David E. Petzal

Petzal's Best Rifles, Ammo, Glass and Deals from SHOT

Online Editors — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:48:40 -0400

From the pages of Field & Stream

In a year that was otherwise economically putrid, the 2012 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show was booming. Attendance last January in Las Vegas was so heavy that there were some aisles you could not walk through, and there was lots of great new stuff to drool over. Let’s get to it.

Thompson/Center Rifles

So radical is the Dimension that T/C doesn’t even call it a rifle; they’ve labeled it an Interchangeable Bolt-Action Platform. Whatever it is, it allows you to swap bolts, magazines, and barrels (including heavy barrels) in calibers from .204 Ruger to .300 Win. Mag. I’ve shot it and hunted with it, and it works. The price for the rifle is $600. Each additional barrel is $199, and a new bolt (if required) is $49. tcarms.com

Ruger

A completely new gun, the American Rifle is based on a piston-style bolt with a non-rotary extractor. Its synthetic stock has integral aluminum bedding blocks. The trigger is two-stage and adjustable, and the magazine is detachable. Right now it comes in .243, .308, .270, and .30/06. It weighs only 61⁄4 pounds and retails for $449. ruger.com

Forbes Rifles

If you’ve lusted for a rifle made by New Ultra Light Arms but could not hack the $3,500-plus price, lament no more. Forbes Rifles is a brand-new company that’s building the Model 24B, a semicustom version of the NULA, for $1,500. Melvin Forbes makes the stocks, Forbes Rifles does the receivers, Timney supplies the triggers, and E.R. Shaw turns out the barrels. It weighs 51⁄4 pounds and comes in .270 and .30/06. I took a close look at the 24B, and I can’t tell it from a NULA. forbesriflellc.com

Montana Rifle Co.

Montana’s new gun is the DGR, which stands for Dangerous Game Rifle, and it’s a heavy, super-reliable, no-frills bolt action that will allow you to mess with death in the long grass. This is a stopping rifle done right. You can get it in chamberings that include the horrifying .505 Gibbs, the cataclysmic .460 Weatherby, and the ever-so-pleasant-by-comparison .416 Rigby. In blue steel it’s $2,399; add $100 for stainless. For what you get, that’s a bargain. montanarifleco.com

Savage

Most women’s rifles are men’s rifles with an inch hacked off the stock, but the Savage Model 11 Lady Hunter is truly designed for female shooters. The walnut stock is shorter and the comb is much higher than standard because women have longer necks than men. Savage has also slimmed the pistol grip and fore-end and lessened the front-end weight. Calibers range from .223 to .30/06. It comes in long- and short-action versions, for $819. savagearms.com

Winchester

Even though the Model 71 lever action was built for only a comparatively short time and only for one cartridge—the .348 Winchester—it earned a lasting place in the hearts of hunters. The 71 is a supremely effective rifle—fast-handling, fast-shooting, dead reliable, and powerful. This year it’s back in Standard ($1,470) and Deluxe ($1,660) grades, and it’s just as great as ever. The one weak point is its buckhorn rear sight. Ignore the silly thing and get a good rear peep sight. winchesterguns.com

Norma

This Swedish ammo maker has been in the U.S. for a long time, but in a small way. Now it intends to be a major factor in the market, which is fine with me. I’ve been using the company’s loaded ammo, brass, and powder for years, and all are of the highest quality. Norma will be offering reloading components and ammunition in all sorts of calibers including metrics and British loadings. norma.cc/en

Meopta

Reinhard Seipp, Meopta’s chief operating officer, says, “We’re not very good at publicizing ourselves, but we’re very good at making things.” Meopta is a Czech company that’s been in the optics business for 79 years and turns out riflescopes, binoculars, and spotting scopes of truly top quality and at very reasonable prices. I am in possession of a MeoStar R1 3–10x50mm, a 30mm-tube model that is a paragon of perfection and carries a real-world price tag of only $600–$650.

Kenny Jarrett, who is as fussy about scopes as any human being I know, told me, “If you can’t afford a [here he named a very famous high-priced scope], get a Meopta.” If that’s not a solid-gold endorsement, it will do until the solid-gold endorsement comes along. meoptasportsoptics.com

Carl Zeiss

Your binocular is your most important piece of hunting equipment, and a fine binocular is worth whatever you pay for it many times over. Unless you’re some kind of witless savage, you hardly need me to rave over Zeiss glasses, so I’ll simply state that the company’s new Conquest HD binoculars come in 8x42 and 10x42, are the absolute state of the art, and do not sell for $2,700, or $2,950, or $3,028.31. The real-world price is under $1,000 for either one. They are also covered by Zeiss’s new unconditional repair policy, which means that if they break, or you break them in the line of duty, Zeiss fixes them for free, period, no questions asked. www.zeiss.com/sports

From the April 2012 issue of Field & Stream magazine.

