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If the rumours are true, and the ATF is disbanded, can we just turn over the enforcement of laws regarding our 2nd Amendment rights to another agency?
You know, like the one that is responsible for enforcing the laws regulating our 1st Amendment rights?
Oh. Wait…
Hunting season is upon us, but I’m not sure how much and to what extent I’ll be able to participate this year. Work has me out and away from my normal hunting grounds, so unless I can get out later in the season, it looks like my freezer may be a bit short of venison this year.
Still, feral hogs are always in season in Texas, and while they’re one of my favorite prey, it’s hard to beat a nice venison backstrap. One of my frustrations with hunting is the difficulty that non-resident hunters have in obtaining licenses in various states. Texas is one of the more friendly non-resident hunting states, while others such as North Dakota (where I am currently) require lottery registration for tags far in advance of the actual hunting season, which makes it difficult for someone with an unpredictable schedule to take the opportunity to hunt when it presents itself.
But enough of my whining.
In a few days I’ll be picking up my new shoulder rig from TheHolsterSite.com for my .44 Magnum Ruger Redhawk as part of my new handgun hunting project. The idea is to have a setup that is light, easily portable (no snagging a slung rifle on trees or shrubs), and still capable of taking large and medium sized game.
If you haven’t had the chance to see the holsters that Michael makes, go check out his site. I’ll wait.
I’ll be posting pictures and a review of the new rig here in the coming days and weeks, and if I have time to venture out into the woods this season, I’ll hopefully have a few hogs or deer to show as well.
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I was pleasantly surprised to see the massive S&W .500 Magnum revolver make an appearance as the first firearm challenge on the Season 3 debut of Top Shot on the History channel. Big caliber aficionados and recoil hounds like myself have long had a soft spot in our hearts for any model firearm that can claim to be “the most powerful production revolver in the world,” even if it’s no longer Dirty Harry’s iconic .44 Magnum.
Contestants on Top Shot last night faced off in what would turn out to be the team selection challenge with three targets to be hit with a massive S&W 500 slinging bullets weighing somewhere between 300 and 500 grains at more than 1,500 feet per second out of an 8.38 inch barrel. Colby tossed out the comment that this revolver is capable of taking any animal that walks this earth… a claim that echoes Smith & Wesson’s own advertising copy, and although I’m not sure I’d try it out on large or dangerous African game, it is certainly capable of taking any North American game animal. That, after all, is what most readers of this blog are concerned with (but if you happen to be on safari in Africa with this handgun and want to give it a go, be sure to email us and let us know how that worked out for you).
Belching a massive 350 grain projectile at almost 2000 feet per second, the S&W 500 generates a stunning 3,050 lb-ft of energy at the muzzle. By comparison, a 180 grain .308 caliber bullet fired at 2,600 feet per second has a muzzle velocity of only 2,800 lb-ft. At distances under 200 yards, the .500 is more than capable of taking deer, elk, moose, or even bear with a properly placed solid hard-cast bullet.
From the factory, the 500 comes equipped with a rear adjustable sight and fiber-optic front sight, which makes aiming easier in the low light conditions around sunrise and sunset when game animals are most active. It holds 5 rounds, which is (or should be) plenty for most hunters, but as we saw on Top Shot last night, it’s still possible to need to top off the gun. With 3 targets at increasing distances, a 50% or greater miss rate required a number of the shooters to reload.
The difficulty here isn’t that the gun is inaccurate or that the targets on the show were necessarily difficult to hit. Quite the contrary, this revolver is extremely accurate and able to reliably hit targets out past 400 yards. The problem is that it takes an unusual amount of strength and control to keep the 8″ barrel of the massive X-frame gun on target. At over 4.5 pounds unloaded, this revolver is no lightweight handgun. Fully loaded and topped off with a scope, it can easily tip the scales at more than 5 pounds. Add in the fact that most of that weight is hanging far out from the fulcrum of the shooter’s grip and it’s easy to see why the shots are difficult to keep on target when shooting off-hand. That being the case, ethical hunters and outdoorsmen would do well to use shooting sticks, stands, or trees to stabilize this big hand-cannon, or shoot from more stable positions such as sitting, kneeling, or prone.
