By David E. Petzal

This unfortunate term (I rank it right alongside the truly loathsome “.257 Bob” for .257 Roberts.) arose on the Internet some years ago to describe a firearm that spends its time in a closet or safe, never to be used. Most of the time, this is not the fault of the gun involved.

Recoil is probably the main creator of closet queens. When the .458 Model 70 Winchester African came out in 1956 it was the first American big-bore in a long time, and there was a lot of interest in it. People who would never get closer to Africa than a Tarzan movie rushed to buy one, and then discovered that the things kicked harder than they ever dreamed. What to do? These Model 70s were not cheap rifles, and not easy to sell, and if you did sell you admitted that you were a little short in the manhood department. Thus they became closet queens.

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By David E. Petzal

Every time you pull the trigger, you squirt a flame of 3,000 to 5,000 degrees (Estimates vary wildly, but it’s pretty damned hot.) up your rifle’s barrel. And every time this happens, the barrel melts a little. It’s charred an unattractive black, and cracks and fissures develop at the rear end of the rifling where the flame is most intense. Eventually, the rifling is literally melted away and your rifle no longer shoots the way it once did.

This seems to happen in two stages. The first thing you’ll notice, assuming you’ve kept decent records, that that your groups get bigger. Your minute-of-angle rifle will no longer put three shots into 1.000; it will do 1.200, or 1.250, or something on that order, no matter how carefully you hold.

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By David E. Petzal

Although I have no earthly business buying guns anymore, I still surf the Internet looking for interesting stuff, and a little while ago I came across a very fine dangerous-game rifle chambered for the nightmarish .458 Lott. The gun was built by a maker for whose work I have the utmost respect, but what interested me most was the owner’s notation that the rifle had been fired only five times to sight it in.

There is something desperately wrong with that. Oxen and wain ropes would not hale me on a safari with a dangerous-game rifle I had fired only five times. If you are going to mix it up with an animal whose idea of a good time is ramming a horn up your fundament, it’s highly recommended that you be sure your rifle functions, and you can’t make sure of this in five shots. Fifty is a good start.

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By Phil Bourjaily

I was in North Carolina on vacation last week. Halfway between Southport and Supply I saw the famous “Worms and Coffee” sign. While I didn’t really need gas, I couldn’t resist stopping in for $20 worth just so I could snap a picture with my smartphone.

The “Worms and Coffee” sign has been there since 1997, and has become a local landmark and attraction. Photos of the sign have appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and the "Late Show With David Letterman." And really, early in the morning if you’re on your way to go fishing, what more do you need than worms and coffee?

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By David E. Petzal

Recently, at the rifle range, a friend of mine who is full of years and wisdom was shooting a brand-new lever-action chambered for the horrifying .454 Casull. The rifle is built on the lines of a Winchester Model 92, and has a small buttstock with a lot of drop to it, and not a lot of weight.

My friend took three shots and put the gun away. “This thing is killing me,” he said, “the next time I shoot it I’ll have a wool coat on.”

Despite the fact that the Casull does not have the power of, say, a .577 T-Rex, it still generates enough steam to hurt in a rifle that delivers punishment at both ends. Many a shooter would have kept right on firing that evil rifle with nothing between it and himself but a T-shirt, and they would have paid.

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By David E. Petzal

This past spring, my three finalist rifles for Field & Stream’s 2012 Best of the Best Awards (see the September issue for the winner), all unaltered factory bolt actions in the low to medium price range, shot not only sub-MOA but sub-half-MOA. I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I’m not surprised. The finalists shared various attributes—which are found on many other factory rifles as well—that are responsible for this astounding improvement in accuracy, and among them are these:

Glass Bedding
This technique em­ploys epoxy—by itself, combined with fiberglass, or mixed with metal particles. It’s a cheap, permanent way to get a perfect bedding job for a rifle action, and it is used either by itself or in combination with pillar bedding. Rather than painstakingly shaping the stock to fit the action, you slap a glob of glass into the action mortise, clamp the stock and the barreled action together, and let the adhesive harden. The result is a perfect, permanent, fit.
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