Petzal's Best Rifles, Ammo, Glass and Deals from SHOT

Online Editors — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:48:40 -0400

From the pages of Field & Stream

Ruger

Forbes Rifles

Norma

Meopta

Carl Zeiss

From the April 2012 issue of Field & Stream magazine.

Where'd The Big Texas Mule Deer Go?

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:44:13 -0500

by David E. Petzal

I’ve just returned from a non-triumphal hunt in Texas where four of us, in an area that is swarming with mule deer, went at it for five days and did not see a single shootable head. We saw spikes in battalion strength, regiments of forkhorns, and brigades of little four-points, but nothing with antlers out past its ears that had lived more than a couple of years. The big deer, who knew what was what, had vanished.

A local game biologist said this was a general condition in the area, not just on the ranch we were hunting, and that the rut, for some reason, was late this year, but that was all he knew for sure. My own guess is that the mature bucks had gone nocturnal; they simply hid until it was pitch dark; God knows there are plenty of places to hide in the high desert.

Big deer can also vanish because they get shot too much. For years, I hunted a spot in eastern Wyoming that produced good to outstanding heads and lots of them. Then, about 15 years ago, the outfitter called and said he was sending back my deposit. The quality of the antlers he was seeing could no longer justify the price of a hunt. The herd has never come back to what it was. I think if you take enough of the good racks, the big-antler genes leave the pool and the trophies peter out.

Or perhaps they go someplace else. The writer Norm Strung once got an offer from an outfitter friend named Roland Cheek to come on a horseback elk hunt. Cheek was retiring after years and years in the guiding business and he wanted to make his very last hunt with a friend. The men rode for two weeks solid and not only did not see an elk; they did not see a track. By the time they quit, Norm had blood soaking through his trousers. All for nothing. Where did the elk go? If anyone could find them, Roland Cheek could.

It’s a chance you take. As the old cliché says, that’s why they call it hunting.

Petzal's Take on Under Armour for Hunters

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:42:17 -0500

Under Armour started as a manufacturer of gym clothes for people with 28-inch waists and 52-inch chests. Recently, they branched out into hunting clothes, and this September, I found myself in a hunting camp where I was the only one not wearing something from Under Armour. Shocked and appalled at how out of touch I was, I got hold of two items from Under Armour. One is the Men’s ArmourLoft Component Hunting Jacket, and the other is the Men’s Big Shell Hunting Jacke t . I’ve worn them in fair weather and foul in New York and Maine and Montana and Wyoming, and am pleased to report they’re nothing short of terrific.

The Component Hunting Jacket is designed to be worn under the Big Shell, or it can be worn by itself. It’s devoid of bells and whistles, and is extremely warm. I don’t know what it’s stuffed with—possibly the undercoats of musk oxen—but if you get cold wearing this thing, best see a doctor. Because the stuffing is so dense, it will not squash down into a fist-sized wad, but that’s about the end of its limitations.

The Big Shell Jacket, despite being labeled a jacket, is about parka length on a person of average height. It’s very light, folds into a small package, is cut quite full, and is very simple in design. There is no special pocket for your Lone Ranger Decoder Ring. Blessedly, it comes in loden green and not camo, which means you can wear it almost anywhere and blend in and you can wear it in the off-season as well. Under Armour says it is wind and water proof, and they are not kidding.

Combined, the Component Hunting Jacket and the Big Shell Jacket will prevail against just about anything. In Maine, I sat watching a hillside from 6:30 until noon on a day when when the temperature was 34 degrees and the wind was a steady 30 mph, gusting to 40. A doe wandered by and said:

“Moron, what are you doing here? I have to be out in this weather. What’s your excuse?”

As I had none, I went back to camp and took a nap. But I never got cold.

Worn together, these two coats will handle just about anything in the way of weather. They’re light, not bulky, and reasonably priced. The Component Hunting Jacket is $120 and the Big Shell is $170.

Rot and Evil and the Military Channel

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:32:58 -0500

by David E. Petzal

Like many of you, I’m addicted to both the History Channel and the Military Channel. Were it not for them I would have to learn canasta or take up calligraphy while I wait for the end to come. The Military Channel still runs some good stuff, but I’m seeing it drift farther and farther from bullets and bayonets and more toward show biz.

