Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2017 i Guns & Ammo

IT WAS THE LATE 1960S, and Guy Hogue had a problem: Like so many other shooters and Southern California law enforcement (LE) officers, the grips of his sidearm didn’t fit his hands. He solved that problem, as did many others, by making his own grips. Unlike those others, his not only fit his hands but the hands of other shooters as well. And as a bonus, they looked good. Unlike the rest of those personal grip-makers, he had a steady stream of officers at his garage workshop looking for a set of grips for their revolvers. He soon found that his workshop wasn’t large enough to handle the volume of work, so he moved into a dedicated workspace. In rapid succession, he left law enforcement, expanded his new business, and…

“NEW” CARTRIDGES arrive every day and can vary in significance from one individual’s pet project to an entire shooting demographic’s preferred wildcat. The 6mm Creedmoor is one of the latter. The roots of the 6mm Creedmoor lie, unsurprisingly, with its parent cartridge: the 6.5mm Creedmoor. The 6.5 hit the market in 2008 and was almost before its time. Hornady designed the 6.5mm Creedmoor to function with Very Low Drag (VLD) bullets, fit in detachable box magazines and keep the bullet’s bearing surface above the case’s neck/shoulder junction. Hornady designed the cartridge for across-the-course competitive rifle shooting. History shows that the 6.5 Creedmoor became much more popular than Hornady ever expected. Long-range shooting at the recreational and competitive levels experienced a sharp increase in participation immediately following the introduction of the…

Really expensive .22LR match ammunition proved that it has a place in the world, for sure. Olympians and other seriously competitive shooters definitely benefit from the extreme accuracy these loads can produce. Shooters interested in the absolute bleeding edge capability of this type of ammunition will likely get their money’s worth. The rest of us probably don’t benefit to that degree, however. Looking hard at the groups, there’s not a lot of accuracy difference between Federal bulk (and other inexpensive ammunition) and the super-expensive match loads at 25 yards (unless we’re shooting at really tiny targets). A couple tenths of an inch was the difference between the top performers and the bottom half. The chronograph showed that some of the weaker accuracy performers had the lowest standard deviations. I attribute…

THE NEW MOTV APP is one of the most important initiatives of the company I work for, the Outdoor Sportsman Group (OSG). In case you are unaware, OSG owns and operates many other shooting, hunting and fishing titles, including Shooting Times, Firearms News, Rifleshooter, Handguns and Petersen’s Hunting, as well as several fish and game magazines and numerous special interest publications. In addition to this family of print and web-based media are outdoor shows featured on the company’s three TV networks: the Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel and World Fishing Network. Until now, viewers had to catch or record an episode on these platforms during a particular time slot. Enter MOTV. Subscription based, MOTV stands for “My Outdoor TV.” It’s like Hulu or Netflix, but for the outdoor community. The content…

IN 2011, BUSHNELL unveiled its HDMR scope, a new flagship model intended for the long-range precision and tactical shooting audiences. However, many greeted the new scope with skepticism. Bushnell was not an established brand in these circles, so few were willing to purchase one to see if it would track accurately and hold up to abuse in the field. I became a believer in the HDMR scopes after visiting with some former teammates at Fort Bragg. They were senior instructors at the Special Forces Sniper School and decided to experiment with the HDMR by putting these scopes on all of the student rifles and running them through the eight-week course. It was an informal field test to see if the scopes could track accurately and withstand the treatment that comes…

SPANISH KERR REVOLVER Q: I have an old cap-and-ball revolver that was my grandfather’s. It has been in the same condition (poor) for as long as I can remember. It appears to be a side-hammer version, but there is no manufacturer or writing of any kind. There is a three-digit number on the right side of the frame (3XX) and two markings on the cylinder. I hope they come out in the pictures. An interesting feature, the cylinder rotates when the trigger is pulled, just like a DA revolver. Any help identifying this piece would be greatly appreciated as Grandpa is no longer with us. Thank you. A.L. Broken Arrow, Oklahoma A: An intriguing piece you have there. It is a Spanish copy of the English Kerr percussion revolver.…

UNTIL NOW, determining the best rangefinder was about measuring distance. With the new Monarch 7i VR, Nikon brought the focus back to practical accuracy. The ability for a laser rangefinder to reach targets at 1,000 yards has existed for 10 years. There hasn’t been a novel approach to rangefinding technology that’s made sense to hunters in that time. Nikon changed that by incorporating its vibration reduction (VR) technology we’ve seen in its high-end spotters and camera lenses to this small, handheld tool. If you’ve ever struggled with holding the reticle of another rangefinder still against a target, you’re likely one of us who applaud Nikon’s achievement. Perhaps you’ve hunted an animal that made your hands tremble with excitement. Or maybe you’ve endured frigid temperatures that wouldn’t let you steady your…

WHILE ATTENDING the 2016 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, a 30-something shooting instructor approached me from a large federal organization. His question caught me off guard: “How do you get shooters past the urban legend of not placing their M4 or AR-15 magazine on the ground while shooting?” I was befuddled; we had slayed this Holy Cow years ago in the secretive sects of Special Operations. I thought, How could shooters in 2016 be stuck in 1968? He went on to say there were several influential shooters in his world that worshiped at the altar of, “Thou shalt not use thy magazine as a mono-pod.” An easy fix to this is to simply rattle off with a, “Dang. You dumb!” Of course, that isn’t going to fix the problem of…