Ruger's critter gitters: meat for the pot oh boy, oh boy

Guns Magazine, Oct, 2005 by John Taffin

If these words from Robert Ruark, The Old Man and the Boy, don't make a body want to enjoy life more--or even again--by shooting .22s. I don't know what will. Robert Ruark could capture the spell of outdoors like no other writer before or since. We can all find some part of our life in the stories of Ruark growing up hunting, fishing and just learning about what life should be with his grandfather, The Old Man, in the pre-Depression years, the same years molding my mom and dad.

"Nother thing you ought to know," Pete said as we walked up to the tree, a big blue gum under which Jackie seemed to be going mad, 'is that when you're hunting for the pot you don't belong to make much more noise with guns than is necessary. You go booming off a shotgun, blim-blam, and you spook ever'thing in the neighborhood. A .22 don't make no more noise than a stick crackin', and agin' the wind you can't hear it more 'n 100 yards or thereabouts. Best meat gun in the world, a straight-shootin' .22, because it don't make no noise and don't spoil the meat. Look up yonder, on the fourth fork. There's your dinner. A big ol' fox squirrel, near-about black all over.'

"The squirrel was pasted to this side of the tree, Pete walked around, and the squirrel moved with him. When Pete was on the other side, making quite a lot of noise, the squirrel shifted back around my side. He was peeping at Pete, but his shoulders and back and hind legs were on my side. I raised the little .22 and plugged him between the shoulders. He came down like a sack rocks. Jackie made a dash for him, grabbed him by the back, shook him once and broke his spine, and sort of spit him out on the ground. The squirrel was dang near as big as Jackie.

"Pete and I hunted squirrels for an hour or so, and altogether we shot 10. Pete said that was enough for five people for a couple of meals, and there wasn't no sense to shootin' if the meat had to spoil, 'We'll have us some venison by tomorrow, anyways,' he said. 'One of us is bound to git one. You shot real nice with that little bitty gun,' he said. 'She'll go where you hold her, won't she?'

"I felt pretty good when I went into camp and The Old Man, Mr. Howard, and Tom looked up inquiringly. Pete and I started dragging fox squirrels out of our hunting coats, and 10 of them made quite a sizable pile. 'Who shot the squirrels?' The Old Man asked genially. 'The dog?'"

Got .22s?

This was many decades before Bill Ruger was building .22 pistols and rifles. If not, you could bet The Old Man probably would have made sure his grandson was shooting a Ruger .22. "They'll go where you hold 'em won't they?"

In 1949, Bill Ruger and his partner Alexander Sturm along with capital of $50,000 and a red barn for a factory began offering a semiautomatic .22 for $37.50. The first semiautomatic, the Standard Model Ruger Mark I, is known as a "Red Eagle," as it had the Ruger Red Eagle symbol in the grip panel. When Bill Ruger's partner died unexpectedly two years later, the Red Eagle became a Black Eagle and remained so until very recently. Now that both Bill Ruger and Alexander Sturm have passed on, the Red Eagle has been resurrected.

Safety First

Ruger has always been concerned with safety and this was reflected in the Mark II design as the safety was changed to allow the bolt to be operated with the safety on. My grandkids have all been trained with the Mark II and know if anything out of the ordinary happens or goes wrong while they are shooting, they are to immediately engage the safety. Solomon, regarded as the wisest man who ever lived, said train a child in the way he should go and when he is grown he will not depart from it. It pays to start the firearm training of kids early and correctly.

The Mark III

Ruger has now upgraded the .22 pistol once again with the Mark III. Beginning in 2004 after more than 3 million semiauto .22 Rugers had been produced, the third generation Rugers arrive. For the first time, Ruger's .22 semiauto pistol features a standard button-style magazine release on the left side in front of the grip panel instead of the lever at the bottom of the magazines as found on the previous Marks. The ejection port has been re-contoured to ease ejection of fired cases, the sights are changed slightly, and the bolt is even easier to operate. In their continuing campaign to make the .22 pistol as safe as possible, the Mark III has three new safety features, a loaded chamber indicator, an internal lock (get used to it--it is now standard on most firearms and is not likely to change in our lifetime) and a magazine disconnect to prevent firing the pistol when the magazine is not inserted. The first two are livable if not likeable, however the magazine disconnect makes a semiauto unusable if the magazine is lost. This is not very likely to happen but could in a wilderness situation.

The tested Mark III version is the stainless steel 5 1/2" Bull Barrel. It is also offered in blue steel as well as both blued and stainless versions with 6 7/8" barrels. The Mark III may have all new safety features, however it still has the standard Ruger profile and is a great shooting pistol as all "Marks" have been. The Mark III is offered in blued or stainless-steel with fully adjustable sights, drilled and tapped for a scope mount, which is included and also is designed to allow the use of iron sights with the base installed. Ruger has offered heavy barreled, scope-ready Hunter Models of the single action six-guns, the Super Blackhawk and Bisley Model .44 Magnums, and the Single-Six in both .22 LR/.22 Magnum, and .17 HMR. Now there is also a Hunter version of the Mark III, stainless-steel with an exceptionally good-looking fluted barrel.