A well known gun writer acquaintance was once asked what the best survival gun was. His laconic response was " What do you want to survive?" Is my late friend Bart the Bear going to attack us? Are we going to ignore the nutritional phenomenon of rabbit starvation and shoot bunnies instead of setting snares and all those jigsaw deadfalls in the survival manuals? Is the wild eyed stranger with a Tom Brown Tracker a direct threat? The late Mel Tappen wrote a exaustive book on the subject that is still relevant. Personally, I'd rather have 5 lbs of trailmix, jerky, Mainstay rations or a gummy bear frozen pizza than the Ithaca M6 we carried in our C-130s in Alaska. That, or find the WW2 Luftwaffe Drilling carried by crews in North Africa- a rimmed equivelant to the .375 H&H over 2 shotgun barrels. If I am going to pack iron for whatever practical and cultural reasons we value it's going to be real BIG! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />