Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2019 i Shooting Times

AS I WAS READING THE STORY ABOUT HENRY STARR IN THE MAY ISSUE, I realized my family had a connection with that old scoundrel. My grandfather, Dr. Byran McAllister, practiced medicine in Fayetteville, Arkansas, from the late 1800s until his passing during World War II. The story goes that he received a telephone call one afternoon asking him to treat a man who had been injured. My grandfather was to get on the 7:30 p.m. Northbound Frisco train when it stopped in Fayetteville and have the conductor stop the train at a certain location where someone would be waiting for him. Awaiting Grandfather at the remote train stop was a man with two horses. Grandfather was blindfolded and placed on one of the horses. The two men then rode for…

WINCHESTER’S MODEL 1895 WAS JOHN BROWN- ing’s last and strongest lever-action design. It was also Winchester’s first to incorporate a box-type magazine compatible with pointed bullets. Introduced in 1895, it served in at least nine wars. Slightly more than 425,000 were made before the model was officially discontinued in 1936. A few more were made by special order until 1940. Although chambered in 10 different cartridges, vintage Model ’95s are most commonly encountered in the United States in .30-40 Krag. While rifle and carbine variations saw limited use by various American military branches, more than 66 percent of the Model 1895s manufactured were built under contract for the Russian military. These were chambered in 7.62-54R, fitted with stripper clip guides and bayonet lugs, and featured long musket-type fore-stocks. While made…

’VE BEEN PLEASED TO REPORT ON SEVERAL revolvers that Smith & Wesson has returned to production during the last couple years. This year the company has brought back a cult favorite—the 10mm Auto Model 610. If you are like me, you probably have a list of guns that you’ve hankered for. Nowadays, my list includes a bunch of guns I’ve always wanted, and it even includes guns that I once owned but traded off or sold and now want back. One gun that I’ve never owned but always longed for is the S&W Model 610. According to Blue Book of Gun Values, the original Model 610 was first made in 1990, again from 1998 until 2004, and again in 2009. It was built on S&W’s large N-Frame and was all…

WINCHESTER’S WILDCAT .22 LR AMMUNITION, NOT TO BE CONFUSED with Winchester’s new autoloading rifle of the same name (see Steve Gash’s gun review on page 30 in this issue), has been around since about 1971. It doesn’t get a lot of press these days, so Editor in Chief Joel Hutchcroft thought now would be a good time to highlight it. It’s a good plinking round as well as a good small-game hunting round. The Wildcat .22 LR loading carries a 40-grain copper-plated DynaPoint (CPD) bullet, and its factory-rated muzzle velocity is 1,255 fps. The factory-rated energy is 140 ft-lbs. The Wildcat .22 LR ammo comes in 500-round bricks. I test-fired the Wildcat .22 LR ammunition in my Ruger 10/22 autoloader (18.5-inch barrel), my Savage Mark I FVT single-shot target rifle…

ASKED TO DESCRIBE MY PERFECT SMALL-GAME cartridge, it would be something like this: medium caliber (.25 to .32); bullet weight of 75 to 130 grains; low velocity of from 1,600 to 2,000 fps. The bullet would be cast lead with no jacket. Such a cartridge would fit nicely into a rifle that can be carried comfortably in one hand as you prowl the woods and creek bottoms, and it would have modest noise and less recoil. Moving that way, the hunter is ready for whatever comes along, from a scurrying squirrel to a scuttling armadillo. It would make a nice turkey cartridge, and if you stalk to get close, you could hunt woodchucks with it. The term “small game” used to mean everything from crows and hawks to edible critters…

STURM, RUGER & CO. INC. HAS AN ALL-NEW .22 LR SINGLE- action revolver that’s priced right. The new Wrangler features a 4.63-inch barrel, black checkered grips, and fixed sights. It has an aluminum-alloy frame and a Cerakote finish in black, silver, or bronze. Cylinder capacity is six rounds. The Wrangler fits holsters for the Ruger Single-Six. MSRP: $249 ruger.com Burris RT-8X 24mm Competition shooters and hunters can now combine fast target acquisition at close range with true both-eyes-open 1X magnification and extremely accurate mid-range shooting with 8X magnification and 600 yards of trajectory compensation with the new RT-8X 24mm riflescope. The scope features a 30mm tube and a 24mm objective lens, and a variety of reticles is offered. MSRP: $399 to $799 depending on reticle burrisoptics.com Rossi RS22 .22 WMR…