The first example of this is a program called “An Officer and Movie,” in which a war film is played and the host, the actor Lou Diamond Phillips, quizzes a combat veteran about what the movie purports to show. The concept is a good one, but the films are some of the lamest military flicks ever made (Heartbreak Ridge? Spare me.) Mr. Phillips is no military authority, the officers are given no time to say anything important, and the questions are innocuous. Aside from that it’s fine.

If the Military Channel would like to do something meaningful, how about having Colonel Jack Jacobs host the program? Colonel Jacobs (USA, Ret) won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam and does military analysis for MSNBC. How about running movies like Attack, a film that stars Jack Palance and came out in 1956. It deals with cowardice under fire, and has some distinctly unpleasant things to say. Or Decision Before Dawn (1951) which was the first postwar American film to show Germans in a sympathetic light, and is about loyalty to a cause, and what it can do to you. Neither film makes for easy watching, and I’d love to see one or both on “An Officer…” but I won’t hold my breath.

The most recent disappointment came Wednesday night in the form of “Triggers.” This show, hosted by one Wil (with one “l”) Willis, purported to be about the Colt Model 1911. However, if you’d like to learn something substantive about the Colt Model 1911, you’d better buy the book Small Arms of the World, because you won’t get it here.

Mr. Willis wears a muscle shirt to show us he has muscles. (Dr. William Atwater has never felt the need.) but if he is responsible for the script, he needs to lose the shirt and grasp the concept of a coherent line of thought. This program is all over the place. Its tone and content seem to be lifted intact from Spike TV, which runs programs on who would win in a fight to the death between a samurai warrior and Justin Beiber).

“Triggers” starts with Sergeant Alvin York, segues to a comparison of the wheel lock and flintlock, includes a fast-draw segment with the Peacemaker and a shootout between that gun and a Trapdoor Springfield, takes in the virtues of the Luger, and on and on. When in doubt, Mr. Willis and guests shoot stuff to no apparent point.

The show could have asked some good questions: For example, it points out that in the 1890s, the Army dropped the .45 in favor of the .38 Special, which quickly proved inadequate. Why? Was the Army stupid? (Answer: yes. Our small arms procurement has never been particularly good, except for some notable successes such as the Model 1911 pistol, the M-1 rifle, and the M2 machine gun. Our introduction of the M-16 to combat was a case study in military incompetence. At the end of World War II, the U.S. ignored the German Sturmgewehr, the first assault rifle, but the Soviets did not. The result was that they developed the most successful infantry rifle of all time—the AK-47—and we did not.)

Then in 1985, the Army did the exact same thing, replacing the Model 1911 with the 9mm Beretta M9, which no one seems to like very much, and which is just as inadequate as the .38 Special. Why? Is the Army stupid? (Answer: yes.) Mr. Willis allowed that special ops units still use the 1911? Why? No answer.

Perhaps “Triggers” will improve. I hope so. Meanwhile, three pieces of advice for Mr. Willis: Lose the muscle shirt and pay some attention to your storyline. Fire whoever does the graphics. A Colt Model 1873 is not a Colt Model 1860 Army. And finally, the velocity of the .45 Long Colt bullet is around 750-850 fps, not 1,200 fps.

November 22, 1963

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:11:28 -0500

by David E. Petzal

If you were alive on that day and old enough to understand what was happening, you will remember it with a clarity that attaches to very few of your other memories. I was a brand new soldier waiting for my second haircut in two days at the 4th Regimental barber shop at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, listening to the radio, which said that President Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas. I have no recollection of my college graduation, which took place only a few months before, but I can remember that with startling clarity.

Even before Kennedy had been laid in his grave, the rumors started, and never stopped. The government said that the President had been shot by one Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, using one of the worst military rifles of all time. People did not believe the government in droves. Who could credit that a twisted geek, a loser who had failed at everything he had ever tried, could have killed King Jack and altered history?

And so we have shooters in the grove of trees, shooters in sewers, shooters on the overpass, and conspiracy theories beyond counting. There have been scores of recreations to see if Oswald could have done what he did. There have been official investigations, and reports. Most likely, it will never be laid to rest.

Years ago, the SHOT Show used to be held in Dallas, and I would sneak out to visit Dealey Plaza to see what I could see. And what I saw was something that I don’t think has ever been mentioned. Looking at the scene with the eye of a rifle shooter, I was struck by how little distance there is between the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository and the spot where Kennedy’s limousine was when the shots were fired. It was so close that Oswald could have thrown the Carcano out the window and achieved the same result.

