Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i Gun Digest

A few weeks back, I was somewhere in the middle of a 14-hour road trip when my mind began to wander, as minds tend to do when the hum of the tires turns into a lullaby. The topography of central South Dakota didn’t offer much visual distraction at that particular mile-marker, and I got to mindlessly looking over the labyrinth of buttons, dials and switches that adorn the inside of my truck. There are so many controls within arm’s reach and, if it’s not too bold to say, that truck is damn shiny when the chrome is polished and the black paint is clean. As the highway continued on, I drift ed back to the age of 10 or so, playing the part of Dad’s wingman at a local auto…

“Somewhere in your gun is the bullet that will solve your problem. It might be the first one, or it might be the last one,” says David “Boon” Benton. There’s a lot of wisdom in that quote, and there are several lessons to be learned from it. I think many who carry a gun for personal protection often get too wrapped up in their gear. They’ll obsess about the gun they carry or the ammunition that’s inside it, but quite often they’ll overlook the fact that in most cases it won’t be the gun or the ammunition that saves their life. Mindset, tactics and marksmanship and gun handling tend to be the things that determine outcomes. Gun writers like me are often the reason the focus gets misplaced; for years,…

01 Springfield Model 2020 Waypoint With its first bolt-action rifle, Springfield Armory provides a top-shelf option to upgrade your next hunt. Like any rifle worth its salt, the heart of the Model 2020 Waypoint is a strong action. Constructed from stainless steel and kept to exceedingly tight tolerances, the Model 2020 action features glass-smooth EDM-machined lug raceways, fluted bolt and dual cocking cams. Lightening the load is a hand-laid stock from AG Composites, complete with full pistol grip, optional adjustable comb and pillar bedding. Added to this is an optional carbon-fiber wrapped barrel from BSF barrels, and you have an iron that in its lightest models tips the scales at well under 7 pounds. MSRP: Starting at $1,699 02 Leupold SX-2 Alpine HD Enhancing a hunt in big country means…

I was on an African hunt with a .404 Jeffery set up over shooting sticks with a wildebeest bull nearly 200 yards away. My PH, Cornus du Plooy, gave the green light. I broke the trigger, heard the bullet’s impact and, after recoil, saw the bull fall. “It’s a good rifle, that,” Cornus commented. He certainly wasn’t wrong. That particular rifle—a Heym Express by Martini—was stocked perfectly for my frame. The Express’ stock is designed by famed gunsmith Ralf Martini, and that’s among my favorite stock designs ever produced. After that first experience with that .404 Jeffery, I got to thinking long and hard about what makes a proper rifle stock. I admit that, until I held some of the finer British and European rifles, I was woefully ignorant as…

At one time, the .50-caliber Hawken was America’s general-purpose rifle. About 70 years later, it was replaced by the Winchester 94 in .30-30 Winchester, and after World War I, the bolt-action .30-06 became America’s one-rifle answer. It remained so until the turn of the 21st century. At that time, the AR-15—or modern sporting rifle (MSR) as it’s known among the politically correct—and the easy recoiling .223 Remington stole that title away. Modern advancements in weaponry, ammunition and optical sights were partly responsible for these transitions. Interestingly, we passed from a single-shot, to a lever-action, to a bolt-action and to a semi-automatic. We also went from a rifle delivering about 500 ft-lb of energy at 100 yards to one with 1,400 (.30-30 Winchester), to 2,000 (.30-06 Springfield) and 900 (.223 Remington)…

HISTORICAL NOTES Announced in 1958, the .338 Winchester Magnum is another of the series based on the .458 Winchester necked down. Initially available only in the Winchester Model 70 Alaskan bolt-action rifle, Remington adopted it for the 700 Series bolt action. Some of the European rifle makers also chamber it, as does Ruger for the Model 77 and No. 1 rifles, Mossberg in the Patriot line, Savage in the 110 series, as well as many custom and semi-custom rifles. Browning’s BAR autoloader also chambers it. .338 WINCHESTER MAGNUM LOADING DATA GENERAL COMMENTS With proper bullets, the .338 Winchester Magnum shoots almost as flat across 500 yards as similar loads in the various .30-caliber magnums—the difference amounts to only a few inches more drop. Designed to handle the heaviest North American…

“Custom-molded earplugs, 31 NRR rated, for $30.” Standing at a booth on range day at the SHOT Show and hearing this, I was certain either my hearing was finally calling it quits after decades of shooting—or I was having a stroke. “You mean $300, right?” The answer, with a smile, was “No, $30. And you can custom fit them at home.” OK, now I was hooked. “Tell me more.” The custom-fitted ear protection is a clever product from Decibullz, and they’re a product of modern chemistry. The plugs start shape in a more-or-less earplug form. You drop them in boiling water and let them boil away for 5 minutes. You fish them out, let them cool and dry, and then press them into your ears. Obviously, you don’t want boiling-hot…