Despite the large caliber of the Smith & Wesson .500, it’s not particularly difficult to shoot. Recoil, while significant, is easily managed. The soft hand-filling grips and an effective muzzle-brake combined with the weight of the frame and barrel make it, if not comfortable, at the very least not punishing when the big half-inch magnum load is touched off.
Still, it’s big, heavy, and LOUD. Inevitably, when shooting a handgun such as this at the range, somebody will come up and politely ask to see what it is you’re shooting.
Unless you’re at an indoor range. Then they will usually shout, “HEY! You wanna give us fair warning before setting that gorram hand cannon off in here?!”
Which is often followed up with “What the heck do you use that thing for anyway?”
The only answer to which is “Dragons.”
“Dragons? Are you crazy? There aren’t any dragons around here!”
But of course. They’re smart, those dragons. That’s why they haven’t been seen in North America for a while. They heard I had a .500 Magnum and took off for lands where the virgins are more plentiful and the most powerful production revolver in the world hasn’t been invented yet.
I got started hunting medium game such as deer and hogs with a traditional hunting rifle. For most hunters, deer season consists of dusting off the .270, confirming zero at the range, and then setting up a blind or tree stand in a place where deer are likely to be.
For some, this is all they want out of hunting season: some quality time spent out in the woods and the chance at bringing home some venison. For others, like myself, this is not enough. It’s not difficult to set up in a good location on properly scouted land and be able to tag a deer at 100 yards or more with a modern hunting rifle. For hunters like myself the desire to hone skills and become more intimate with the prey drives us to use more primitive methods.
Many hunters move over to bow hunting. Modern compound bows however are nothing like their ancient counterparts, and it’s not truly fair to refer to them as “primitive.” But successfully employing one in a hunt requires quite a bit of skill nevertheless. They require a hunter to set up a blind much closer, or in some situations require them to learn to quietly stalk to within 30 yards or less in order to set up a good shot.
Arguably not as difficult to utilize as a modern compound bow, handguns bridge the gap between rifle and bow hunting. They don’t pack the power of a rifle, and the shorter trajectory and lower energy of these platforms makes their effective range limited. Still, the familiarity of the trigger and aiming system makes their use somewhat familiar to hunters.
Most important, for myself at least, is the fact that getting started hunting with handguns doesn’t require a massive investment if one already has a rifle hunting setup. Bow hunting requires purchasing not just an adequate bow, but also arrows, quiver, broadheads, a trigger/release, and aiming system. This expense can quickly run into the thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, a quality .357 or .44 magnum revolver can be acquired for less than $500 used. Many hunters already have lever action rifles chambered for these calibers, but even a hunter with only a .308, .270, or .30-06 bolt action rifle can find single shot pistols chambered in the same calibers they already own. Thompson Center Encore pistols for example can be found chambered in the relatively easy shooting .243, .270, 7mm-08 and .25-06 calibers and are often scoped to make shooting out past 100 yards a simple matter.
Check your local hunting regulations before investing in a handgun for hunting. Not all jurisdictions allow the use of handguns, and some of those that do have minimum requirements with regards to caliber and muzzle energy. If a bit more challenge is what you’re seeking this hunting season, keep an eye out for some upcoming articles on the type of hunting handguns suitable for bringing Bambi to the table.
Firearm safety isn’t difficult. But it’s one of those things that, if you screw up, and if you screw up badly enough that you break more than one rule at a time, someone can get seriously injured, or even killed.
Jaxon from Gun Nuts Media posted this video over at the Gun Nuts website, and I felt it good enough to share. It’s a compilation of the worst and most egregious violations of firearm safety as seen across the internet.
Be warned, some parts of the video are disturbing.
The saddest part of all of this is how stupidly EASY it is to avoid having an “accident” like one of those shown. In fact, Colonel Jeff Cooper codified the rules of firearm safety with just four simple guidelines.
All guns are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target
Be sure of your target
That’s it, just those four simple rules. In fact, if violate these rules singly, it’s quite likely that you will still avoid damaging yourself or anyone or anything else. The problems begin when you break one or more of Col. Coopers rules at the same time.
Point a gun in an unsafe direction but kept your finger off of the trigger? Not a smart idea, and generally considered to be quite rude, but nobody will die from that. Break both rules at once? Then we’ve got trouble.
Most accidents involving guns boil down to a lack of education. Get training, learn these rules, take them to heart, and then teach your kids, teach your family, and teach your kids.
