GEARHEADS

WALNUT HILL

- Terry Wieland

A Kenny Jarrett rifle built on his own action chambered for his own cartridge, the .300 Jarrett. Kenny always sends targets with the rifle to show what it can do. His half-minute guarantee is for real.

This all began at a very early date, but I can’t say exactly when. I first became aware of it in my teens, however, and that is pushing 60 years ago. It was traditional when writing a hunting story, to begin with, some breathless partial account of derring-do (to be completed later), run through the background, and finish up with the clean and efficient dispatching of the animal in question. The writer then told us all about his equipment – rifle, cartridge, scope, and binocular.

I became an inveterate buyer of magazines and books about hunting, and invariably found myself rushing through in order to get to the part that interested me most: What did he use? And how did it perform?

To this day, when I reach the section where I see mention of a cartridge – .270, .30-06, whatever – I can feel my breath quicken. Old habits die hard.

In mountaineering and, presumably, other more arcane pursuits, they have a term: “Gearhead.” It usually denotes a guy (rarely, it seems, a girl) who is just as interested in the equipment of climbing as he is in the climbing itself. It’s almost as if the climbing is merely an excuse to buy every new gadget that comes along, or buy better gadgets to replace the ones you already have or buy backup gadgets in case a first-string gadget fails at the critical moment.