New Stock at my Local Dealers

As bad as I want a L42, I’m afraid it would be my luck to get one with a shot out barrel and no spares to be had. Those L42’s must have had a rough life, sniper course after sniper course for how many years? That is in addition to their previous life as a No. 4 T.  

It’s at the top of my list though….

All that aside, M.U. 4-01 which I'm sure you're familiar with was my go to hunting grounds.  I took a Grizzly bear, a Black bear, several Whitetail deer and Mule, deer , and a Mountain Goat in the Flathead Valley.  

Sapper740 wrote: I feel ya Rick, anyone who trained at CFB Chilliwack knows the weather and terrain in the area can make any training exercise a real "bag drive".

It wasn't by accident they hauled courses to that training area.  Aside from the almost always 24/7 freezing rain at that time of the year, most of the time you were trying to "patrol" through the dense scrub, even if it wasn't dark you usually couldn't see any of the surrounding mountains to shoot a resection to figure out where you were.

Long hours and days of being not only near-hypothermic freezing wet cold, but also totally lost.  Leading to one patrol, when the det I was leading finally found an open spot and COULD shoot a resection - I discovered that I had just invaded the USA, stumbling across the border into Washington State.  As the other three in my det were also Jacks, we agreed that nobody would ever hear about our bold strike into the heart of America!  The next leg was a bearing of 3200 mils and crash through the brush and the health with silence and stealth.

All that aside, M.U. 4-01 which I'm sure you're familiar with was my go to hunting grounds.  I took a Grizzly bear, a Black bear, several Whitetail deer and Mule, deer , and a Mountain Goat in the Flathead Valley.

Grew up hunting and fishing there.  It became a zoo of buzzing quads and 4x4s early in the 1980s.  Back in the day the Trail Creek border crossing was still open down there in the South Country.  

You could be camped nearby hunting Sage Creek or the other areas near what is now the Ak-Kish provincial park, take a short detour on the way back to where the tent was set up to the border.  The US Customs guys would allow you to cross over along with your hunting rifles to grab a beer and a burger at a tiny little bar and restaurant at Moose City a few hundred yards on the other side.  Canada Customs was equally as disinterested when we returned to the other side. No Form 6NIA required at that time to do either that or cross the border to shoot in a match in the USA; that came later.

It's closed now.  Canada completely demolished their facilities there including the pretty nice quarters they provided for the border guys to stay in while working that crossing point.  The US buildings are all boarded up, but you do see Border Patrol vehicles parked there as they do some patrolling from there via horses, quads, etc.

It's a nice easy and scenic dual sport ride from either Jaffrey/Elko/Sparwood via Lodgepole FSR on the BC side, and Columbia Falls via the Flathead North Fork Road on the Montana side.  The little bar/restaurant at Moose City is gone, but a bit further south down the road, the Polebridge Mercantile makes a killing selling food, drinks, and swag to tourists.  It's become a tourist attraction that reels them in from people wanting to access Glacier NP from the North Flathead road.