I am Srinivas , an entreprenuer in Renewable Energy , based out of bangalore.
I have been in love with Guns, Bows & Arrows, Forests and Wildlife for as long as I can remember.
My tryst and passion for guns started at a very young age of ~8 yrs. My passion for guns was fuelled by watching westerns on VCRs and theaters back in the day in mid 80's. I used to pester my mother to buy me a toy gun whenever we passed a toy store and finally got a pair of colt .45's and a Mauser pistol ,which could hold 9 cartridges ,and came with its own small 3 piece human torso target. These were, ofcourse, from leo toys, a very big name in toys in those days and the quality of construction was exemplery.
I remember making my own tie-down holster using rexine material which used to be the popular material for furniture upholstery and I used to practice quick draws with the colt replica by firing it at targets placed 10-12ft away and got pretty good at it too.
When I started college, the entreprenuriel bug bit me and I started assembling and selling electric Diyas during my free time and with the first profits I made, I bought my first and only gun till date , a .22 Air Rifle, in 1992, from a local gun shop in bangalore. After test firing it in the small range the shop had, I got a few tweaks made and the gun still fires true even to this day. I used it a lot for target practice in the early years of its purchase and as I didn't have the money nor the means to join a club, of which there was only one at that time, I used to shoot from the terrace of my house. My target was 2 x 0.22 pellets stacked on top of each other placed at a height of 7ft from the ground and shot from 25ft away.
I also had a couple of friends who owned farms and estates and I used to go hunting with them during school and early college days as well. We shot with Muzle loaders and 12 Guage DBBLs. I have even had the experience of casting lead balls and refilling used shotgun shells, for practice. I have had the pleasure of shooting with two very fine guns, a Birmingham 12 Guage and .22 BSA Rifle which used Rimfire cartridges.
All my free time during school and college days used to be spent in the reference section of Bangalore City Central library, reading books on different kinds of guns and books on man-eaters by Jim Corbett ,of whom I am a huge fan, and kenneth Anderson. Due to my love for wildlife, I got involved with volunteering for the karnataka forest department on various programs and started developing products for wildlife conflict mitigation. One of my favourite movies was the "Ghost and the Darkness", a real life story about two man-eating lions in Tsavo region of Africa. I was so crazy about the movie that I was not satisfied even after watching it for the umpteenth time. I then visited the Field Museum in chicago, where the two infamous man-eaters of Tsavo , portrayed in the movie, are displayed to this day and that brought satisfaction to my soul.
The reason I brought up the movie was because I used ideas from that movie to design a trap for a tiger that had become a rampant cattle killer and the forest department was at their wits end to put an end to this menace before a more bigger disaster struck, which could turn this tiger from a cattle killer into a man-eater.
I think I have pictures of that trap somewhere in my repository. I got to know about the forum "Indians for Guns" when I was reading an article written By Dr. Prashant Singh, about the hunt for a man-eating leopard, 7-8 years ago. I had thought of becoming a member around a decade ago but then , for reasons unknown and forgotten, I didn't.
Oh, BTW, I also own a custom made bamboo bow with which I used to practice Archery some 18yrs ago.
So here I am, willing to soak in the vast knowledge that this forum brings and hope to enjoy every bit of it and would love to get to know as many people as possible and interact with them.
Cheers,
GVS
