Book Review: Under Orion

I didn't meet Jeff Quinn.

When the NRAAM (the National Rifle Associations Annual Meeting) in 2014 was in Indianapolis I came walking out of the convention hall looking for a cup of coffee and a place to sit. I found the first and was stuck leaning against the wall as no chair was to be found. Left alone long enough to stand around and do nothing the old bodyguard in me comes out and I start people watching, and to be real honest the NRA convention makes for pretty good people watching.

At some point and time I saw Jeff and Boge Quinn step off an escalator and I pushed off the wall to go and introduce myself and chat for a moment. As I recall, Jeff was carrying a microphone and Boge a camera and they started setting up to record a piece. As soon as I saw this I decided against, as not to interrupt a couple of guys working, the problem was having pushed off the wall and I was now committed in my head that I was going to talk to the now occupied Quinn brothers. So there I was standing away from an otherwise decent wall to lean against with no one to talk to.

It just so happened that I looked up at the top of the escalators and saw Richard Mann leaning against a rail watching the world go by. Earlier in the day I had the opportunity to meet him in person, while having a ham sandwich and talking with Ed Friedman and Jay Grazio (I'm just going with the name dropping at this point. Stick with me it might get better). We had exchanged pleasantries and then Richard went on to talk with Ed about how he could wound animals with a .223 or something.

Now he was standing all alone minding his own business with a posture that said clearly "Leave me alone I've had enough of people today".

"Perfect!" I thought "I'll go talk to him."

Ordinarily I'd leave another man alone but I had always enjoyed his writings and he looked kind of old and tired standing up there and I thought "Well Jeff Cooper died before I could meet and talk with him. I'd better risk it".

Fortunately for me Richard didn't throw me over the rail and we spoke for a few minutes and he gave me some advice here and there on writing and then we parted ways.

Last year he self-published a book called "Under Orion: Hunting Stories from Appalachia to Africa" and a couple of weeks back I ordered a copy for myself from Amazon.

Unexpectedly, I finished it tonight. It had not been my plan, which was to do some reading from Morton Hunt's "The Story of Psychology". Richard's book happen to be on top and I could see I was getting near the end and I was trying to preserve it just a little longer but, then I opened it up to the dog eared cornered page that was titled "I don't believe in ghosts". Had it been only titled and been devoid of any photos I might have been able to resist. The problem was, there was a photo near the bottom and it was of Finn Aargaard.

As a gun obsessed teenager I loved anything Finn Aargaard wrote and, when he passed away in 2000 it struck a real cord with me at the time because his death made real to me that the last of the great gun writers were starting leave us.  Gary Sitton would go in 2005 and Jeff Cooper in 2006. As much respect and admiration I had for the late Colonel Cooper and everything he did for modern hand-gunning, Finn Aargard's death, to me at the least, ended the golden age of gun writing.

He was my generation's combination of Townsend Whelen  and Frederick Selous. So it didn't take much persuasion to disregard Hunt's book of psychology for Richard's brief moment shooting Finn's well known Model 70 in .375 H&H.

Then twenty pages later it was done. I had finished Under Orion.

In this age where 90% of the gun writers are not really gunmen and not even really writers, Richard Mann is both. And he writes in the way the old timers did. His own.

What makes Under Orion so worth while is that, it's not a chronologically written autobiography of Richard's hunting life nor a book that is page after page of "So I got me another trophy animal after the last trophy animal and I wasn't even...."

Instead it's about the triumphs and sorrows and at times hilarious moments any man or woman who has ever loved to hunt and had the chance to do it enough experiences, with a little bit of the West Virginia Hillbilly waxing poetic about wool collars and cold breezes. Which you may roll your eyes and think that part unimportant but, for those of us who have in fact buried ourselves a little lower into a wool collared hunting jacket on a cold morning watching the sun break the woods orange and the squirrels make as much racket as a city street the poetry and motion of life in the woods matters.

The title of course refers to the constellation known as Orion which is the best constellation because it belongs to the hunter. When I see him, Orion, up in the night sky I am taken back to my formative years deer hunting with my dad and my first real rifle, a Remington 788 in .243 Winchester. I'm huddled in an old wooded tree stand hours before sun up watching Orion through the pines. Crossing an early morning field with a buddy, or in the San Juan mountains north of Durango.

Perhaps most of all Under Orion is a book that gets it. And by it I mean how the small things in life matter so dearly much. The value of good friends, smart dogs, beautiful country, the smell of early mornings and good rifles.

