RifleShooter, the magazine dedicated to advanced rifle enthusiasts. All rifle sports are covered including hunting, target shooting and collecting, while focusing on fine custom rifles, great classics, and new high-tech designs.
Ready, Set, Collect! Imagine my surprise when I checked out Jeff John’s “So You’re Ready to Collect” article. After looking at the picture on page eight, I immediately ran to my gun safe to make sure no one visited it in my absence. Sure enough, my 1916 vintage Remington Model 14 in .30 Rem. and my 1939-vintage Winchester Model 70 in .30 Holland & Holland were still there! Both rifles were purchased from a good friend’s father’s estate. The Remington 14 is a pure pleasure to hunt deer with, and the Winchester 70 took an Idaho 46-inch bull moose in 2021. The Remington 14 is all original while the Winchester 70 came with a G&H side scope mount and an Alaskan 2.5X scope. A new one-inch set of G&H rings…
LANDS & GROOVES I love long-range precision shooting. Call me old-fashioned but it’s so much more fun when you’re running a .22 LR rifle. No recoil, it’s quieter, and I’m still refining the same skill set needed to run a larger caliber rifle. If you like pushing the envelope like I do, you probably enjoy challenging yourself by shooting from various positions. Prone, half kneeling, seated, standing, using a barricade, ladder or even shooting off a tractor tire can put you in an uncomfortable position that makes it harder for you to run the gun and perform at your best. Unfortunately, sometimes these awkward positions don’t work well for our aging bodies. For example, I know a lot of guys struggle with shooting prone simply because their head, neck and…
The 7x57, also known as the .275 Rigby or 7mm Mauser, was developed by the great Paul Mauser way back in 1892. Initially a military cartridge fielded by Spain, it raised holy hell against .30-40 Krag-armed Americans in Cuba just prior to the turn of the 19th century. The British and their .303 took a licking courtesy of the 7x57 during the Boer wars in South Africa as well. The 7x57 was soon supplanted by more modern military cartridges, but it soldiered on in the sporting world. It has an illustrious hunting history—famously used by W.D.M. Bell for elephant culling and Jim Corbett for dispatching man-eating cats. It was also a favorite of Jack O’Connor’s wife, Eleanor. The 7mm-08 was originally a wildcat created by necking down the .308 Win.,…
During the decade after World War II, gunsmith P.O. Ackley pioneered the “improved” cartridge case. Steepening the shoulder angle and fire-forming most of the taper out of a cartridge case’s body increases internal capacity. With more room for gunpowder, hand-loaders achieve significantly greater velocities. Plus, since the datum point at the shoulder/neck juncture is maintained, parent versions of the cartridge in question may safely be fired in the improved chamber. Best known of the myriad cartridges Ackley modified—from the .22 Ackley Hornet to the .475 Ackley Mag.—is the .280 Ackley Improved, so we’ll use it for discussion in this article and to spotlight the characteristics of improved cases, as applied to handloading. The .280 Ackley was submitted to SAAMI by Nosler in 2008, so it’s a legitimate factory cartridge now.…
As long as hunters hunt, shooters shoot and collectors collect, it’s a safe bet that lever-action rifles and carbines are going to be with us. Although Mossberg and Henry have produced traditional tubular-magazine center-fire lever guns since the early 1970s and mid-2000s, respectively, the two preeminent old-school brand names are, of course, Winchester and Marlin. There are literally acres of Model 94s and 336s out there, still doing yeoman service in the deer woods. But there’s another, little-known lever gun once made by Stevens, and it’s pretty slick indeed. The Model 425 High Power is easily the nicest traditional tubular magazine lever-action rifle you may have never have heard of. The Model 425 was manufactured from 1911 to 1917, a couple of years before Stevens fell under the Savage umbrella.…
While the handy little Marlin Model 1894 Classic in .44 Mag. is new, Marlin actually introduced its design close to 130 years ago. At that time the .44-40 Win., first offered by Winchester in the Model 1873 and later in the Model 1892, had become the most popular deer cartridge in America. The action of Marlin’s Model 1893—which eventually evolved into the Model 336 that was also brought back to life this year—was too long for the .44-40 cartridge, so it was shortened and renamed the Model 1894. The .25-20, .32-20 and .38-40 Win. were also available. Marlin discontinued the 1894 in 1935, and if not for the 1955 introduction of the .44 Mag., the little deer thumper would likely have remained in its grave. Ruger introduced the gas-operated Deerstalker…