I once discussed the assassination with a crime reporter, and his take was this: If more than 40 years have passed, and not one shred of credible evidence to the contrary has emerged, then the story we got is what actually happened. So be it.

If you go to Dealey Plaza you can stand on the Grassy Knoll and look out at the highway leading from Dallas to the airport and see essentially the same thing that Jack Kennedy saw in his last few seconds on earth. And even if you are not an admirer of his (as I was not) you can’t help but think, “You poor son of a bitch.”

The Melvin Forbes Lightweight Bolt Action Model 24B Rifle

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:38:51 -0500

by David E. Petzal

Before Melvin Forbes came along, the path to a featherweight big-game rifle was to take a conventional bolt action, chop, gouge, hack, and drill it until all the excess steel was gone, then screw in a short barrel the diameter of a soda straw and bed the whole mess in a scrawny stock made out of bass wood. I encountered just such a rifle in a deer camp in the Adirondacks in 1969, and it frightened me so badly I lived in the woods for two days.

In the early 1980s, a West Virginia gunsmith named Melvin Forbes was approached by a customer who, the preceding fall, had been caught in a Montana blizzard and, at the end of his strength, was forced to hang his heavy rifle in a tree in order to slog through the drifts. So when he got back, he asked Melvin to build something really light, and Melvin did. Having a horror of not doing things right, he built what the man wanted using a Remington 600 action, and turned out a .308 that weighed under 6 pounds with scope and was not a boiled-down monstrosity.

But then Forbes thought, why not do the job from scratch, and really do it right? He got together with two friends from the aerospace industry and designed a Kevlar/graphite stock that weighed only 16 ounces, but was stiffer than a steel barrel, and so strong that a pickup truck could roll over it without doing more than chipping the paint. Then, he designed his own bolt action, looking at things that people had never looked at before, even down to the scope mounts. And when he was done there was no excess weight to chop, hack, or gouge because it was never there in the first place. His first rifle, Ultra Light Arms serial number 1, weighed just over 5 pounds with scope. It had a 20-inch #1 contour barrel, a full-sized stock, and the same amount of bearing area in the bolt lugs as a standard rifle. (Nosler had an Ultra Light action on one of its test rifles that cycled over a million rounds before it was retired.) The gun was dead accurate, stable, safe, and mild-kicking.

Ultra Light Arms (later New Ultra Light Arms) was started in 1983. Since then, Forbes has turned out several thousand in all calibers from .22 rimfire to .416 Rigby. Prices range from $3,000 to $3,400-plus, depending on what kind of options you want. Melvin has 9 different models, and offers all sorts of stock colors and camo patterns, Timney or Jewell triggers, muzzle brakes or not, right- or left-hand actions, and on.

Forbes had always wanted to produce a more affordable rifle and, in the early 90s made a deal with Colt Industries to produce a non-custom version of his design. Colt, which at the time would have screwed up the recipe for ice water, botched the project, and few guns were produced.

But the idea remained, and now there will be an affordable Ultra Light, produced by Forbes Rifle LLC. This is a joint venture. Titan Machine Products, in Westbrook, ME, will do the actions. Timney triggers will remain as standard. The barrel maker has not been named, but Melvin auditioned different makes until he found one that shot the way he liked. The stocks will continue to be made at the NULA factory in West Virginia.

The MSRP, as of now, is $1,500, which places it in the upper tier of factory guns and way below custom rifles. Only 24-inch barrels will be offered, chambered in .270 and .30/06. Later on we will see .25/06, 7mm Remington Magnum, and .300 Winchester Magnum. The weight will be 5 ¼ pounds without scope. The basic stock color will be black, but other solid colors will later brought on line (no camo patterns). The first guns should be appearing at dealers in the first quarter of 2012.

How good are they? Perhaps the best way to answer is thus: I got my first Ultra Light in 1986. Since then, I own, or have owned them in .22 rimfire, .22/250, .220 Swift, .270, 7mm Weatherby Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum, .30/06, 6.5x55, 7mm/08, .340 Weatherby, .308, and .338. And I paid for them all. (I couldn’t afford to keep them all, but that’s another story.) They are go-to rifles. I have used them a ton, from Africa to Alaska. A higher endorsement than that I cannot give. And now you can get one at half the price I paid.

The Trijicon Accupoint 3X-9X: A High Quality Scope For a Reasonable Price

Sarah Smith — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:12:42 -0500

by David E. Petzal

Trijicon (which is an American company, by the way) is probably best known for its ACOG red-dot sight, which is currently issued to the United States Marine Corps so they can shoot whoever disagrees with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even if you’re not a Marine, you should be aware of the company’s line of conventional Accupoint rifle scopes. They are of extremely high quality, and I used an Accupoint 3X-9X (Model TR20-1) on a .270 to end the career of a Wyoming mule deer a little while ago.