Two Presidents, Two women and a .45

Tonight in a "town hall" meeting President Obama told a woman who survived a rape and was now pro-gun that she may not have been able to use a gun to thwart the assault on her and that it may not really make her any safer.

The real war on women continues as the men of the Left continue to see women as helpless, weak and their role best left to being a victim, while not offering any answers, encouragement nor decisive statement where he could have said "I'm only sorry you didn't shoot the son of a bitch."

Because that is what he should have said.

Yet there was a time when Presidents were different, even before they became President.

On a hot autumn night back in 1933 Melba King was walking to her home in Des Moines, Iowa after being at nursing school when she felt a gun pressed into her back and a man demanding all of her money and one wonders possibly what else.

But it was never to be known, because out of the dark came a voice from above.

"Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders!"

And there, two stories above, leaning out of his apartment window with a .forty-five revolver was a young sports reporter named... Ronald Reagan.

The robber didn't debate, he didn't threaten, he didn't shoot instead he fled back into the night from which he had came. Reagan told the young Ms. King to stay put long enough for him to put on his robe and slippers so he could escort her home...no doubt the .45 concealed in a pocket.

Some fifty years would pass before Reagan would see Ms. King again. In 1984 at a Republican campaign event then Governor Terry Branstad had heard of the story, and invited her to the event where Ronnie was going to be in attendance.

In true Reagan fashion when the story was told, remarked to the crowd "The gun was empty! I didn't have any cartridges! If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him." laughing at himself.
However, when the reporters asked Ms. King for a comment about that night she responded with "And he said 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you between the shoulders.".

Martin Luther King junior once famously made a remark about not judging someone by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character.

He was of course right.

Should you...

In his book "Never Give In!" Winston S. Churchill, the grandson to, well...Churchill related a story in the preface. Here he describes that his mother was just twenty years old and about six months pregnant with him in the early summer of 1940. The British had fallen back from Dunkirk, retreating across the English Channel, France was falling to German occupation and Hitler was preparing for Operation "Sealion", which was his codeword for the invasion of England.

One evening, before the air raid sirens would begin, sending the family to the basement they sat at dinner and Churchill's daughter related how he was brooding at the dinner table. Buried in thought. At some point he ended his silence and said:

"If the Hun comes, I am counting on each one of you to take one with you before you go!", "But Papa" his daughter exclaimed, "I don't have a gun and, even if I did, I would not know how to use it." "But, my dear," Churchill said, his voice increasing in power and fist held high, "You can go tot the kitchen and grab a carving knife!"

This was Churchill at the core.

In the aftermath of the ISIS attack on San Bernandino there is much being said about a lot of things from the politicos...and most everyone else. Like everyone else I have my feelings on each bit of it.

Contrary to what you may think, if you have read me here for any matter of time, I am at my core a sincere man of peace. I believe in the right of the individual to live their life as they see fit and to believe as they choose as long as they bring no harm to another. It's my belief that violence is an answer best saved as an absolute last resort.  If for no other reason, violence has the inherent issue of affecting the lives of people not directly involved.

Yet, as much as I believe in living peaceable I do not by contrast believe that anyone should live under willful naivety.

We, the world, are in a war with the Huns, just as Europe was with Germany. Only our enemy is far more opaque. There is no uniform, no central power, no "one man" as it was with Hitler. And while we live in a post 1945 world where we know that outcome, once upon a time, such was not the case.

Much like the politicos are weighing in, so are many in the defense community. And they do so with understandable reasons, my inbox is well flooded at this point with so many questions from enough people that it would be time consuming to respond to them all.

So here is my advice.

Should you meet with a person bent on a campaign of terror, intending to murder their fellow men and women, to leave behind a swath of widows, widowers and orphans, to grieve families and nations alike. Do the reasonable thing.

Kill them.

Little bores for bigger roles

It's not my standard Modus operandi to link other articles (okay except for the ones I write elsewhere for other people) but, I thought I would share this one.

The plinker went to war The IDFs Ruger 10 22

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I had penned something along the same vein . To be honest on any given day I can be accused of being a Caliberist, I am of the old school thought that I like a large bore pistol when I can have it, and fortunately I can have it on a daily basis.

That said there is also a real need for diversity in the civilian defensive tool box and sometimes we all (self-included) can fall into the pit of latest and greatest buy-me-now craze. Fact is most of us are already pretty well geared up more than we know and the money desired to be spent on a new gun could be better served in buying spare mags and getting to the range.

