Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Gun Digest

Rumors have flown at the trap ranges about grizzled, blue-rock busters cooling their barrels on hot afternoons via a vat of water. Old-time buffalo hunters did something similar (used liquid) to keep their irons from overheating under the blazing prairie sun. Needless to say, they didn’t have a tub of water at hand—usually only a full bladder—as if the corrosive percussion caps and primers of the day weren’t enough. Either way—the dunk tank or dropping trow—it seems barbaric. Particularly nowadays. Still, if you have any interest about where you’re hitting, not to mention keeping your rifle’s chamber throat smoother than alligator skin, helping your barrel keep its cool has to remain at the top of your mind. No Use Getting Hot Under the Collar In a more leisurely era, the…

I have a penchant for big-bore rifles and cartridges. It’s not necessarily that I’m in love with a ton of recoil (although I don’t mind it); it’s that grabbing for one of my big-bore rifles usually means I’m heading on a hunt for dangerous—or at least very large—game. Let’s get this out of the way early on: You can hunt 95 percent of the world’s game species with a cartridge no bigger than 7mm or .30 caliber. Premium bullets give the best balance of expansion and penetration we’ve ever experienced, and a good heavy-for-caliber 7mm or .30 is a formidable projectile. So, it’s plain to see that your dangerous-game rifle will probably be the least used. Nevertheless, it’s the most important choice of rifle—when you need it, you really need…

When I mentioned I was hunting wild hogs in Texas with an air rifle, a lot of people looked at me as if I were crazy. The usual questions were, “You’re going to shoot a mean-tempered wild boar with a BB gun?” or, “What are you taking as backup when he charges?” “No, no, no!” I exclaimed. Air rifles have changed since we were kids. And, it’s no BB gun; it’s the 50-caliber Air Venturi Dragon Claw, firing stout chunks of lead—210-grain pellets, if you can call a 210-grain lead projectile a “pellet”—at serious velocities. Test results with a 225-grain projectile hit 679 fps and 230 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle. Here’s the kicker: The Dragon Claw also shoots an Air Bolt, a 23-inch arrow designed to be fired…

It seems any and everyone associated with firearms training wants a technique or drill tied to their name. Some television/Internet trainers go to great efforts to talk trash about one stance in order to promote their own. This has been a common theme since Jeff Cooper codified the Weaver stance in his Modern Technique of the Pistol. The Internet is rife with arguments about shooting stances, with proponents preaching the wonders of everything from the Weaver to a turtled-out isosceles. This leaves the average defensive handgunner wondering exactly how they should stand when they’re shooting their handgun. The problem is that if you go to five different handgun training schools, you’ll learn at least five different stances—or at least five different variations of the same stance. Is everybody right? Are…

For many years, Winchester’s Model 70 was the standard by which all other centerfire bolt-action rifles were compared. Introduced in 1936, it was a time when bolt-actions were well on the way to replacing the great lever guns of the prior century. Our doughboys who served in World War I with 1903 Springfields came home with an appreciation of the inherent accuracy and rugged reliability of bolt-actions. During the Great War, the major American gun companies were already making plans to develop new firearms for the civilian market. Not long after the war was over, Remington, along with Winchester and Eddystone Arsenal, had supplied troops with the Model 1917 Springfield and developed a civilian version in .30-06 known as the Remington Model 30. Savage unveiled its first bolt-action—the Model 1920…

Going on a century ago, Elmer Keith and Phil Sharpe were really onto something by hot-rodding the .38 Special. Arguably, their tinkering in the all-American pursuit of “more muscle” produced perhaps the greatest revolver cartridge of all time. At the very least, the .357 Magnum is the king of the 20th century. What other hand-cannon caliber is, in the same breath, both manageable and devastatingly powerful? Certainly not the bucky .41 Magnum and the downright cranky .44 Mag. And while the newish .327 Fed. Mag. has the virtue of eminent shoot-ability, it’s ballistically a small fry compared to the granddaddy Magnum. It’s thanks to the .357 Magnum’s nearly perfect middle ground that the defensive revolver continues to soldier on. Despite the platform being dated in this era of semi-automatic pistols,…

Show up at the range with a .50-caliber handgun, and folks don’t fail to notice. It elicits whispers about compensating for alleged inadequacies and some comments about your mental state. Others secretly hope you bury the front sight in your forehead. That said, you will not fail to draw attention every time you touch off the behemoth and it thunders the way only a large displacement cartridge can. But aside from drawing sometimes unwanted attention, what are these big revolvers good for? Big-game hunting, plainly and simply. Well, at least that’s what I use them for! There are a number of .50-caliber handguns readily available commercially that are chambered in .50 AE, .500 JRH, .500 Wyoming Express and the “horsepower king”—the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum. However, the .500 Linebaugh…

Firearms with big bores have always been an attraction for some shooters. There might be some argument about what constitutes a “big” bore, but we can all agree on the rock ’n’ roll motto, “Some is good, more is better, too much is not enough.” As much fun as it is to shoot the big boomers, you still have to hit what you’re aiming at. The traditional large-bore rifle sight setup came to us from the British—the “express” sight. This is a front sight, often with a large bead on its face, and the rear sight is a blade shaped in a shallow “V”—again, often with a line up the center to the point of the V. Yes, it’s wicked fast. But you have to remember one thing: It was…

You might have noticed it on the neck and shoulder of your rifle cases—a rainbow-like coloration on the brass case. What you’re seeing is the result of a process called “annealing,” which is a means of keeping the brass soft. Simply put: The brass is heated to a temperature between 500 and 800 degrees (Fahrenheit) and then quenched to cool rapidly. The Chosen Metal Brass was chosen as a material for our cartridge cases for its malleability, strength and rigidity. It’s durable enough to withstand the rigors of life (copper was tried, but it proved to be too soft—as the stuck cases from the battle at the Little Big Horn showed), yet it is pliable enough to be easily formed and reshaped. Brass, unlike steel, becomes softer when heated and…

here I was, cruising a gun show many years ago. I spied a bolt-action rifle with a nice-looking stock on it sitting on one of the myriad tables. It was classic in design. Solid recoil pad. A Mauser action. OK, I thought, picking it up. Oh, a .375 H&H. I worked the action (that tells you how long ago it was—they didn’t use zip ties on the actions back then), and it felt pretty smooth. I threw it to my shoulder, and the sights were dead on. This rifle fit me! I looked at the receiver, expecting to see a set of German or Argentine proofmarks. Instead, I saw “Inter-arms” and “Mauser Mark X.” This was getting interesting, so I flipped the price tag over and blinked. This was a…

Punt guns were oversized black-powder shotguns used by market hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were capable of downing scores of ducks with a single shot. However, to impugn them is to misunderstand the purpose, economic demands of the time and the world in which market hunters lived. These were specialty guns, relatively rare, singular and deadly effective in purpose in the hands of skilled hunters plying their trade in a time of flocks of ducks so thick they darkened the sky. A 1914 listing of “owners of big guns in the vicinity of Susquehanna Flats, Maryland,” listed 16 owners, three of them with two big guns each, for a total of 19 guns. A description of the guns stated, “These guns are all about the same…

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