Since the early days of firearm building, armorers noted that if they imparted spin to the projectile that it greatly enhanced in-flight stability and accuracy. The earliest rifles had numerous bands of metal that were forged together and twisted to create the helical shape of the rifle groves. As machining processes were developed and refined, hammer forged barrels became popular as they were much stronger and much more precise.
Rifle twist is represented with a “1;” a colon; and another number, such as 1:7, 1:9, 1:10, 1:12, etc. The second number is the length in inches that it takes for the grooves to make one complete revolution. Thus, a 1:10 twist rifle barrel makes a complete 360 degree revolution in 10 inches. A 1:7 rifle barrel on the other hand makes a complete turn in only 7 inches, giving it a much tighter faster rate of twist (and consequently a greater RPM to the bullet).
The Greenhill Formula, developed by Sir Alfred George Greenhill, lays out the mathematics for computing the optimum spin and rifle twist necessary to stabilize a bullet. His most basic calculation is:
where C = 150 (or 180 for muzzle velocities greater than 2,800 fps) D = bullet caliber (in inches) L = bullet length (in inches) and SG = bullet’s specific gravity (10.9 for most lead bullets). For lead core bullets, the second half of the equation is disregarded as the value of the square root of 10.9/10.9 is 1, however the value will need to be calculated for steel core, steel jacketed, or frangible bullets as their specific gravity will vary. Because of the high muzzle velocity of most 5.56/.223 rounds, C should be set to equal 180 in the above formula.
What does all of this mean? For most shooters, not much. For our purposes, it means we can determine the appropriate twist based off of the bullet weight for a given caliber since bullet length is generally a function of the combination of bullet weight and caliber. Having said that, we’re not going to delve any deeper into the mathematics of calculating the optimal barrel twist for various bullet designs. Instead, we’ll lay out the basics and give you some good guidelines to go by when figuring whether or not your AR-15 barrel will stabilize a given round.
In general, you want a faster twist (lower second number) for heavier bullets. Firing lighter bullets through a fast twist barrel can over spin them, causing inaccuracy from overstability and/or spin induced drift. Overstability occurs primarily in light weight projectiles fired from a fast twist AR barrel and causes the bullet nose to remain at a high angle of attack during the descent phase of the flight trajectory, due to extreme gyroscopic stability. Extremely light weight, thin jacketed varmint rounds, that are overspun past 300,000 RPM, can even fly apart from the immense centrifugal forces imparted by the bullet spin.
For 5.56/.223 bullets weighing between 35 and 50 grains, you can use a 1:12 or 1:14 twist. 1:9 (probably the most common twist found in AR rifles) and 1:10 are good, moderate twist rates that are capable of stabilizing bullets weighing from 45 to 69 and even 70 grain bullets. For the heaviest 5.56/.223 bullets, you will need a 1:7 to 1:8 twist barrel in order to reliably stabilize bullets weighting between 69 and 90 grains.
There are some odd barrels out there being used to fire heavily customized .223 loads. Some custom barrels are available in a 1:6.5 twist and are capable of stabilizing 100 grain bullets, though that weight is not very common and difficult, if not impossible, to find. Extremely high velocity loads firing a bullet weighing 55 grains or less, at speeds exceeding 4,000 feet per second, require a very slow twist rate of 1:15 to 1:16.
Most shooters find that a 1:9 twist barrel meets their needs quite well, but if you’re going to be firing heavier match loads, or lighter, faster varmint rounds, you’ll need to search for a barrel with a more appropriate twist rate.
I get this question probably more than any other. What caliber should I choose for wild boar? What about elk? Moose? Texas whitetailed deer? Mule deer? What if I find myself out on a bear hunt and I come across a moose, which I also have a license for and is conveniently in season, what gun should I take?
Folks, first of all, there is no one magic caliber or rifle. Second of all, there are far too many other variables. What is the terrain? Are you going to be hunting in dense brush where your maximum range might top out at 75 yards, or are you seeking out game on wide open rolling plains where a 300 yard shot is considered normal?
At the end of the day, you should choose a rifle that you can comfortable shoot accurately, that won’t cause you to flinch from excessive recoil, and that has enough energy to reliably drop your quarry. Ammunition availability and cost is another consideration as well, since having a rifle you can’t find affordable ammunition for renders it pretty much useless.