While we all in the gun culture or defense community have our pet peeves and prejudices, whether it's AK vs AR, Steel vs Tupperwear....I mean plastic, the .22 LR and specifically the .22 long gun very much has a place in your kit.

Perhaps...

What we should stop doing in the wake of any attack from anyone is listening to the "talking" points of academics, politicians, or psychologists who have no real world experience in most anything let alone contending with dangerous armed men bent of committing evil. And instead listen to dangerous, armed men who are committed to preserving society.

Gear Review: CRKT Otanashi Noh Ken

Life often involves more adapting to it than getting what you want out of it. Travel the world in any small capacity and you learn this somewhat rather quickly. Back when the Afghanistan and Iraq military campaigns were going on strong and Blackwater held a very significant presence there was a common misconception that if you were in the private contractor trade and could pay enough graff that you could travel large portions of the world armed. In some cases it was and is true but by large margin it was not.

When I first started in the executive protection game two decades ago it was surprising how often that work would not involve carrying a gun of any kind. Back then (and still now) in many parts the globe and the U.S. as well conceal carry laws were fewer and reciprocity was essentially unheard of.

The common and predominate thought becomes "How do you bodyguard without a gun?". You just do, liking it has no part in the equation if you are going to go about it. Professionals do it all over the world everyday. For me in these days of late not all work travel is protection. There have been critical extractions, K&Rs negotiations, and intelligence gathering operations for any number of reasons and clients.

On a somewhat now infamous job Central America I had to surrender a Beretta Bobcat for various reasons and was left with being armed with a knife and a collapsible baton. In the ensuing days and nights having a gun of any caliber would have been nice but as the man once said, "wish in one hand...."

Sometime after that I was preparing to go overseas into Pakistan, then India carrying a gun was almost possible right up until it was not. CRKT had just come out with the Hissatsu, this being the original fixed blade model. For me and at that time, it was exactly the knife I needed and wanted. It was slim, trim and a straight up fighting knife and not am over sized wilderness survival knife. The only caveat I had with the knife is that I've never been crazy about the sheath for it. Someday someone will have to explain to me how knife makers can come up with brilliant knife designs, be willing to charge a premium, then do such an incredibly  bad job at sheath design when it comes to either practical carry or for that matter discreet carry.

Eventually I was able to work it out a couple of solid carry methods with for it. One being inverted under my shirt, carried under my arm pit via what essentially was a paracord shoulder cord rig. This worked well for riding in a vehicle for hours at a stretch. The other was an in-the-waistband cross draw, another hung inverted down the small of my back.

The knife did in fact prove invaluable on the job in thwarting an attack along a road side. A large bladed knife transcends any language barrier. But, on the thirty-five hour flight home after carrying the large fixed blade for a month I began working out what I liked and did not like about it.

What I did not like was the difficulty in concealing the knife on my person, and there is also the risk of it not being well received by customs or the local law enforcement should such a knife be discovered. You can expect much in the way of inquiry into your person. Having been there and done that with the questions from across the desk and not being in the land of the free and the home of the brave, I can assure you even when the conversation ends up "okay" you don't care to revisit it anywhere. The Buck Nighthawk that I carried into Central America was confiscated in England thanks to their draconian knife laws. In my experience most countries pay no attention to a fixed bladed knife in a checked bag but as the world gets smaller and tighter they will and knives weird the sheep out.

So upon return home the interest turned towards finding a tactical folder that followed the same lines at the Hissatsu fixed blade. I didn't have to look or wait long because about a month later the Hissatsu Folder came out. I ordered one immediately.

When I finally got it I actually hated it. Quite a bit.

This was partially due to the AUTOLAWKS system on the knife. It was counter-intuitive to anything I had been dealing with at that time of three decades of knife handling. To me it was half lawyer switch/ half boy scout safety knife system. I despised it. When I ordered it I thought it was an optional thing I could use, if desired. Instead it was the button safety on a lever gun. Ugly and I hated it.

Mind you, it had nothing to do with whether or not it worked. It wasn't optional and therefore hated.

Over the next few days the knife started to grow on me and I grew less interested in sending it back, but the AUTOLAWKS system had to go and it did. In somewhat of unglorious fashion with a hex headed driver of appropriate size I stood at the work bench and happily voided any warranty the knife had, but once back together and in fine working order I liked the knife far better.

It did not really see active duty in the everyday carry sense for any period of time. Instead it became relegated to what I referred to "gym" duty and wore it in my waist band as I worked out. Around that time I decided to begin hitting the lap pool at the gym again and two nights a week, there clipped to the waistband of my swim-trunks lap after lap was the Hissatsu folder.