I’ve long had a Trijicon 2.5X-10X-56 on my beanfield rifle, so the brand is nothing new to me, but in case it is to you, what makes Trijicon unique is its ambient-light-powered aiming dot system, used in conjunction with standard or mil-dot crosshairs, or with Trijicon’s post reticle (which is what I have on the beanfield gun). The Trijicon system works to perfection, uses no batteries (in case there’s no ambient light a tritium implant takes over), and lets you adjust the brightness of the dot to where you like it.

My experience with the dot is that you’ll seldomly need it, unless you make a practice of hunting in first and last light. But every once in a while, as I found in Wyoming, it makes all the difference. If that deer had not been standing in a light-colored part of the field so I could get a good look at him, and if I had not had the green dot to aim with, it would have been a different story.

Last summer I had occasion to compare my beanfield Trijicon to three other scopes that cost a lot more (and I do mean a lot) and was shocked at how good its optics are. They stood up just fine in the company of scopes that cost half again as much.

The MSRP for the 3X-9X is $900, but in the real world I see it being sold for $700 and change, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you could get one for less than that. At any price, it’s a great all-around scope. For more intel, go to trijicon.com.

If You Think You Hit, Keep Looking

Online Editors — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:10:35 -0500

by David E. Petzal

This past week, in Wyoming, I was watching deer come into a field of winter wheat, looking for a nice eating buck. At just about the last minute of shooting light I saw one, facing me at 125 yards. I put the crosshair on the center of his chest, pulled the trigger, and he ran like hell with not a sign of being hit.

Usually the center-chest shot is instantly deadly. Last year, I hit a whitetail buck in Maine in that spot and he simply sagged sideways, deader than meaningful tax reform. But this buck ran off into the dark, surrounded by half a dozen other panicked ungulates. I sat and waited the customary 5 minutes, took out my flashlight and went to the spot where he had his collision with a rapidly moving object, and looked for blood. Nothing; not a drop.

The other two hunters in my party arrived, and they didn’t see any signs of a hit either. But I was sure I’d gotten him. I had a good, steady rest, and when the gun went bang the little green dot* was right where it was supposed to be. So we looked, and after 10 nerve-wracking minutes we found him, piled up about 125 yards from where he’d taken my bullet.

Said bullet, a 130-grain Hornady SST**, had demolished his lungs and penetrated two-thirds of his body length, exiting behind his ribs. How he could take a hit like that, show no sign of it, not bleed a drop and run as far as he did is beyond me, but that’s what happened.

The moral of this is that if you think you hit and your sight picture looked good, you probably did hit, and you are obliged to look and keep looking until you find a dead critter. Very often you’ll get a flinch or a leap, or the thump of a bullet strike, and very often you’ll see where the hooves dug in and find at least a drop or two of blood. But very often you won’t, and this is nothing more than a sign to look all the harder.

*More about the little green dot in a subsequent post.

**I’ve used a variety of the new Hornady bullets over the past 3 years, and their performance has been unfailingly flawless.

Good Ammo: Berger Bullets

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:07:13 -0400

by David E. Petzal

Recently, at a shoot where I qualified at 600 yards, I heard the word “Berger” so often it was like working at Wendy’s. These Bergers were not beef, but copper and lead; it seemed everyone and his uncle was handloading the creations of Walt Berger, a Hall of Fame benchrest shooter—including myself.

Berger makes target, varmint, hunting, and tactical bullets, all to match standards. The ones I was shooting were the second category, called Hunting VLD (for Very Low Drag), .308, 155-grain. VLDs are made with J4 copper jackets, lead cores, very small hollow points, a very long secant ogive, and a pronounced boattail base. They come in 6mm through .308. What I can tell you also is that they are exceedingly aerodynamic. The wind can’t seem to grab them, and they drop far less than the numbers say they should. Every time I estimated how much to hold over at long range, they hit higher than I guessed.

Hunting VLDs are quick expanders. They’re designed to get several inches inside whatever you’re shooting and then come unglued. I haven’t taken anything with them, but Kenny Jarrett has, and he says that while they’re not instant killers, they’re extremely reliable killers.

Bergers are not loaded by any of the big ammo manufacturers, but they are loaded by three custom ammo makers whose address you can get from the Berger website, which is bergerbullets.com.