By Dave Hurteau

I got the phone call on Friday and spent the weekend not really believing it. But Monday’s usual slap hit like a club, and there’s no getting around the brutally sad truth that Guthrie, as everyone called him, is gone—died in his sleep Friday morning, leaving his wife and two young children.

Known best for his work with Petersen’s Hunting, Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, and a variety of other titles, as well as Guns & Ammo TV, Guthrie had just begun doing stuff for F&S, including the March feature story “The 1,000-Yard Shot,” which he and I worked on together. I was hoping he’d do much more for us down the road, because he was very, very good, and because I liked him, and I think you—F&S’s readers—would have liked him, too.

By Dave Hurteau

I am just back from testing bows in Kentucky with a Norwegian and a couple of rednecks. Before I left, I checked the status of our Final Four matchups and saw that the .30-06 was flogging the life out of it’s little .25 caliber nephew—shocker—and that the .270 was inching ahead of the .300 Win. Mag.

By Dave Hurteau

After more than 3,500 votes per matchup, the Division I Elite Eight cartridges are settled: The 7mm Remington Magnum obliterated the .260 Remington; the .30- 06 predictably crushed the .243 Winchester; the .257 Weatherby Magnum edged past the .257 Roberts; and, in our first upset win of the tournament, the .25-06 Remington took down the excellent 6.5-284 Norma.

By Dave Hurteau

This may bring some pain to those of you who have already spent $5K or even $10K in years past to get your sub-MOA, long-range deer rifle with befitting scope and comparable binocular. But the gun and glass I carried last week while hunting mule deer in Oregon cost, all together, about a grand—which in this rotten economy should bring great delight and jubilation to anyone just getting into deer hunting or, say, to the Easterner or Midwesterner planning his first deer hunting trip out west where hyperaccuracy and quality optics come in handy.

I carried a Weatherby Vanguard Series 2 Synthetic in .257 Weatherby Mag (about $490 real-world price) topped with a 4.5-14x44mm Bushnell Legend Ultra HD Scope (about $280 street price) and a Bushnell Legend Ultra HD 10x42 binocular (about $250 street price). That comes to $1,020. I’ve used guns and glass costing much more and I don’t believe any of them would have served me substantially better as a practical matter. (By the way, NRA writer Aaron Carter—a far more accomplished rifleman than I—used the same rig to take his buck at 359 yards.)