I did have to be mindful about the edge getting rust on it but, not paranoid and it has continued to thrive in water environments onward.

I also liked that the knife also has this element of classic switchblade to it, while not being as delicate, and after a rocky start it found it's way into my everyday carry rotation.

But much like the first season of a television show, sometimes it takes a while to work out the kinks. The overall idea being sound but, the details could use improvement.Eventually James Williams and CRKT found their shui in my opinion with the Otanashi Noh Ken.Whatever first impressions the Hissatsu Folder gave me, the Noh Ken was a complete 180. I liked it from the start and have been carrying it everywhere ever since.

The short description I would give you is, through all of my years running a protection detail or working in unfriendly realms this was the knife I was waiting for. I promise you that is not solicited bullshit.

Mind you there are a lot of wonderful tactical folders out there. I've owned many of them, and I will own more. That's just knife life and there is no sense in apologizing for it.

So why the the Otanashi Nok Ken?

As much as I hate working, consulting, problem solving or however you title the work I do; some of the cities, regions and environs that I traverse to are not gun friendly. Some you who read this corner of the web on occasion work in far far less friendly areas and do so in true black. Many of you also work everyday in gun unfriendly office spaces. But most of us can either carry or smuggle a knife in one way or another if need be. In this vein we are talking about it in a personal defensive role. When folded into it's handle it is both flat and thin. It's very rectangular shape allows for a certain level of camouflaging when placed in a gear bag, shaving kit, or IT equipment pack, if you are of that ilk.

One of the problems in carrying the larger tactical folders is that they are not just big, but they can also be obnoxiously big, rough handled, thick handled and thick bladed. From a durability standpoint these things all sound good because they tend to be tough as hell. But much like the .22 in the hand is better than the .45 at home mantra the same can be true of the behemoth folders. If you don't have it with you it's not going to do you any good.

They also tend to be hard on the liners of pockets and aren't necessarily good at doing sometimes simple tasks. Like slicing something other than an attacker.

If you ever have picked up a filet knife and thought "this would make a good defensive knife if it was sturdier and had a thicker blade" that is kind of what you are getting with the Otanashi Noh Ken.

The blade comes in at 4 and a half inches which can be an issue for carrying some places. That said...the blade is four and a half inches which translates to being very effective against an attacker.

When we talk about knife defense work we have to be very honest about it, because a knife does up close what the bullet does from distance. And sometimes it does more so.

With it's longish blade the capability to deflate a lung, cause rapid blood loss from strikes to the the right and left carotid arteries the trachea, or getting very successful deep wound penetration on areas of the shoulder and biceps is most certainly there.

While that may make you cringe, or read it with some offense it's worth noting that, if you found yourself being shoved into a van, or on your back onto the pavement of some dark parking lot and are armed only with a knife....

This is what you want to be doing, And you want to be doing it with a strong insistence towards repetition.

Regarding the LAWKs system on the knife, either mine is broke or they finally got smart and made it optional where you can engage it or disengage it at will.  While the knife experts like to drone on and on about steel, whether or not is AT593f'd or something. Here is my thought process towards it. It maintains an edge very well, along with a fierce point and is readily touched up or resharped as needed. Knives lose their edges and you have to re-sharpen them. That's life. Much like that green light you see tomorrow will eventually turn red. Deal with both and move on along.

Opening is easy enough via the thumbstud mounted onto the blade. It's also very easy to open via good old fashion inertia. Something that should be encouraged in it's practice.

Large bladed aside, it's size and length are also advantageous as to it's grip length, not only because it will fit a wide array of hands but in colder climates and months the knife is easy to manipulate with gloves, in all fashions.

Lastly, upon the knife itself. They got the clip right on the Noh Ken where they got it wrong on the Hissatsu folder. While I get that the clip is part and parcel to the modern knife industry here is why I am pointing this out specifically.

In cold weather I commonly wear a button up coat or a wool vest. In between buttons, riding vertically, I like to clip a folder to the inside of the garment. While fundamentally functional it is more often than not, not well concealed in this position. Largely this is based upon the fact that of the knives I carry the clip is mounted lower on the knife, which in turn means the knife rides higher....or in this case juts outward.

This is a very accessible angle and position when riding in a vehicle and on the street it allows for primary access to a secondary weapon when my pistol is concealed. The Otanashi Noh Ken's clip is so well placed on the knife that it rides very very deep and is ideal for this type of vertical chest carry. Something not often easily obtained in cold weather defensive carry for any weapon.

