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Why Shorter Rifle Barrels May Be Better

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:27:18 -0500

by David E. Petzal

A couple of generations ago, before there was a chronograph lurking under every loading bench, gun makers used barrels of sensible lengths. If you got a .30/06 or a .270, most likely you got a 22-inch barrel. If you bought a magnum, it was probably 24 inches. Over the years, however, barrels have been getting longer, possibly because manufacturers are afraid their guns/ammo won’t deliver advertised velocities.

I’ve never feared shorter barrels. They are handier to use, weigh less, and often are more accurate than the longer ones. And as a rule, you lose very little velocity when you lop off some steel.

As proof of this, ace Texas rifle maker Charley Sisk recently published an experiment where he barreled six rifles with 27-inch tubes and chronographed them, cutting each one back an inch at a time. Space doesn’t allow me to list all the figures, but I can give you the totals.

Olympic Medalist Kim Rhode on Prep for London Games

Online Editors — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:40:43 -0500

Kim Rhode will be competing in the Olympic Skeet event in 2012, where she hopes to break an Olympic record by winning five medals in five different Olympic Games. She talks with Phil Bourjaily about her practice routine and prep work leading up to the London games.

Do-All Outdoors: Have Fun Shooting These Targets

Online Editors — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:30:35 -0500

Bored shooting the same targets over and over? Try blasting an orange prairie dog or any of these reusable targets from Do-All Outdoors.

Pro Ears ReVO: Hearing Protection Designed For Young Shooters

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:11:49 -0500

This set of ears was designed for youth shooters from the ground up, rather than modifying an existing design. The ear pads are specially shaped to eliminate gaps in the seal around the ear near the jawline on smaller heads.

SHOT Show 2012 From The Floor: Day I

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:48:40 -0500

Photos from the floor of SHOT Show 2012, Day 1.

Lessons Learned and Soliciting Queries for SHOT Show 2012

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:15:08 -0500

by David E. Petzal

This past year was an unusually active one for me. I dragged my rotting carcass across both oceans and to a number of states, and took 11 head of big game, with big game being defined as a wild swine or larger.

Looking over the whole business, a number of things stand out. The longest shot I took was at an elk. It was 160 yards. The two shortest--at a red stag and a mule deer--were around 30 yards. The average for everything was 80 yards. None of this is long-range shooting, and leads me to wonder, where are all these 500-yard shots everyone is obsessing about? During the whole season, one person I was afield with took a long shot--400 yards--at an elk, hit it and was unable to find it. In the real world, at least from my experience, things still happen well inside 200 yards.

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.

A Project for 2012

Sarah Smith — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:59:58 -0500

by David E. Petzal

A little while back I spent an hour at the range helping a friend of mine mount a scope and get a rifle sighted in for his young son. Everything worked, and dad took the boy to Pennsylvania to hunt deer. As it turned out, they didn’t get one, but the father was nice enough to send me a photo of the kid in his stand, and the expression of joy on his face is unmistakable. I e-mailed my friend that whether or not his son goes on to be a serious hunter, that deer hunt will be pure gold for the rest of the boy’s life.

Small contributions like this can make a very big difference. If you are a hunter/shooter with some experience, there is a beginning hunter/shooter out there who can use your help. These are not easy sports to break into; there is an immense amount to learn. Questions lead to other questions, and the number of people who have the answers is shrinking.

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!

Finally, The Secret To Reducing Felt Recoil

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:32:56 -0500

by Phil Bourjaily

Some of the comments to the “Top Five Softest Kicking Semi-auto Shotguns” post dealt with the concept of “recoil” versus “perceived recoil” or “kick.” Recoil, as I mentioned, is purely a mathematical construct. Kick deals with the interaction of shooter and the recoil of the gun, and how painfully that recoil is delivered.

Shooter’s stance, grip, pain threshold and many other factors determine how much a gun kicks. So do recoil attenuation devices like recoil pads and muzzle brakes. Stock fit also plays a part. As some of you mentioned previously, even a seemingly unrelated factor like muzzle blast can contribute to the feeling that a gun kicks. That’s one of the reasons I always wear ear plugs and ear muffs to the range.

The two videos below illustrate the difference between recoil and perceived recoil graphically. The guns are identical Browning BARs, a gas-operated semiauto said to be fairly soft-shooting. For the purposes of this exercise, we will assume them to be of the same caliber, and assume that the scopes, slings, and other accessories are of identical weight. Therefore, they would each generate exactly the same amount of recoil.

Is Improved Cylinder The Do-It-All Choke? Yes and No...

Sarah Smith — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:33:56 -0400

by Phil Bourjaily

Years ago at the Remington Shooting School our instructor had us put Improved Cylinder chokes in our guns and shoot springing teal targets. We backed up five steps with every break until the whole class was hitting teal with Improved Cylinder chokes from the Ilion Gun Club parking lot. The point of the lesson was supposed to be that even an open choke like Improved Cylinder can break targets that are very far away, and that therefore, IC is all the choke you ever need.

Yes and no.

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.

A Stern Warning: Never Assume Your Rifle, Scope Will Work

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:32:03 -0400

by David E. Petzal

Now that hunting season is here, many of us are tempted to grab our trusted smokepoles and head for the fields and forests. But what your trusted smokepole may hand you, rather than a dead animal, is a sharp rap in the nuts, metaphorically speaking, of course. You never, ever, assume that a rifle/scope will work.

This was brought home yet again by a friend of mine whom I met at the range a few days before he was to head for Canada. The trigger of the rifle he had planned to bring had gone weird; the sear would not hold, and he had to send it back to the maker for repairs. So this morning he had brought his backup gun, a veteran of 25 years’ flawless service. Lo and behold, the first shot was not even on the paper. We boresighted the gun and the crosshairs were 8 feet off to the left. Unbeknownst to my friend, someone had dropped the rifle or otherwise screwed with it.

