About all that I got accomplished before the November portion of the Missouri Firearms Deer Season was getting Thunder Beast together. With my house remodeling project going on I did not get to do any work on stands or hunting locations like I had planned.
Last weekend I got a few hours to work on my stand location on the Southwest corner of the property. Armed with my Stihl Chainsaw, Polarus Ranger, and my old John Deere Tractor I went to work. I have a valley on the North side of this stand that has a lot of deer traffic going East/West up and down the valley floor. We have a road from Andrews food plot location running down the valley through the woods to a second road that runs North/South. My problem has been that the only place open enough to shoot has been when the deer are crossing this single track road. As brushy as it is I normally do not spot the deer in time to set up a shot.
Last Saturday I went to work curing this problem. I chainsawed down numerous trees, cutting most into firewood as I went, and used the tractor to move the remaining tree tops to a dozer pile for later burning. I also took out 5 smaller trees that were close to the stand limiting my field of fire. Sunday I was back after Church and finished up. I left the large trees up, and just cleaned up smaller trees and brush. The end result is now I have about 70 feet that I can set up a shot in instead of 12.

On Saturday 1 December after the Steel Pistol Match I rounded my brother up and changed out the doublewide ladder stand at that location. The one at that location was one of my first generation stands with a plywood top that attached to the existing stand structure only. It was not wide enough on the sides. The Second Generation Stand has extra tubing welded around it allowing me to extend the plywood top out wider on each side. A big improvement. It probably took us a couple hours or so to change the stands out, and get all the camo back around the new one. I also transferred the drink holder from the old stand to the new one. The drink holder is a 3" Schedule 40 Coupling with a slotted drain cap added so it does not collect water. I have it zip tied to vertical tubing on the side of the stand frame. This works great to hold a water bottle so you can minimize movement when getting a drink.
By dark last night the new stand was installed, and looked just like it had before after reusing the camo netting that was around the old stand.

Now when I get time I will be cutting tubing to convert the old stand to a Third Generation with more counter top to the front. We have 4 double wide stands at this time. Two have the Tubing added, and two still need the tubing added to them. One of them is a newer Wal-Mart double wide that only clamps to the tree in one spot. It will be getting remodeled to lock to the tree in two locations like the older stands before putting it up for use.

My last project is getting the 3 Gill Muzzle Breaks I just purchased installed on my 35 Bullberry and 357 Maximum Contender barrels. I am planning on using the 35 Bullberry for the December alternate weapons season. The Muzzle Brakes on my 7.62X53R and 260 Remington Encore barrels has spoiled me.

Bob R

Sounds productive! I would be interested in seeing a pic of the stand modification if you were willing to share.

karl I will try and get some pictures if the Sun ever shines.

I have my 35 Bullberry and 357 Maximum Contender barrels threaded, and I should have my Three Gill Muzzle Brake's back Cerakoted "Flat Black" Monday. I will hold off doing a final sighting in on the 35 Bullberry until I get the Muzzle Brake installed.
I got to see the machine work done on the barrels. That was more involved than I would have thought. The timing was all done on the muzzle brake. The brakes have three holes sizes in them. The middle chamber's hole is bigger than the hole into the front chamber. The gas blasts directly into the back chamber. The larger than bullet hole size hole into the middle chamber lets gas also blast into it around the bullet, The slightly smaller hole going into the front chamber also lets gas blast into it around the bullet. The hole in the muzzle is smaller yet keeping most of the gas going out the ports. The gas blasting rearward from the gills cuts recoil, the row of holes on the top keeps the muzzle down. The result of the progressively smaller hole sizes going through the brake is that you are using all 3 ports a lot more efficiently.

I looked over a muzzle brake on a high end specialty pistol a while back. They did not go through all the steps above to custom tailor it to the bore size being used. Looked like a generic screw it on everything under 7mm and just time it fit. You could tell a difference when you pulled the trigger on it also. With custom fitting it would have worked much better.

I will still need to clean up the screws, apply some Blue Loc Tite to them, get the scope base back on, and the 2-7 Burris remounted.

It will be interesting to see just how well the muzzle brake works on the 357 Maximum. I am sure the wife will like it much better with the brake.

Bob R