“THERE IS NO SECOND-PLACE WINNER,” THE legendary Bill Jordan famously wrote. In gunfights, that’s true, but there could be one among the world’s military cartridges. In 1943 Russian arms technology experts began researching a new service cartridge between their battle rifle cartridge and submachine gun cartridges like the 9mm Parabellum and 7.65x25mm. They wanted a cartridge equally at home in a trio of firearms classes: light machine guns, semiautomatic carbines, and assault rifles. Eliminating many theoretical possibilities, they focused on those for which evaluation samples were created. The winner was the 7.62x39mm M43. It was at first glance much like the German 7.92x33mm cartridge except for a cartridge case that was 6mm longer. However, the case head diameter was smaller (0.433 inch versus 0.470 inch), so the Russian cartridge delivered…

NEW WHIZ-BANG CAR- tridges come and go, but the .22 Long Rifle just keeps chugging along. It has been made since 1887 in a huge assortment of loads from subsonic to hypervelocity, and it is justly considered the most popular cartridge in existence. Long guns and handguns of almost every shape and configuration continue to be made for the .22 LR. One of the latest is the Wildcat autoloader from Winchester. The Wildcat (which bears the same name as one of Winchester Ammunition’s great .22 LR loadings—read more about it in the special Quick Shot report beginning on page 56) has many new features that make it unique and practical. Winchester says the Wildcat is ultra-reliable and “purrs like a kitten.” That sounds good to me. The Wildcat is manufactured…

IN 2008 RUGER AND FEDERAL INTRODUCED THE .327 Federal Magnum. This .32-caliber cartridge boasted impressive ballistics that approach .357 Magnum ballistic levels and was intended to be a powerful personal-defense cartridge and an efficient small-game hunting round. The revolver that housed this new round was the small-frame Ruger SP101, which had a 3.06-inch barrel. The .32 caliber’s smaller size allowed small-frame .38/.357 wheelguns to add another round to their cylinder capacities. A Ruger SP101 chambered in .38 Special holds five rounds, but that same gun in .327 Federal holds six rounds. One more round might not seem like very much, but it is a very welcome addition in a gun that has limited capacity. That extra shot could be a literal lifesaver. Even from a 3.06-inch barrel, the .327 Federal’s…

THE NEW MODEL 48 NOSLER CUSTOM HANDGUN (NCH) IS A SOLID EXTEN- sion of the evolution of the “hand rifle” and to me is eerily reminiscent of the Remington XP-100. The NCH is based on Nosler’s Model 48 rifle bolt action, most of which is behind the trigger, but it is tweaked into a single shot with a solid-bottom receiver. It has a futuristic-looking stock that—without open sights—longs for glass. And it is chambered in a raft of cartridges that makes it suitable for varmint or big-game hunting, steel silhouette matches, long-range target shooting, and plain old paper-punching. It is a “custom handgun” in the sense that Nosler offers myriad options from which the shooter can choose, plus it is built by Nosler custom gunsmiths at the company’s headquarters in…

LAST MONTH I RELATED THE STORY OF OUTLAW Juan Soto’s demise at the hands of Sheriff Harry Morse. Known as the “Bloodhound of the Far West,” Morse also brought in many infamous characters like Bartolo Sepulveda and “Red-Handed” Procopio Bustamante, nephew of the legendary Joaquin Murrieta. Henry Nicholson “Harry” Morse was born on February 2, 1835, in New York City. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had fought in the War of 1812, the Revolutionary War, and the French and Indian War respectively. At the age of 10, with his parents’ blessing, Harry went to sea, and he spent four years sailing between New York and Liverpool. In 1849 he signed on to the Panama , a ship headed to the West Coast and the gold fields of California. After arriving…

SOME TIME BACK, WHILE WRITING ABOUT SPEER’S Gold Dot component rifle bullets, I mentioned that Federal Premium would soon be announcing a new series of component bullets. Those new bullets are part of the company’s Fusion hunting line, and I’ve been working with them in nine different cartridges. The smaller-caliber bullets (6.5mm, .277, and 7mm) are packaged 100 to the box, while the larger ones (.308 and .338) contain 50. The good news is that each box has a card inside with specific load data for two to four different cartridges using Alliant propellants and Federal primers. Fusion bullets are manufactured in exactly the same way as Gold Dot rifle bullets—with one significant difference. Lead/antimony alloy cores are swaged to a prescribed shape and then electroplated with a precisely controlled…