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Greetings Gun Nuts. Though I never thought an occasion would arise that caused me to stray from my post at the Honest Angler blog and enter the realm of Mr. Petzal and Mr. Bourjaily, sometimes strange things happen. One actually happened today. I aimlessly wandered the SHOT Show floor with Phil Bourjaily, filming whenever something grabbed his attention. Here's a look at what we found, including some of the hottest new guns and gear, plus a booth babe that signs lingerie. I hope you enjoy the show, as Phil and I certainly had fun making it -- Joe Cermele

SHOT Show starts tomorrow, and as always, several manufacturers held pre-show shooting events  today that gave us press-types a little trigger time with some of their new guns. At the Browning/Winchester shoot, I had the chance to get reacquainted with the SXP.

The SXP is the Turkish-made reincarnation of the old 1300, an underappreciated, lightweight, inexpensive gun made in the old New Haven factory before it closed. Winchester announced the SXP last year but it wasn’t until this year that they actually received guns from their Turkish vendor in sellable quantities.

Anyway, the 1300 was briefly known as the “Speed Pump” because its rotary bolt helped it cycle very quickly. I remembered the guns were smooth, but I had forgotten just how smooth they were. The first two times I tried to shoot doubles with it today, I worked the slide and ejected the shell literally without knowing I had, leaving me pulling on the forearm trying to open an action that was already open. Once I figured out what was happening, I could shoot the gun very fast, and a butter-slick pump gun is a lot of fun to shoot.

I liked the way it pointed and shot, and the... [ Read Full Post ]

My Jeep Liberty chose the last Saturday of pheasant season to suffer power steering problems quite possibly related to -13 overnight lows.  When it warmed up to -1 or so, I closed out the year taking my wife’s car – a 2002 PT Cruiser – to the field.  Jed’s box fit neatly in the back with the seats folded out of the way.  It held me, my older son, our guns and gear, a snow shovel just in case, and, on the way back from the field, a couple of unlucky roosters.

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Here’s a rare picture: a 2009 limit of Iowa roosters (they’re hard to come by this year), and, rarer yet, me with a 20 gauge.  I can’t remember the last time I shot a rooster with a 20 before this season.

There are so many light 12 gauges now that weigh the same as 20s that the 20 gauge might just be obsolete.  My Benelli Montefeltro weighs 6 ¾ pounds with a 28 inch barrel; alloy framed O/Us like the Browning Citori Feathers weigh even less, as does the wonderful Benelli UltraLight. The near-mythical Ruger Gold Label side by side – I am one of the few who have one – weighs 6 ½ pounds in 12 gauge.

I can shoot reloads as light as ¾ of an ounce in my 12s and load them up to 1 ¼ for pheasants. For all practical reasons, there is not much a 20 gauge can do in the uplands that a 12 can’t do better. Add non-toxic shot to the equation and the 12 gains an even bigger edge. The exception (as is the case in this picture) is if you load up the 20... [ Read Full Post ]

For this, my last post of the 00s, I had been trying for a while – and failing --  to think of an end-of-the-decade blog post. My “Eureka” moment came while cleaning up after cooking our Christmas goose. I heard the “tink” of metal falling into the kitchen sink. When I fished the misshapen pellet pictured above out of the sink I realized Hevi Shot is the most significant invention in shotgunning of the past 10 years. [ Read Full Post ]

Beretta’s A400 semiautos  – which I saw in Italy earlier this fall -- are trickling into the country. I have one and have been putting it to good use. Thus far, I like almost everything about the A400. Through a flat of target loads and an assortment of hunting loads, it has worked almost perfectly. Its one failure to fire came on the second shot of skeet doubles. I was using 2 ¾ dram, 1 1/8 ounce target loads, and the second round chambered but the bolt didn’t close 100% of the way and the gun went “click.” I think the loads were a little light for this 3 ½ inch gun, although it may eventually cycle them with complete reliability after I shoot it more.

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Can you shoot? Are you in shape? Are you a character?

If you can answer “yes” to all three, you might be the contestant Pilgrim Productions is looking for to appear on the History Channel’s upcoming “America’s Top Shot.”

Pilgrim – producers of “Ultimate Fighter”, ”Dirty Jobs” and “Ghosthunter” – needs to cast 16 shooters. One will eliminated each week in a marksmanship challenge until the last man or woman standing claims the $100,000 prize. Because this is a History Channel show, weekly competitions could feature any projectile weapon ever made, from atlatls to assault rifles.

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When Browning introduced the excellent Maxus semiauto last year one of their engineers walked me through all the features of the gun, including the “turnkey” magazine plug. It is pretty slick: you take the forearm off, use any car key to turn the plug through 90 degrees, and you can slide it out of the magazine tube without any disassembly, increasing the capacity from two shells to four. The plug goes back in just as easily if you need to limit the magazine capacity to two for migratory bird hunting.

I thought, that’s clever, but so what? [ Read Full Post ]

From the Examiner:
In a November survey, the Consumer Reports Money and Shopping Blog  . . . revealed a number of items new to the [poll] that gifts respondents said they’d be ‘thrilled’ to receive: boots, purses (designer, no doubt), pajamas and guns.

“It's a feeling of confidence, like having a shield,” Tony Orifici, a salesman at Dunedin's Florida Survivalist gun shop, told the St. Petersburg Times. “Grandpa wants a shotgun. Mom wants a revolver. ... We had a family come in and buy an AR-15, a shotgun and two handguns, one for each of them . . . .”

But unlike trendy toys and gadgets, there are no fashionable brands of armaments.
“It's like a candy store. You come in and decide what flavor you want,” one gun store manager told the Times. “You might like Fords. I might like Chevys.”

So, what flavor do you want? [ Read Full Post ]

CSU is one of a very few universities in the U.S. that permits concealed carry on campus—but that may soon change.

From the Denver Post:
Colorado State University may be closer to banning concealed weapons on campus after the school's board of governors this morning voted unanimously for a weapons policy. . . .

"We respect there are many differing opinions on this issue," said board chairman Patrick McConathy, "but members of the CSU System Board believe this a reasonable, rational and responsible decision for our system. . . ."

Debate on the issue highlighted schisms between faculty and students at CSU-Fort Collins as well as CSU-Pueblo.

"A concealed weapon empowers the powerless," said CSU-Fort Collins student body president Dan Gearheart. . . .

But CSU-Pueblo student body president Steven Titus saw differently, saying concealed weapons would disrupt learning. "If I see a girl sitting next to me with a gun in her purse . . . I'd get up and leave and maybe call security on her." [ Read Full Post ]

I love the giant clay target and the huge trap in this clip.

If you were wondering: The clip is part of a beer commercial for Carlton Dry. The tank, although it looks like a French AMX-13, is actually an Austrian SK-105, which has a 105 mm gun.  If you were really shooting tank cannons at monster clays, you would want to load one of these (I know, I have posted this before, but that was before I knew there were giant clay targets):

Mel Brooks did a similar gag – funnier and in much worse taste – in “History of the World, Part I.” Playing  Louis XIV, he calls “pull” and shoots at peasants flung through the air. “It’s good to be the king.” [ Read Full Post ]