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More on Long Range Shooting

Sarah Smith — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:30:40 -0500

by David E. Petzal

Back in April, 2011, I became a probationary member of the Scarborough Fish & Game Association in Scarborough, Maine. The name notwithstanding, SF&G is a shooting club, and a very large, very active one at that. They stage just about every kind of rifle, shotgun, handgun and archery event you can think of, and there is a dedicated range for cops to practice shooting people (so if you have any wants and warrants outstanding, stay away).

Among their assets is a beautiful range with shooting points from 100 to 600 yards, but since the Association’s official religion is safety, they do not let anyone use that range until they’re vetted. You qualify there or you stick to the 100-yard ranges; SF&G does not want any bullets sailing over the backstop. If you raise your muzzle above the level of the backstop you get a warning. If you do it again you are requested to leave.

Did You Get a Gun For Christmas, Too?

Sarah Smith — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:27:15 -0500

by Dave Hurteau

Actually I got a winter restoration project—a Savage Model 24 in .22LR/.410 with good bores and solid wood but a very rough exterior. As far as I’m concerned, the Model 24 in this configuration is the perfect squirrel gun.

By the way, did you know that squirrel hunting makes excellent practice for hunting whitetail deer, the species about which this blog is solely dedicated?

As I was saying, it’s a fantastic squirrel gun, particularly for small woodlots close to populated areas, because you can use the .22 when your backdrop will stop a bullet and the .410 when it won’t. Plus it’s just a damned cool gun that I’ve always wanted to own.

Ohio Man Shoots Amish Girl While Cleaning Gun

Sarah Smith — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:02:41 -0500

by Phil Bourjaily

Jingle Bells With a 1911

Sarah Smith — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:48:01 -0500

Happy Holidays from the Gun Nuts!

On Fouling Shots, and Choosing Your Friends

Sarah Smith — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:36:38 -0500

by David E. Petzal

A friend of mine called from Wyoming with grave concerns about his rifle, a .300 Win Mag with a #4 contour barrel from one of the really good makers, and all the other Right Credentials.

“It never prints the first shot with the others,” he said. “The first shot is always an inch high, and then you can cover the next three with a badly worn dime. What’s wrong with the gun?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. “It just needs a fouling shot. About half of my rifles do. I have no idea why. I keep cheap ammo for just that. When I shoot, I put the first round in the dirt alongside the target and then get to business. Same when I go hunting. I sight in here and don’t clean the bore until I come home.”

Do You Treat Your Reel As Well As You Treat Your Gun?

Sarah Smith — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:16:00 -0400

About a month ago, I wrote about the necessity of maintaining and servicing your fishing reels. Some readers noted doing a lousy job of tackle maintenance while at the same time taking meticulous care of their firearms.

That brings up an obvious question: Why is this so? Or what’s the difference? Seems to me that if you’re going to make the effort to keep a prized rifle or shotgun in top shape, then you might lavish the same attention on a nice, quality reel--be it fly, spin or baitcasting.

Guns and reels both perform better with appropriate care. But somehow guns are often seen as treasured heirlooms while various tackle items are usually not. Historically, it’s an attitude that goes back a long way, which I learned as the former director of a flyfishing museum and often went through boxes of old, usually neglected fishing stuff.

Bashed-Gun Puzzle Solved

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:26:33 -0400

by David E. Petzal

In my post of Oct. 24th, I wrote about a friend whose hitherto-flawless backup rifle had developed a scope that was knocked 8 feet off target and an extractor that suddenly refused to extract. He—and I—now know why.

My friend put the ruptured rifle in a gun vise and saw that the scope was knocked so far out of line with the barrel that it was obvious from across the room. The last time he had used the gun was on a whitetail hunt in Kansas and, on a hunch, he hauled out the case in which it had traveled—a cheap plastic one. Sure enough, there were tire marks across the case. Some thoughtful ramp ape had driven a baggage cart or an airplane tug over it. The case had given and sprung back, but the scope mount—not the scope itself—was twisted all to hell.

