By Phil Bourjaily

I could try to come up with an April Fool’s joke for this first post of the month, but I can’t improve on real life. Kazahkstan’s trap shooter Maria Dmienko won gold in the Arab Games held in Kuwait last week. At the medal ceremony, instead of hearing “My Kazakhstan” which begins:


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By Chad Love

For cryin' out loud, here we go again. After being defeated last year, serial lawsuit-filing anti-hunting organization the Center for Biological Diversity is back at it on lead ammo. If at first you don’t succeed...

From this story in the New York Times:

Citing risks to birds and to human health, roughly 100 environmental groups formally asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency this week to ban or at least impose limits on lead in the manufacturing of bullets and shotgun pellets for hunting or recreation. The use of such ammo by hunters puts about 3,000 pounds of lead into the environment annually and causes the death of 20 million birds each year from lead poisoning, said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate at one of the groups, the Center for Biological Diversity. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

At SHOT I ran into my friend Mike who works for a maker of game calls and accessories of all kinds. I asked if there was anything new in duck and goose calls. “Waterfowl sales are soft,” he said. “Having a duck lease costs a lot of money and not many people can afford it anymore. Waterfowl is getting to be our own little sport of kings here in America.” I had just come from the Benelli booth, where I saw the new Performance Shop Super Black Eagle II.

It’s an already expensive gun with enough aftermarket barrel and choke work done to give it a $2900 sticker price. Yes, that is a lot of money for a semiautomatic shotgun. And yes, the first run of 600 had already sold out.*

So, while affordable duck calls like the ones Mike’s company makes aren’t selling in huge numbers, at least 600 people in the United States apparently have money to spend on a high-end waterfowl gun, and, I assume, a lot to spend on their waterfowl hunting in general. Waterfowling has always attracted the wealthy, but there used to be room for the regular guy in the sport, too.
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By Phil Bourjaily

People ask me what kind of gun they should buy.  I tell them: “If you want a really good gun for not very much money, buy a Beretta 3901.”  I picked one up late last summer and my sons and I have shot targets and hunted with it and I already want another one.

The 3901 is a budget version of Beretta’s A390, which was Beretta’s top of the line semiauto throughout the 1990s. It is now two generations old, having been replaced first by the A391, then the wondrous A400. It may not be cutting edge anymore, but the 390 was beloved by target shooters and high volume dove lodge operators as a semiauto that always worked.  That hasn’t changed.

The 3901 is made at Beretta’s factory in Accokeek, Maryland, although the barrels are made in Turkey by Steoger. It is not an attractive gun. It is a bare bones semiatuo that comes in 3-inch 12 gauge only, with a black synthetic stock and forend with a hard plastic buttplate. The metal is matte finished. It weighs 7 pounds, 10 ounces with a 28-inch barrel threaded for Beretta’s Mobilchokes.

As an all-around gun the 3901 is hard to... [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Our high school trap club recently bought a DryFire laser shooting simulator and already I am a believer. A device that eliminates the noise, recoil and expense of live fire makes huge sense as a teaching aid.

For instance, we took a senior who had never shot a gun and taught him the basics with the DryFire. He shot two rounds of laser trap a few days before his first trip to the range.

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By Phil Bourjaily

To segue from my previous post about movies back to shotguns via paraphrase: “Patches? We don’t need no patches!”*

That would be the motto of Remington’s new Bore Squeeg-E. As you can see in the picture, it’s a rubber bore cleaner that attaches to a pull-through cable. According to Remington’s claims for it, the Squeeg-E does in one pass what it used to take several cloth patches to accomplish and it cuts down on the need for brushes, too.

I am all for anything that lets me clean guns less so I gave my Browning Cynergy and a couple of revolvers the one-pull Squeeg-E test. They came out literally (thing makes a squealing noise as it goes through the bore) squeaky clean. They Cynergy had been fairly dirty, the revolvers were not, but as far as I could tell the Squee-G got down into the rifling as advertised and left it shiny. The shotgun's bores were very clean, too.

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