By Brandon Ray

I shot the fine Texas 8-point buck in the accompanying photo using a rifle chambered in .25-06 Remington. The rig was a loaner Nosler Professional topped with a Swarovski 3-10x42 Z3 series scope with a plex reticle. I used Hornady 117-grain Superformance SST ammo. The shot was 90 yards from an elevated tower blind with a good rest.

The buck would not have been any deader had I shot him with a bazooka. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

I spent the past week in Kansas, a place of very little culture but very many whitetail deer, which is a better reason to go someplace than culture. I was hunting out of elevated blinds with a friend who is a highly experienced hunter and a very good spotter of cloven-hoofed ungulates. Each of us had a laser rangefinder. Mine was in my binocular; his was separate.

What we noticed pretty quickly was that neither rangefinder ever agreed…ever. Sometimes the difference was only a few yards, but sometimes it was 50 yards or more. In addition, my rangefinder also gave Weird Readings. It would say that a deer was 152 yards away when it was perfectly obvious the beast was way over 300. This may have been caused by fog, which we had, or by the beam bouncing off weeds and brush that I couldn’t see but which the laser could. It was, as Richard Pryor used to say, a nerve-shattering experience.

[ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

So, there I was, sitting in a box blind in Maine 10 minutes before last shooting light, looking through my scope at a hillside with a whitetail on it, trying to decide whether the creature had horns or not. This was complicated by the fact that the whitetail was already in deep shadow, and that the hillside was backlighted by the setting sun, and by the fact that it (the deer, not the sun) had its buttocks toward me and its head down in an infernal tangle of branches, weeds, and other annoying plant life.

I was looking at the critter through a Zeiss Conquest rifle scope and, good as the scope is, I was unable to tell if it was time to pull the trigger. Finally, since the light was running out, I said the hell with it and picked up a Zeiss 10x42 Conquest HD binocular (a loaner; sent it back yesterday) and saw at a glance what I could not see through the scope—that the beast was a doe and that the day was over. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

Thanks to Deadeye Dick for this idea, but before we get to scopes, here are two more handloading tips that I want to get down before I forget them.

Before I resize my cases, I clean the carbon off the necks with a metal polish called Simichrome. Then I wipe off the black ugh and throw them in the case tumbler with the fired primers still in place. This saves you having to poke pieces of ground-up corncob out of the flasholes.

If you want to do a really thorough job of degreasing, soak the re-sized shells in acetone for 15 minutes. You do this outdoors, or in the garage with the doors open. They dry off very quickly, and if you want to speed up the process even more, turn a fan on them.

OK, scopes. Because long-range shooting is now all the rage, some scope designers have made their reticles things of unholy complexity, packed with dots, lines, very small lines, squiggles and, in some cases, runes. This is due to the belief that a) the more complex it is, the better it is, and b) the people who design hunting optics have apparently done precious little hunting and intend to sell these things to people who are likewise unqualified. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

Amidst the horror of the recent Olympics, I noticed that a great many of the competitors were not extraordinary talents like Michael Phelps, but simply people of above-average ability whose dedication was extraordinary. There was an Irish gymnast who had sustained a catastrophic injury years before and had been told that he would never walk again, yet here he was. There was a member of the American women’s diving team who had once hit the water wrong, smashed her guts, and nearly died. Yet here she was, back on the platform.

When Vince Lombardi took over the Green Bay Packers, he told them that they were going to pursue perfection. They would not achieve it, he said, but in the process they would attain excellence. He worked them nearly to death, but they became the dominant football team of the 1960s and a good many of the men to whom he spoke went into the Hall of Fame.

Which brings us to my friend Tony M. whom, you may recall, turned in a zero (in a practice round) because he forgot to sight in his rifle. You may also recall my telling you that he was the hardest-working, most meticulous, and best-prepared rifle shooter I know. Just after the zero, this paid off. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

Once every four years it’s my duty to fight down my gag reflex and discuss the presidential election. But before I do so, I have to emphasize that what follows are my opinions and mine alone, not those of Field & Stream, or Phil Bourjaily, or anyone else.

So, let us begin. Basically, whoever wins, the country is still in deep trouble. Neither candidate has a clue about how to solve any of our major problems. Congress is so useless that it would be incapable of declaring war on the Empire of Japan the day after Pearl Harbor.

So, ignoring all our other dreadful problems, let’s turn to guns, and start with some general facts. [ Read Full Post ]