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: Lube Your Gun for Negative-40 Degrees

Online Editors — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:27:52 -0400

Two days before I saw this bird, I got a couple ptarmigans for the pot. My gun worked with out incident. This bird in the video got away because my firing pin was frozen. Once the trip was done, I told the story to my friend Pat in Ulukhaktok, and he showed me what he uses to lube his gun in extreme cold.

He uses a fast-drying graphite spray made for aviation applications that can handle extreme cold. Oil-based lubricants get very slow and sticky at low temperatures. In the deep cold, the heat created from firing your gun creates condensation that can freeze your pin. In these conditions, it’s better to use no lube at all if you don’t have a dry lubricant, wiping all the oil-based lube from your gun. I would also consider putting a stronger spring in my gun in future situations like this.

Moral of the story: If your gun freezes up when your ptarmigan hunting, you’ll go hungry. If your gun is freezes up when you’re being charged by a bear, the bear doesn’t go hungry.

Graphite spray it is.

Announcing the 2011 Gun Nut Target Photo Contest

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:22:42 -0400

Enter the 2011 Gun Nut Target Photo Contest for a chance to win a S&W rifle.

Never Trust a Quirky Rifle

Online Editors — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:39:52 -0400

by David E. Petzal

In my post of April 7, wherein I pissed and moaned about my groups breaking up at 300 yards, Amflyer asked a couple of very interesting questions: First, would a bullet that dropped 10 inches below point of aim at 300 yards really cause me to miss any animal that was big enough to justify shooting at it with a .338? And second, would not a range-compensating scope compensate for the fact that some bullets went way low?

To which I reply: there are two things every rifleman should fear: shifting winds and anomalies of any sort. Since the first is not relevant to this post, we will deal with the second. In the wonderful world of rifles, consistency is king. Just as surely as Congress is comprised of petulant, half-bright children, any gun, or load, that does weird, quirky stuff is not to be trusted, no matter how often or seldom it occurs, because, when it counts most, that anomaly will jump up and bite you right in the ass.

Make a Log from a Newspaper + 57 More Hunting, Fishing and Camping Tips from the Readers of Field & Stream

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:39:38 -0500

Here are the best Reader Tips from 2009 to the present.

Make a Tic Tac Box Bait Dispenser + 44 More Hunting, Fishing, and Camping Tips from the Readers of Field & Stream

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:19:38 -0500

Here are the best Reader Tips from 2009 to the present.

SHOT Show 2011: E.R. Shaw's Rex White on Re-Barreling Your Rifle

Joe_Cermele — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:27:58 -0500

by David E. Petzal

About the Video: Pennsylvania-based E.R. Shaw has been around for nearly a century, and while they're best known for rifled-slug barrels, they make terrific rifle barrels, too. Shaw's Vice President of Marketing, Rex White, talked to me about when it's time to re-barrel your gun.

Bourjaily: 3-Gun Two-Sight Solution

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:29:08 -0400

Dave often cautions us not leave our variable scopes set on the highest magnification when we’re hunting. That way, if we have an unexpected close call with a buck as we sneak through the woods, we’ll have a better target than a patch of blurry hair, which is all you see when you look at a deer 10 yards away through a 9x scope.

Petzal: All About Gun Cleaning

Online Editors — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:36:43 -0400

Some time ago, I was asked how to clean a rifle. There are as many different ways to do this as there are to summon Beelzebub, and there is no single “correct” method.

Whatever works, works. Here, instead, are some general tips.

*Think of cleaning as a two-stage process. First you get out the powder fouling, then you get out the copper.

*For powder fouling, I use Shooters Choice solvent and phosphor-bronze brushes. When you’re finished with a brush, give it a toot from a can of Birchwood-Casey Gun Scrubber; this will get the dirt off the brush and will keep the Shooters Choice from eating the bronze bristles.

The Gun Nuts On Television

Online Editors — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:55:05 -0400

That’s me -- I’m the one on the left -- on the set of “The Gun Nuts” the other day. We had just filmed a highly scientific test on the shot-resistant properties of shooting glasses. What happens when 8 shot launched at 1200 fps meets polycarbonate lenses protecting googly craft eyes on cantaloupes representing human heads? Tune in to The Gun Nuts to find out.

