. first in mine & then they would function most of the time from the second bbl. afterwards, but still not at 100%. Most of the others switched to Federal 'Heavy Field Loads' 1oz. US made ammo in their 20ga. 425's & it worked 100% of the time from the bottom bbl. I suspect it had to do with the die adjustment at the ammo factory in Cordoba being set to squish the rim thickness about 3~5 RCH's short of the requisite minimum thickness. Most thought that they burned dirty too, but so what? Those #7's are good pellets and they work just fine, taking down any and all birds that one is entitled to, even at stupid distances. Luck & pellet size are both necessary for the really stupid stuff, ya know & #7.5's just won't get the job done 100% of the time at that game. 1oz loads of smaller shot only thump you more. The RBL only weighs 6# 4oz. and it works perfectly for low gun, point & shoot use. With no pad of any sort, the 25gram loads are plenty on the receiving end after the first few boxes, trust me. I cannot shoot the gun well pre-mounted at all and I can also honestly say that to do the same amount of shooting with it using 1oz loads would be serious self abuse, well beyond my tolerance level. But to use it for gun down, bring it up and fire use w/the 25 gram loads, it is just death on the intended target and does not kill the shooter either, though it is probably at the threshold of minimum acceptable weight for much hot corner use. I don't use a PAST pad or recoil absorbing jacket pad, rather I wear a layered approach of clothing and come out of all that is not necessary to be comfortable ASAP. This trip, it meant a rain coat/outer jacket, sweatshirt under that, polypropylene long handles under that, cotton T-shirt under that. Early, start with all of it & by after lunch be shooting jacketless in the sweat shirt and then putting the jacket back on, later. It was 28F in the morns, rained at night some, frost on the ground early each day. Shot the 425 not that much except exclusively on the last morning for some really high flyers in the winds and ran a total of another 20 something boxes thru it. Mostly wanted to give the RBL a real workout & did that. No bruises received, but did find that the butt would slip out on the bicep on some right to left screamers, if I forgot to change my footing position. Got a nice several thumps in the wrong place from that. Think that I shall fabricate a replacement pad for the hard plastic one on it now for any future use of a similar nature, I'm not at all inclined to cut it's stock. Perhaps one made from a 1/4" piece of red rubber or Sorbothane glued to a thin metal or plastic plate. Its a thot. Actually a piece of 3M swimming pool tape would have probably been sufficient to stop the side-slip on my poor footing shots altogether, but I just didn't think of it when I was packing.
FWIW, I screwed in the IM & F chokes in the RBL and left the rest of the stuff at home, inclusive of the choke wrench, case, etc. A Bore Snake, a chamber brush & handle and ancilliary cleaning items & lubricants all fit in a quart size zip lock plastic bag that packs easily to the field. The chokes loosed just a bit after much shooting each day and I whittled what you might term the handle of a slingshot ['catapult' to our Brit friends] to the appropriate dia. and used that as my choke wrench. I also found that it was much easier to load the gun and shoot it as a single, selecting either bbl., than it was to shoot both bbl's. When you are doing a lot of shooting some of those nuances can become quite noticable.
Saddens me that I can't copy the Wise man on this one, but he's probably getting better sport where he is now anyway. I thot of feathers & stuff for his mojo bag & I thot of him in particular when nature lifted her skirt showing a fire rainbow, twice. Yet but another reason man assigns gender to nature, you think?