Which brings me to my last criticism towards the knife. While the clip on the knife is dark and blends well against all but the lightest backgrounds and it has an Achilles heel with the lettering CRKT running down it. This and the silly Japanese writing and English translation "Otanashi Noh Ken" on one side of the blade and CRKT on the other rob the knife of the sterility that is envisioned behind it's purpose. It also reminds me of the cheap military inspired knives I use to buy on vacation when I was a twelve year old boy. So there maybe some paint remover in the knife's future, just to give it the nod of quiet it is supposed to represent.

Those very minor criticisms aside...

If I were sending a daughter off to college or into her young years of adult life and she was weapon friendly while her locales were not so much but a knife was doable, the Otanashi Noh Ken would be a very good choice as a companion for the subway station or the walks across a dark campus.

Here on the internet everyone is a Tier 1 Delta SEAL Recon sniper agent. I get that. But there is also the reality of the world where there are in fact any number of men and women who work in the intelligence game around the world, with and without the benefit of the diplomatic passport. Some of them come off "the farm" some of them don't and while every regular joe thinks these folks are well trained and well equipped you'd be surprised by how little they operate with. In my experience, they tend not to think about anything that wasn't provided to them by the government (you think I am joking). If they are fortunate enough to carry a gun, it's because they checked it out from someone's armory however, most of them work their careers unarmed. That does not however mean that they don't put their lives on the line in the process.

Faced with the prospect of not having any type of significant weapon at my disposal while working anywhere overseas for a couple of years or longer before coming home and wanted an edged insurance policy that was both readily capable of handling one of more attackers in a close up fight but required it to be discreetly carried, I would be hard pressed to not choose it.

Flight Risk

Prior to 9/11 a person could fly with a pocket knife. In most airport arenas this constituted a blade of 4 inches or less, and it was generally recognized that airport security went with their respective State's blade length law.

At that time I, like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of travelers carried a knife when they flew. In the early to mid 90s I carried a then standard Spyderco Endura as an everyday carry. That is until the day I went to depart from Atlanta airport. A private uniformed security guard informed me that I would not be able to fly with the knife and that he would have to confiscate it. When I inquired as to why, as the blade length was not prohibited he stated that it was deemed to have an "aggressive edge" (read: it was serrated). A knife is a knife there is no such thing as an "aggressive edge" no matter what century you live in but, the confiscation was going to happen regardless. He apologized for the rules but suddenly seemed irritated when I opened the blade, stuck it under the heel of my boot and snapped the blade off.

Upon returning home I decided to circumnavigate the "rules and regulations" of flying with a knife and purchased a Spyderco Native with a plain edge (along with another Endura). From 1996 to 2001 the Native became my "flying" knife. 

Then of course we all know what happened in September of 2001 and the course of domestic airline security made sweeping changes, but only in the bureaucratic sense.

Going on fourteen years later and countless number of flights we are not safer. Our pre-flight security is not handled by professional armed counter-terrorist profilers greeting you on the walk through to your plane. Instead we have gross inefficiency that rivals what we had before 9/11 only under the federal banner.

To be frank. I should be allowed to fly with my knife. So should my 60-something Vietnam veteran Father-in-law who recently had his dull as butter, tip broken, small Trapper taken from him because he left it in his pants pocket. And so should anyone else.

But if we wanted to have a set of rules for flying with a knife then we would have to look no farther than the wallet. Because if a person can produce a conceal carry permit or a Federal Firearms License then why shouldn't they be allowed to carry a knife. Because gun owners, unlike every other American, has been routinely subjected to background checks and fingerprinting that goes through state and federal records that deem them "okay."

I shouldn't need to go through a TSA background check so I can get permission to keep my boots and belt on. I've already done my background work. As a matter of fact I've done it several times in a couple of states. In essence my ccw says "trustworthy".

Instead we are regulated to being continually treated like cattle, children, and criminal suspects all lumped into one line for the stupidity of political correctness. Instead of well paid, and well healed effectiveness.

Because while you can not, under any circumstance, legally fly with a pocket knife you can however hand them your credit card and proceed to get drunk, potentially belligerent, or mood alternated to the point you go for the emergency exit door handle at thirty-five thousand feet.

But granddad's Case trapper knife is a problem.

I want my knife back, my pants belted, my boots on and everyone's dignity in place when they travel. Why we have allowed ourselves to be victimized by this idiocracy continues to astound me.