The pellets you see here make up the content of a pre-production sample of Federal’s new Prairie Storm pheasant loads,  a lead version of their Black Cloud.  The normal looking shot is copper-plated 4s. They are mixed with “Flitestoppers,” which are also 4s but have rings around them that look like Saturn, or like WWI helmets. The white stuff is buffer, which helps the pellets keep their shape as they go down the barrel.

Both pellets and the buffer are loaded into ...

... the Flitecontrol wad, a solid shotcup that holds the pellets together for the first 15-20 feet out of the muzzle (rather than beginning to spread immediately upon leaving the muzzle as is the case with other types of shotcups), tightening patterns and increasing downrange velocity slightly.  The Flitestoppers are loaded first with the copper pellets on top. That way, the round pellets can draft for the less aerodynamic ridged pellets.

The Flitestoppers are nasty little things, at least, on the basis of the autopsies I performed on a couple of roosters I’ve been able to shoot with them. The ones I have dug out of the carcasses did indeed leave larger and more ragged wound channels than did the round 4s thanks to the ridges around the pellets. Contrary to my expectations, the ridges on the pellets I recovered survived passing through to the far side of the bird fairly intact.

Prairie Storm will be available at first in 4 shot, 1 1/4-ounce, 2 3/4-inch loads at 1500 fps.  They are unnecessarily fast, at least in my recoil-sensitive opinion (“Ringneck Rocket” was the other name the Federal marketing people considered), and I could certainly feel them going off in my lightweight Benelli Montefeltro. They wouldn’t be bad to shoot out of a gas gun, though. Besides, speed sells, the name is cool, and they seem to work. I suspect they will develop a cult following like the one that has grown up around the steel Black Cloud.

My standby pheasant poison will likely remain the milder-kicking yet deadly 1 1/4 ounces of 5 or 6 shot at 1330 fps, but I’m looking forward to shooting up my two sample boxes of Prairie Storm in the meantime and reporting back.

Recently I’ve heard a rash of stories about dogs ingesting foreign objects. Two weeks ago a good friend’s springer, Bailey, swallowed a cocklebur while on a pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota. The offending cocklebur lodged itself in the dog’s intestine and eventually had to be removed surgically. Thankfully, Bailey is recovering nicely. And over the weekend, a German shorthair owned by F&S Shooting Editor and Gun Nut blogger, Phil Bourjaily, ate an entire pack of sugarless gum, which can have dire consequences for a dog. Bourjaily spent a sleepless night watching his pup and was grateful for no adverse reactions except for minty dog breath.

But the story that surpasses all is that of a 110-pound Rottweiler named Luciano and his owner Deirdre Murphy Lofft. Seems when Lofft wasn’t looking Luciano sniffed out her engagement ring on the bedside table and decided to make a snack of it. After ransacking the house for a day the Lofft’s began to suspect Luciano and called the vet. They were told to watch the dog and its stools, which Deirdre did religiously. But after 48 hours of sifting through stools with rubber gloves and nothing to show for it they went to the vet’s office for an X-Ray (above), which revealed the ring sitting in the dog’s descending colon—next stop Mother Earth.

“When they showed us the X-Ray, it didn’t even look real,” says Deirdre, “But they said it would be coming out soon.” Unwilling to wait for the dog’s morning constitution, Deidre and her fiancé “put Luciano on a leash and walked him until he had to go.”

Sure enough, the ring had made the journey through the dog’s bowels. “It was yellow gold so it had lost some of its shine,” says Deirdre. “We took it to get professionally cleaned, but I don’t think we told them the whole story.” At their rehearsal dinner the Loffts propped up a framed copy of the X-Ray with the inscription “Honorary Ring Bearer.” Since the incident, which happened a couple of years ago, Luciano hasn’t swiped any other valuables.

Thankfully, Pritchard has yet to ingest anything notable or harmful besides a rubber band and a bunch of bark, but I’m sure some of you dog owners have some stories to tell. Feel free to share. This could get interesting.

With all due respect to the many great Marlins of the past, this rifle bears an uncanny resemblance not to them but to the cult favorite Winchester Model 71. Both rifles are lever guns that deliver Serious Thump—in fact, the ballistics for their respective cartridges are almost identical. The main loading for the 71’s cartridge, the .348 WCF, is a 200-grain bullet at 2,530 fps. The sole loading for the .338 Marlin Express (developed and loaded by Hornady) is 200 grains at 2,500 fps.

The rifle I got to try out is ...

... an all-stainless gun with a laminated stock and 24-inch barrel. You can get the same thing with a 22-inch barrel (I would go with this one) or a blue-steel and walnut model with a 22-inch barrel. The new cartridge is based loosely on the breathtakingly obscure .376 Steyr.  It’s a chubby little rascal with very little taper, a fairly sharp shoulder and, since it has to work through a lever gun, a pronounced rim.

Factory ballistics specify a 200-grain poly-tipped FTX bullet at 2,565 fps from a 24-inch barrel. However, my chronograph said 2,485. I say, who cares? For all its power, the Marlin kicks about like a .30/06 of the same weight; it should not pose a problem to anyone who is not a sissy.

The rifle weighs 8 pounds, 2 ounces with a 3X-9X scope in Weaver mounts. The trigger pulls 5 pounds even. It’s clean and consistent, but 5 pounds is too heavy for me; I would take it to a gunsmith and have it lose a pound or so.

The Winchester 71, for all its virtues, was not an accurate rifle by modern standards. You couldn’t mount a scope on it, and even with a good peep sight typical groups for the ones I’ve shot ran in the 2 ½- to 3-inch range. The Marlin test gun will shoot rings around that; the average group size was 1.135-inch, which is bolt-action accuracy, and pretty damn good bolt-action accuracy at that.

For some reason, Marlin continues to use the same old semi-buckhorn rear sight that has blighted its rifles for many decades. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it folds flat and out of the way of a scope. If you’d like iron sights as an option, get a ghost ring sight in the rear, a big bead up front, and a good QD mount.

If you’re interested in shooting at long range—which for this cartridge would be beyond 300 yards—find yourself a scope with a range-compensating rifle that is appropriate to its velocity and flatten things at 400. I would not push it beyond there. The .338 Marlin Express has plenty of power, the FTX bullet is good and tough, but 2,500 fps is good only up to a point.

MSRP for this gun is around $800, which is certainly fair. It is a powerful, accurate, versatile firearm that is also drop-dead reliable and fast-firing if you need that. If you want more, you’re just plain greedy. Marlinfirearms.com --DEP

Yet another reason for a NJ bear hunt, from the New Jersey Herald:
When she heard a different kind of sound coming from the llama pens that night, Lynn Gannon knew something was wrong

"I grabbed the flashlight and went out. It was a kind of scream I had never heard before. Then I saw it. A bear was tearing at Lily[, one of the llamas]," she said. . . .

"The bear. . . ripped her open," Gannon said of the wounds, and the veterinarian euthanized the llama. . . .

As Gannon and her husband were standing over the animal . . . the bruin returned.

"He was right about here," Gannon said as she stood in the pasture Tuesday afternoon, reliving that night. "We yelled, waved our arms, but he didn't run off. He just kind of walked away, not afraid of us at all."