Modifying your Glock to look good on social media isn’t hard—but carefully choosing what modifications you make that enhance your Glock’s performance while retaining factory reliability is a lot harder. With a sea of choices, separating the high-quality parts that enhance your pistol from those that are nothing more than tinsel can be a challenge. Just because you can find high-quality parts that can tailor your pistol to fit whatever role you use your Glock doesn’t mean that Glock Perfection needs perfection. In stock form, the Glock is probably the single best duty pistol ever produced and is more than capable of nearly every handgun owner worldwide. Even though your pistol is fine, there are some good reasons to modify it. The question is, what are the most beneficial modifications…

If you consider the evolution of the rifle, the goal has always been—and remains—to shoot with extreme precision, as far as possible, while experiencing the least recoil and influence from wind and gravity. Just look at the evolution of .30-caliber rifle cartridges; we went from the .30-30, to the .30-06, to the .300 Winchester Magnum and now to the .300 PRC. The desire to overcome the adverse effects of wind and gravity push the design of cartridges and bullets, and shooters relish every advancement no matter how minute. So, when someone argues that we don’t need a new rifle cartridge, what they’re essentially saying is that there’s nothing to be created that’ll be desirable or useful. Well, that’s clearly not true. The enhancement of external ballistics has been the driving…

Across the thousand years that people have been using guns, there have been innumerable materials used to achieve the goal of launching a projectile at a target. In the grand scheme, carbon fiber is just another material applied to that end and not specifically devoted for it. Muskets were greasy affairs, and anyone who is a muzzleloader aficionado will be familiar with all manner of mess. These shooters use everything from animal fat and butter to wax and entrails to work on their guns and load them. Greased fabric patches are wrapped around round balls and rammed down, waiting to be fired by flint striking steel. Mass production in the era after the Industrial Revolution saw machine guns with barrels surrounded by water tanks as a means of keeping them…

In the firearms world, perfection doesn’t exist. Thank goodness. After all, how boring would perfection be the next morning? Most people know things can always be better, and the best of us know they should be. That quest to make things better every day isn’t perfection—it’s precision. I have no doubt why it’s in the name of the company Tom Houghton Sr. started in 1978: H-S Precision. What is the H-S Precision brand? “I want the H-S Precision brand to be known as the highest-quality products in the firearms industry offered at a fair price,” says Tim Houghton, vice president and chief operating officer for H-S Precision based in Rapid City, South Dakota. “We will continue to design, engineer and manufacture every component of the products that we offer. We…

Spoiler alert: I’m not the neatest guy in the world. While not technically a slob, most of my guns could use a thorough cleaning, and so could my reloading gear. I find cleaning rifles a necessary but mundane chore. Sometimes we need to turn an eye to our reloading tools themselves and give them some attention to keep things running smoothly and delivering consistent results. POLISHED BRASS Regarding the cleaning of cases, there are several methods you can choose, depending on your personal preference. Some reloaders like to clean all of their cases before they even see a resizing die, leaving the spent primer in the case during the cleaning process, and letting the resizing die push that old primer out. Others want to get rid of that primer so…

For decades, .22 LR rifles fell into three categories. There was the “grandpa’s squirrel gun” class of rifles from Marlin, Ruger and the other big American manufacturers. Then, there was the Europeans—the Olympians—with hard-to-pronounce names like Anschütz and Feinwerkbau. The single-malt scotch set of American shooters had a few high-dollar walnut and blued-steel options—the Dakotas and Coopers—but by design they weren’t widely available to the dirty, accuracy-obsessed masses. Then, came the internet, where shooting nerds shared tips and tricks for ringing no-bull accuracy out of less-than-perfect rifles. With an accurate .22 LR, a competition Precision Rifle Series or National Rifle League shooter could train on the cheap. Hundreds of rimfire rounds could be sent downrange in a weekend without spending hundreds of dollars on centerfire components and a long evening…

You should be aware that the AR-15 is an incredibly popular rifle platform in America, and for good reason. Relatively inexpensive, light recoiling, reliable and easily adaptable to a particular role are all huge factors in why it’s grown to be crowned as “America’s Rifle.” And if I may be completely frank, those are the same reasons that we have a sea of subpar parts all over the market. Experience and several hours of exhaustive research on Facebook tell me that the AR-15 is misunderstood by a huge number of AR owners. So, before you jump on AliExpress and order all of the Chinesium parts you can find, this is where I would start to get the most out of my rifle—and get the most from my money when considering…