Still, there are some calibers favored by sportsmen. A .30-06, .308, .270, or even a 6.5×55 can be used on any game animal found in North America. In fact, outside of Africa (and maybe Australian Water buffalo), these calibers are useful on any medium or large game found throughout the entire world. Get a rifle that you can shoot comfortably in one of these calibers and top it off with a good quality 3-9x scope and you’ll be well equipped for most any hunt.
 Comparison by Winchester Ballistics of various weight .308 and .223 bullet trajectories fired out of a rifle zeroed at 25 yards. Click to Embiggen. |
It’s a common question: what distance should you zero your rifle for? Many hunters I know simply zero their rifles at whatever distance is available at their local range. But is this the ideal distance to have your scope set at? The answer varies depending on the caliber your rifle is chambered in and what game you are pursuing.
Let’s talk for a bit about what Maximum Point Blank Range (MPBR) is. In a nutshell, the MPBR is the maximum range at which you can aim your rifle directly at any target within that distance and be reasonably assured that your round will hit. What that distance is depends on the size of your target, the round you are firing, and the configuration of your rifle.
On medium sized North American game animals, the size of the vital area is generally 10 inches in diameter. That gives you 5 inches of bullet rise above the sight height and another 5 inches of drop below the sight height.
To figure the best distance to have your scope dialed on at, you’ll need to know your rifle and chosen ammunition well, and you’ll need to be able to do a little bit of math. But to help you out, there are online ballistic calculators available from Winchester and a very comprehensive calculator over at JBM Ballistics. In general, you’ll need to know the ammunition you are using including the bullet weight as well as the muzzle velocity it achieves in your firearm. If possible, it helps to know the bullet length and the ballistic coefficient. Both Winchester and JBM ballistics have fairly comprehensive libraries with all of this information included with particular Winchester cartridges or bullets in the case of JBM Ballistics. The final piece of information you’ll need is the height of the center line of your scope over the rifle bore. In most modern firearms this ranges from about an inch up to around 2.5 inches.
If you’re using a .308 caliber rifle, depending on your load, you’ll have a maximum point blank range of just over 300 yards. A 150 grain .308 caliber Barnes XLC boattail bullet will top out with 4.8 inches of rise at 150 yards and be dead on at 300 yards. This gives you “minute of deer” accuracy out to nearly 350 yards, meaning that with the crosshairs of your scope centered on the vital area of a deer, you will be assured of a solid hit at any distance out to 350 yards.
For most modern rifles, I usually recommend zeroing at a distance between 100 and 300 yards. The higher the ballistic coefficient of the bullet and the faster it is traveling when it leaves the muzzle, the longer the distance you can expect to be able to have your rifle zeroed for. Obviously, if you have a .22 caliber squirrel gun, the size of your target is much smaller and consequently your MPBR will be much shorter, usually only 50 or 100 yards. Small fast varmint rounds may have a high muzzle velocity, but due to their light weight and low ballistic coefficient, they lose speed fast. Most varmint rifles will do well to be zeroed at distances between 200 and 300 yards. For larger calibers capable of making shots out past 600 yards, especially some of the larger .30 caliber belted magnums, you can reasonably zero your scope and rifle for 400 yards and beyond.
Not many people have access to a 300 yard range, but with the help of a a ballistic table, you can calculate exactly how high or low the round should impact at any distance. The .308 load we mentioned earlier has 4.8 inches of rise at 150 yards, but what if you only have access to 25 and 100 yard ranges? You can get the rifle on paper by zeroing it at 25 yards, and then fine tune it until your group is centered at 3.9 inches high at 100. A bullet fired from a rifle starts out anywhere from 1″ to as much as 2.5″ below the sight height. For a rifle zeroed at 25 yards this means that the bullet must climb fairly steeply, and of course it will continue to climb for another hundred yards or so before reaching the apex and beginning to descend. For this particular load, the initial 25 yard zero should get you roughly on target at 300 yards. By confirming that your rounds are hitting 3.9 inches high at 100 yards you’ll get the rifle much closer to being precisely on target at 300.
I don’t know of any hunters running bench rest guns capable of putting a 5 shot group inside the diameter of a quarter at 600 yards. If you’re running a traditional .30-30 in the thick South Texas brush, a 100 yard zero is probably just fine. But for most other situations, it only makes sense to zero your scope and rifle combination for the Maximum Point Blank Range, which depends on your quarry and the caliber of your rifle.
