By David E. Petzal

Someone asked me about cleaning rods, so here’s what I know. A good one, used properly, will keep your bore alive and healthy. A bad one, or a good one used incorrectly, will kill your bore quicker than a good dose of hydrochloric acid down the muzzle. A good cleaning rod is either steel or plastic-coated, like the Dewey rods. It should be stiff enough that it will not bend; a bent rod will scrape against the rifling and that will be that. The worst rods are brass and aluminum, as they’re soft and pick up abrasive crud, and they bend permanently out of shape. I am also down on jointed rods of any kind unless those joints fit together seamlessly.

The best jointed rods, in a walk, are those made by Belding & Mull, however B&M apparently does not make them any more. If you ever see one, grab it, assuming that someone is not using it at the time, in which case he will punch you in the snout. I do not like pull-throughs; however, D’Arcy Echols, whose opinion I respect to the nth degree, thinks the world of them, and wishes that he had invented them. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Earlier this year I shot my first ever 1-inch, 100 yard group with shotgun slugs.* That it took me until 2012 to achieve that feat is more a reflection on my lack of bench shooting skills than the state of the slug shooting art. The slugs and guns we have today are quite accurate.

The gun I shot the 1-inch group with was a Savage 212, a bolt action with Savage’s excellent Accu trigger. The slugs were Remington Copper Solids which are my go-to slugs when I want to shoot a good group out of almost any gun. I had a Bushnell 3x-9x slug scope mounted on the gun.  I didn’t much care for the 212’s plastic detachable box magazine or its general lack of slickness but the gun is very affordable ($606), has the aforementioned great trigger, and it really, really shoots.

As I mentioned previously, the H&R/NEF Ultra Slug Hunter with a heavy barrel is a very accurate slug gun, as is the gun I shoot, an Ithaca Deerslayer III. I can always get Remington slugs to shoot. Winchester XP3s and Hornady SSTs are quite accurate, as are Federal’s new Trophy Copper slugs.

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By Phil Bourjaily

Slug Week continues. Today’s topic: hybrid slugs, a category comprised of Lightfield Hybreds, Winchester Rackmasters, various Brenneke* offerings and Remington Buckhammers. These slugs are all fullbore slugs with attached wads designed to shoot well in rifled barrels.

Idduckhunter asked about Rackmasters, which look like an old-style Foster slug with a wad attached to it. The year they came out, Winchester had a bunch of them at the pre-SHOT Show shooting day along with scoped Browning Gold rifled slug guns sitting in Lead Sleds. There were wooden frames set up at 100 yards with a variety of things to shoot on them: hanging bowling pins and plastic water bottles and some golf balls underneath them. I loaded a Rackmaster into one of the guns, put the crosshairs on a golf ball and pulled the trigger. The ball disappeared so fast I can’t tell you if I hooked it or sliced it, but I bet it went a long way. That is incredibly impressive accuracy (with a little luck mixed in) from a shotgun slug. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Last week coachsjke asked why I never write about slugs. Actually I have written about slugs often in the magazine*, but not so much in this space. So, we’ll discuss fullbore slugs out of smoothbore barrels for now and leave sabots for some other time.

I started out deer hunting as a participant in deer drives with our farmer neighbors in the days before rifled shotguns. We would divide up into drivers and blockers/shooters. Because my gun was one of the few in our group that had sights I was often a designated shooter and would fill my Auto 5 with old-style foster slugs. I took lots of shots at standing, walking and running deer, including shots I would not dream of taking today. I never lost a deer I hit, and a .729” hole in one side and out the other usually leaves a blood trail that is short and very easy to follow. Fullbore slugs back then had their drawbacks (recoil, poor accuracy, looping trajectory), but lethality was not one of them.
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By Phil Bourjaily

I have been skeptical of the current trend to high velocity lead shotshells. Unlike steel, which benefits from high velocity, lead is dense and retains energy well. Therefore I have always thought lead doesn’t need to be driven at high speeds to be effective.  I have shot a lot of pheasants with lead loads ranging from 1,220 fps to 1,500 fps and noticed no apparent difference in how the birds react nor in how many I bring to bag.

However, recalling my trip to Uruguay made me reconsider. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Season III of “The Gun Nuts” debuts tomorrow night on the Outdoor Channel at 7:30 p.m. EST and 11:30 p.m., and again at 3 a.m. We’ve changed the show a little--all, I think, for the better. One of the new segments is “Make the Shot” in which we talk about specific field and target situations and how to deal with them.

When I first started doing TV someone told me: “As long as you talk about what you know, you’ll be okay on camera.” With that advice in mind I chose “how to keep from totally losing it when a turkey walks into range” as a topic, although we call it here: “how to shoot spring turkeys.”

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