Our property where I hunt in LA, lower Alabama, is over a bean field where 200-300 and longer shots are common. My two go to rifles have always been a pre64 model 70 super grade featherweight in 308 and a model 700 Sendero, the first model not new ones in 300 win mag but I recently bought a CA...
I have a pretty extensive collection of Emerson Custom Knives going back to 1992 when I bought my first one to carry on deployment. After that I have always carried an Emerson.
What you have there is one of the finest hunting shotguns ever made. I would keep it and use it if it were me but then I collect auto 5's and have several 16s including one my father bought new as a 2 barrel set when he came home from WW2. He gave it to me as a Christmas present the year before...
FYI, a 56mm objective, 30mm tube, 20moa rail and low Warne Rings work perfectly with the barrel contour of the short action CA Mesa. Cheek weld is perfect as well.
If you can afford it, Wyoming has some of the best retirement laws on the books. When I retired from the Marines we considered it but ultimately settled back home in LA (lower Alabama)
When it comes to clothing I tend to buy the best I can afford and never anything trendy. I like stuff that literally last forever. When I was an CO of the MSG detachment at the London Embassy my wife thought I was crazy paying 450.00 for a Barbour Jacket but 25 years later it's still in pristine...
I have 3 rifles I hunt with, a pre64 model 70 super grade feather weight in 308, a CA Mesa in 6.5cm and a Weatherby accumark in 30- 378nand all 3 have about the same amount of play in the bolt. Just the way it is.
I bought a Weatherby accumark a few years back in 30-378 for 1500.00 in almost pristine condition. It's a similar rifle and it's a tack driving southern bean field whitetail rifle if ever there was one but ammo when I can find it at gun shows is 100.00 and up.
I don't have the time or energy to invest in every jack leg clothier to come along. I have two main jackets I wear in the field and both are over 20 years old; a Barbour Beaufort jacket and a Browning Gortex Hydro fleece parka. Nothing anyone makes today will ever come close to the quality of...