 Tacti-Cool Bird Gun Model 870 Mk 1. Is it ugly? Damn straight. Does it work? I’ll let the birds speak for themselves. It’s not a limit of dove, and it really is an ugly gun, but it’s not bad for what I had on hand. |
Go ahead, I’ll wait for the laughter to die down before I continue.
Now, before you get going, sending me emails and leaving comment asking me “What the hell were you thinking doing that to that poor bird gun?” let me say, this shotty did not begin life as a bird gun but instead was pressed into service. I first purchased this 870 shotgun back when I was working executive protection and needed a small tactical shotgun. It came with a pistol grip and an 18″ cylinder bore barrel. I added the side saddle, folding stock and vertical foregrip to make it more useful in my job. I haven’t worked security for a number of years and, despite having bird hunted with friends’ guns for some time, as my firearm collection grew somehow a proper bird gun of my own never made its way into my safe.
Fast forward to this weekend. Friday a friend of mine called asking if I wanted to join him early the next morning on a Dove hunt in North Texas. Sure I did, but I didn’t have a bird gun, and on such short notice I couldn’t get my hands on one easily in time to get out to the dove fields before sunrise. I could however get my hands on a ribbed 26″ Remington 870 barrel with an improved cylinder choke
, so I called my buddy with the barrel and asked him if he wanted to come on a dove hunt with us. He’d never hunted before, but agreed it could be fun so off we went.
It wasn’t pretty, but with the bird barrel installed on my Remington 870 I felt confident I could drop a few birds. Getting proper cheek weld was going to be a problem: the bead on the rib was a bit higher than on my old barrel, but after a few misses I quickly figured it out.
By the afternoon, I was dropping doves regularly. While I didn’t shoot a limit like my friend with his semiautomatic 11-87, I was pretty happy with the results. It wasn’t the best tool, but with a quick barrel swap I turned the wrong tool into an adequate tool. And dove is a tasty reward.
Kel-Tec claims they’ve shipped their newest gun, the PMR-30. I’ve been eagerly awaiting my own since ordering it back in April. I’ve been checking regularly with my local gun dealer – so far my pistol hasn’t come in yet.
I’ve long had a passion for .22 WMR autoloading pistols. Many people will argue that, if you want a .22 magnum pistol, you’re better off picking up an inexpensive and reliable revolver. Rimfire revolvers have been around for well over 100 years, and the technology is well refined. But there’s something to be said about having 10, 20, or even 30 round at your disposal without the need to reload.
A number of years ago I picked up an old AMT Automag II in fair condition. Long and lean, it looked like a cross between a 1911 and a Beretta 92 that had been crafted from shiny stainless steel. One of the first magnum autoloaders ever developed, it had a number of problems. Extraction issues caused by the late peak pressure of the .22 magnum load were ingeniously solved by engineers who had a number of tiny ports drilled at 90 degree angles into the chamber.
Later I came across an old Grendel P-30 in fair condition. It was an interesting pistol, but prone to feeding problems. Fun to shoot (when it would cycle), it looked like something out of Blade Runner. Unlike the AMT Automag II, I was never able to get my Grendel to cycle properly, despite the amount of money I gave my gunsmith.
Imagine then my excitement when FN Herstal came out with their Five seveN pistol, appropriately named given the 5.7x28mm cartridge it fired. The Five seveN boasted a 20 round magazine capacity and slightly better ballistic performance than the .22 magnum. It was also supremely reliable, though at a very high price. It wasn’t just the pistol that was expensive, retailing for more than $1,000. Ammunition, initially only available through FN, was priced over $0.50 per round. Of course I bought one anyway and still have it, though I don’t shoot it as often as I’d like to owing to the high cost of keeping it fed.
So when Kel-Tec, under the direction of George Kellgren the original designer of the Grendel P-30, announced that they were developing a .22 magnum autoloader it piqued my interest. So far however, Kel-Tec has been long on promises and short on delivery. Initial promises of an April delivery date soon became May and then June. Finally in July Kel-Tec announced that they had shipped their first delivery of PMR-30s. It’s August now, and no one can seem to find them yet.
I’ve got my ears to the ground and am eagerly looking for my own model, but so far haven’t found any dealers or distributors who have any. As soon as I find one however, you’ll find the review here.