Starting today, every Wednesday at 9:30 PM (EST) Dave and I will do our best to bring this blog to life onscreen on the Outdoor Channel. We will blast melons, torture red dots, debunk myths and even break out Dave’s famous Ballistic Buffalo. We’ll talk about guns both classic and new, give shooting advice, and speak our minds about gunny subjects. We may give some stuff away, too.

How to Shoot a Magazine for Fun and (Maybe) Profit

Online Editors — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:20:41 -0400

Petzal: All About Barrels, and the End of Days

Online Editors — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:52:01 -0400

I’m getting lots of questions lately about the End of Days, and about which barrels I recommend, so let’s do the easy subject first. Yes, it’s coming. December 20, 2012, is the end. You don’t think all the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are coincidence, do you? Get your affairs in order.

Now about barrels.

Petzal: Who Knows What Horrors Lurk?

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:57:38 -0500

A Hawkeye borescope is a pair of steel 17-inch tubes (they give you two different views of what they see) containing gradient lenses and a light. When you poke it down your barrel you see what is actually there, as opposed to the bright, shiny surface you see when you squint down it with the naked eye. For about the price of a good scope sight, you can tell a bad barrel from a good barrel without firing a shot, see when you’re really done cleaning the bore as opposed to when you think you are, and detect what’s wrong with your rifle when the friggin’ thing won’t shoot.

Here are some of the neat things you can see:

A damaged land. I have no idea how this was done, but it has wrecked the barrel for good.That gouge is going to tear any bullet that passes over it.

Petzal Reviews the Second Edition of Terry Wieland's "Dangerous-Game Rifles"

Online Editors — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:39:08 -0500

There are only a few books on guns that are worth a damn, and to make matters worse they are rarely updated* and become less valuable over the years. Such is the case with Warren Page’s The Accurate Rifle (1973) or Jim Carmichel’s The Book of the Rifle (1985)--still eminently worth reading, but now quite dated.

How To Replace A Rifle Stock

Online Editors — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:22:56 -0500

In the current economic climate, it could be a while before that new rifle you've had your eyes on ever reaches your hands. But what if I told you that in one hour you could make your old rifle shed a pound or more and increase its accuracy for a fraction of the cost of a new gun? · All you need to do is glass-bed the barreled action into a synthetic replacement stock. Sounds like a job for a gunsmith?

Hunting, Fishing, and Camping Tips from the Readers of Field & Stream

colinkearns — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:47:49 -0400

Here they are: the 34 best Reader Tips from the past two years.

Petzal: Why I Hate Detachable Magazines

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:37:18 -0400

In the course of this blog I’ve said many unkind things about detachable magazines and I meant every word I said. It has dismayed me to see detachable magazine on some very fine and high-priced rifles whose makers should know better, but it seems that the industry trend is toward them. So I was elated to see, on p. 251 of Craig Boddington’s brand new book Safari Rifles II, the following:

“Personally, I’ve never understood what place a detachable magazine has on a hunting rifle. They are one of my pet peeves, just something else to look after and possibly lose.”

How to Judge If Rifle Repairs Are Worth the Money

Online Editors — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:53:11 -0400

In my formative years, I regarded every gun as a work in progress. Only after my genius and a gunsmith’s skills were brought to bear on the “problem” would a rifle perform to its peak level. Now I’m a little more selective about what I do and, as a result, am able to buy food, gasoline, and other frivolities that I could not previously afford. Before you go charging off to the gunsmith, here are a few guidelines to consider as to which sort of modifications make sense and which don’t.

Think Small

Rifles of Interest: Remington Model 700 Custom Shop AWR II

Joe_Cermele — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:11:16 -0400

The Remington Custom Shop in Ilion, NY has, over the past 30 years or so, turned out pretty guns, very accurate target rifles, and tactical rifles, but serious, high-grade working rifles were not on the menu. This all changed a year ago when the company brought in a product development manager named Carlos M. Martinez, who is a rabid hunter. Quicker than you could say “major investment in new machinery for the shop in Ilion,” there sprang forth a line of very earnest high-grade working rifles.