Shooting Gear

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.

Rimfire Scope Review: The Nikon Pro-Staff BDC 150

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:46:00 -0500

by David E. Petzal

When I showed up at the Kittery Trading Post to buy a used Anschutz .22, I was saddened to see that this peerless piece of Teutonic precision (one with a $1,000 price tag, new) was saddled with a piece-of-junk scope that you might use to hold a window open, or throw at an armadillo if one particularly annoyed you.

There is no abundance of good rimfire scopes—in fact, there are damned few—despite the fact that that the .22 is the foundation of any serious shooter’s gun collection. I guess most people feel that when they've bought the gun they've shot their wad (as it were) and look for something cheap and rotten to use as a sight.

This brings us to the new Nikon Pro-Staff BDC 150 3X-9X-40. It is a very, very good scope, and it comes with Nikon’s BDC reticle, which will enable you to shoot out to 150 yards. This particular reticle is calibrated to work only at 9 power, and only with hyper-velocity (1,600 fps) ammo, but with a little experimental shooting, you can adapt it to just about anything.

Yet Another Reason To Break The Bank

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:04:47 -0400

by David E. Petzal

For years I’ve been whining at you that while it’s OK to buy an inexpensive gun, it’s stupid to cut corners on optical equipment, because the cheap stuff will not hack it.

Exhibit A here, is a Leica spotting scope that elk guide Amos Ames has used for the past 13 years. As you can see, it’s had a hard life, and then some. It is, however, still fully functional, where a lesser piece of equipment would be in a trash bin somewhere.

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.

Scope Review: More Miracles from Minox

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:09:32 -0400

by David E. Petzal

Oh well, back to guns. As Pogo said, politics is the kiss of death for swampland critters.

Some time ago I reported on Minox’s binoculars, and stated that, dollar for dollar, they were the best I knew of. (Or if I didn’t, I should have.) The optics were wonderful and the glasses themselves were simple, straightforward, and direct. They would not double as an astrolabe or tell you where there was an open parking space, but they would show you where the game was.

Now, I’m pleased to report, the company is offering a line of 9 scopes, designated as the ZA3 and ZA5 models, depending on power, that range from a 1.5X-8X shotgun/dangerous game scope to a monster 6X-30X with a 56mm objective. I have been using a ZA5 2X-10X (Yes, a great many of these scopes offer 5X magnification) for a number of weeks now and have not been so impressed since Redfield came back from the dead.

Video: Mini Crossbow Shoots Flaming Mini Crossbow Bolts

Online Editors — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:37:33 -0400

Last year at about this time we posted a story about a diminutive piece of pocket artillery called the mini cannon. It was a real, working gun that used gunpowder, tiny steel balls and what looked like firecracker fuses to wreak havoc on all sorts of common items.

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.

Send SOG Your Best R. Lee Ermey Impression and Win a Trip to the 2011 SHOT Show

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:12:24 -0500

SOG Specialty Knives and Tools is asking if F&S readers have the grit, guts and gall to show their best impersonation of the one and only Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey, a.k.a. The Gunny, to the world.

You know him from his Academy Award-nominated performance in Full Metal Jacket along with his many other film roles, including the Toy Story trilogy and the History Channel series "Lock N' Load With R. Lee Ermey."

If you think you can hack it, SOG has kicked off the "Are You The Gunny?" video contest on its Facebook page. Participants are asked to videotape and upload their best Gunny impression to the page and the winner with the best submission will be flown to Las Vegas as a guest of SOG for the 2011 Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show and Conference in January. The winner will also get to hang out with The Gunny himself at a special cocktail party on the first night of the show.

The 50 Best Entries from Field & Stream's Gun Nut Target Photo Contest

Online Editors — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 08:49:22 -0400

To enter Field & Stream's 2010 Gun Nut Target Contest, readers had to send us creative photographs of a special Gun Nut Target insert we published in our July 2010 issue. We promised to give away a brand-new Smith & Wesson M&P15 MOE 5.536mm rifle to the photo we liked best (as judged by a panel of our editors).

Bourjaily: Aftershave in a Shotgun Shell

Online Editors — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:43:24 -0400

Web editor Joe Cermele alertly grabbed this “Good Shot” edition of Avon’s Wild Country After Shave for me at a flea market. It’s full, so I can tell you Wild Country smells like the talc old-school barbers slap on your neck after a haircut.