Guys, you know I just can't seem to tell short stories. So here's another long one.

Have you ever gone jug fishing for catfish? You throw out a lot of plastic jugs with different lengths of line tied to them, and a baited hook on the end of the lines. They just float around out there. Sometimes they catch something, sometimes they don't. Sometimes what they catch is a keeper, sometimes it's not.

Well, as many of you know, I've been jug fishing for TC sidehammers. Here's one of my jugs.



I've got an amazing number of "hits" on my jugs. Most of them didn't pan out. The seller just wanted too much for the gun in question. But I did pick up a "pristine" .50 Renegade for $150, which became one of the Sinful Sisters with a scoped Green Mountain barrel. I still have the pristine 1:48 twist TC barrel sitting in the closet. Also, I'm still waiting for a guy in Mobile, AL to name a price on a Cherokee he's "thinking" about selling.

Here's the last e-mail I have from a guy with what he describes as an "almost perfect" Hawken with "two small dents on the bottom of the stock"

I can't decide on that one. I'm more of a Renegade kind of guy.

Anyway, I just bought a .54 Renegade "sight unseen". The guy lives about 50 miles from me, but real close to one of my hunting club buddies. He described the gun as having a "bad barrel - shoots twelve inch groups at sixty yards, but it has a new stock".

When he said he would take $50 for it I decided to take a chance. Called my buddy and asked him to pick it up for me. He did, and I got it from him at the hunting lease over the weekend.

Bad barrel??? Man, that was an understatement.

Here's a picture of what the entire outside of the barrel looks like.



Here's the breech end.




And the bore.




But man, the stock is PERFECT. No dents, scratches, cracks, or blemishes. The lock and butt plate are clean and rust free. The trigger guard is a smooth shiny blue.

Now Sabotloader is a fan of putting 15/16" Green Mountain barrels in Renegade stocks - and I found out why. I picked up two of them at a very good price in Cabala's Bargain Cave a while back, both .50 caliber Long Range Hunters. Sabotloader has one of them, acquired in a barrel swap. The other has been sitting in my closet.

I put the Cabala's barrel on the $50 stock, and now have another really nice Renegade.




Nope! Not putting a scope on this one. I recently got new glasses and can actually see the fiber optic sights on this barrel well enough to shoot. That 15/16" barrel makes it a wonderful gun to carry.

So the Sinful Sisters now have a Virtuous Cousin.



I think I have all of the Renegades I need. (So does my wife.)

But I sure hope that guy with the Cherokee comes through.