Two Ways to Gauge Wind Speed For Long Shots

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:56:21 -0400

by David E. Petzal

“Rifle shooter must break wind first before wind break him.” —Vorislav Djubrotnij, Eastern-bloc shooter of the 1950s, making it all clear.

Recently, I attended a class on how to hit targets at 600 yards and beyond, and came away both impressed and depressed. Of all the factors involved, by far the most uncontrollable and difficult is wind. As an example, a 5 mph breeze, which is just enough to agitate the leaves on the trees, can move a 168-grain .308 bullet 16.1 inches at 600 yards.

Here are two ways to gauge wind speed.

Avoiding Sighting-In Follies

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:48:22 -0400

by David E. Petzal

A couple of days ago I watched a fellow sight in his rifle for a competition shoot. He laid the gun on a nice, hard sandbag, took the caps off the scope turrets, and fired a shot. Then he cranked the dials. He did this ten times in a row: blam, crank, ka-pow, twirl, bang, twist. Eventually, the barrel was hot enough to fry eggs on, and the rifle was shooting where he thought it should.

Later, by sheer chance, I got to score his target, and he was all over the place. He had one good score which was pure luck, followed by a bad score, which was inevitable because he broke the rules of sighting in, which are:

One shot tells you nothing. You need a three-shot group, and you proceed from where the center of that group is.

A Longtime Shooter's Notes on Hearing Loss

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:58:11 -0400

by David E. Petzal

Having started shooting in the 1950s when no one wore hearing protection and having persisted for half a century, I now have what the doctor describes as “profound” loss of hearing in both ears. What has happened is that some of the hairlike receptors in the middle ear, called cilia, have dropped dead from all the noise. This has had three effects: First, I have to wear hearing aids, but even with those I still have trouble understanding some people. Second, I have constant ringing in my ears, called tinnitus. Third, I have lost my ability to tolerate high-pitched sound that doesn't bother other people, such as fire sirens or Michelle Bachman speeches. This is called “recruitment.”

Of the three, the least known is recruitment. It occurs because your ears essentially re-program themselves when some of your cilia call it quits, and have other cilia doing double duty to compensate for the loss. The result is, that when certain sounds hit your ear, they get very loud very quickly because the way you process sound is all screwed up and some of your cilia are pulling in that sound much harder than they normally would. This is why, when a fire engine passes you with its siren going, you clap your hands over your ears and fall to the ground foaming at the mouth. And people with normal hearing merely stare at you in curiosity.

About hearing aids. The ones they have now are infinitely better than the ones that existed only a decade ago. But they are not a cure-all. If you’re trying to talk to someone who jabbers like a rhesus monkey, or speaks softly, or both, or has Valley Girl Lockjaw,* you will not understand them.

Rifle Triggers: A Weight Problem

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:19:37 -0400

by David E. Petzal

Upon reading that the Jarrett Signature’s trigger was set at 1 ½ pounds, Dickgun, a regular blogger, a hunter of vast experience and a bush pilot of otherworldly ability, asked if that was a good pull weight for hunting rifles in general. To which I reply, great gobs of goose grease, no! Kenny sets his triggers light because almost all the rifles he builds are for carefully set-up shots at long range, and are purchased by experienced shooters who take the time and ammo to get to know their rifles. Bush rifles they ain’t.

For general use, anything below 3 pounds is asking for it. If you’re excited, or your hands are cold, or you’re wearing gloves, or any combination thereof, a trigger pull of less than 3 pounds is going to get you into trouble eventually—the rifle will go off before you’re ready. The M24 sniper rifles used by the Army have triggers that are set between 3 and 5 pounds because even for the coldest-blooded practitioner, sniping is a high-stress occupation that is performed in all kinds of weather. Good dangerous-game rifles have their triggers set at 4 to 5 pounds, and I’ve pulled some heavier than that.

Jarrett Signature Rifle Review Part III: Give Me A Brake!

Online Editors — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:27:34 -0400

by David E. Petzal

For Part I, click here
For Part II, click here
Oddly, one of the most striking features of the Jarrett Signature is the muzzle brake. Kenny’s recommendation is that any rifle he builds of .30 or above should come with a brake and I see his point. I’ve shot a good many guns with muzzle brakes, and while they all work, this one is uncanny. There is almost no recoil. John Blauvelt shot the rifle and could not get over it. We guessed that with the brake in place this .300 Win Mag kicked about like an 8-pound .243. To an experienced shooter, who knows what to expect from the .300 Win Mag, it is unsettling.

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

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:07:17 -0400

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

A Basic Guide to Sporting Rifle Actions: Bolt, Lever, Pump and Semi Auto

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:50:33 -0400

Dave Petzal's brief guide to the four basic sporting-rifle actions in use today.

Ultimate Gun IQ Quiz Answers

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:29:03 -0400

The scores have been tallied and the answers are revealed. See what questions stumped you.

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.

It Isn’t So Bad Being a Southpaw Anymore

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:04:50 -0400

by David E. Petzal

I learned a couple of days ago that the Browning X-Bolt Micro is now being made in a left-handed version, which means that if you are both vertically and directionally challenged, you can simply plop your plastic on any gun dealer’s counter and walk out with a first-class rifle that will fit you to a T. If you are of average height and left-handed, you can buy all manner of rifles, either factory or custom, that will work off the sinister shoulder. It was not always thus.

Before 1958, left-handers were almost totally ignored. A gunsmith named Barbour did conversions of right-handed rifles, and there was a custom bolt-action called the Mathieu (I’ve seen two in my life) that was very good, and I believe Mauser turned out a very few left-hand actions, but that was it.