Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2023 i RifleShooter

Hooray for the .270 Good article by Craig Boddington about the .270! I have never owned one, but I don’t doubt its effectiveness. I don’t think I would use one for elk, or anything bigger. My own preference in hunting rifles is the .35 Rem. with Remington Core-Lokts for whitetail and hogs out to 150 yards, the 6.5x55 with 140-grain Nosler Partitions for anything up to but not including elk out to 300 yards. And the .35 Whelen with 250-grain Nosler Partitions for elk and anything bigger. Oh, and if I got the chance to hunt the big bears, my .416 Taylor with 400-grain Hornady DGXs would do the job. Clete Davis, Illinois Would You Do This? I operate a small gunshop in central Kentucky, and I’m a fairly active…

Hornady’s new 7mm PRC (Precision Rifle Cartridge) is provably the best long-range 7mm cartridge ever introduced. As with all rifle cartridges, handloading tuned ammo for it helps achieve the best it has to offer. The 7mm PRC’s DNA is 100 percent long range. As such, loading highly aerodynamic bullets is recommended. The cartridge doesn’t offer any advantage with light 7mm bullets. As spec’d by SAAMI, the 7mm PRC has a rifling twist rate of 1:8. This enables it to effectively stabilize the long-bodied, streamlined projectiles. Lead-core bullets of 168 grains ranging up to 195 grains and monometal bullets of 160 grains up to 168 grains provide optimal performance in the 7mm PRC. Examples are Barnes 168-grain LRX bullet; Berger 168-grain VLD Hunting, 180-grain VLD Hunting, and 195-grain Extreme Outer Limits…

When I began my outdoor writing career back around 2006, it seemed like every rifle I tested was some flavor of AR. Most of them were great guns, but I found myself struggling to say something new and unique about rifles that were anything but. Innovations were subtle and incremental—at best. This year, I finally get the chance to talk about an AR-style rifle that is new and unique. Ruger’s new Small Frame Autoloading Rifle (SFAR) does what no other rifle that I’m aware of has ever done: It is chambered in .308 Winchester but in what is essentially a .223-size package. Let’s take a step back to the 1950s where this story begins. When Armalite’s Eugene Stoner invented the rifle that we know now as the AR, he did…

A lot of firms out there are building custom bolt-action rifles for big game hunting. There is seemingly no end to high-end production, semi-custom and custom rifles on the market. Prices and quality run the gamut. In 2015, Andrew Foster set out to be different from the rest. He founded AllTerra Arms in Boise, Idaho, with the hope of “designing, patenting, and building the most accurate and reliable rifle on the planet.” AllTerra’s Mountain Shadow Carbon is one of the rifle designs that evolved from Foster’s vision. Customers can choose from off-the-shelf rifles or use AllTerra’s website to custom-configure their own creations. Choices begin with choosing the basic rifle model, a right- or left-handed action and chambering. The stock is next, and buyers can customize length-of-pull, various camo patterns and…

Fiocchi ammunition has been around since 1876, and while some shooters are quite familiar with the company, American big game hunters may not be. The company is out to change all that. Fiocchi’s U.S. arm has been in operation since 1983, beginning with a manufacturing facility in Ozark, Missouri. More recently, Fiocchi USA established another plant in Little Rock, Arkansas. Together, the two facilities encompass more than 200,000 square feet and employ more than 300 people. And those statistics don’t even count the just-announced primer plant that will be located at the port of Little Rock and operational by the end of 2024, beginning of 2025. Fiocchi USA builds several lines of centerfire rifle ammunition, including general range ammo, match ammo and the subject of this article, Hyperformance Hunt. “Hyperformance…

For most of America’s early history, the United States felt secure from invasion, and it maintained a small, not always well armed army and navy. European countries, on the other hand, constantly armed and rearmed to remain militarily competitive with each other. A turnbolt mechanism in a center-fire cartridge became a staple there early on, but America simply adopted the percussion musket converted to centerfire during the Civil War. However, the value of a repeating rifle had been proven by the the Spencer of that era. Problem was, this rimfire repeater and its short, stubby cartridge just didn’t have the power and range a modern army required, and other repeating mechanisms weren’t capable of handling the greater power required for serious military cartridges. That is, until the International Exhibition of…

The 7mm Rem. Mag. was introduced in 1962 in the also brand-new Remington Model 700. Both took off rapidly, and other actions quickly adapted to the new cartridge. At least by 1970 it was a standard chambering among manufacturers that had actions housing its 2.5-inch case. Within a decade it would rise to be the most popular cartridge we call “magnum,” a position it held for a quarter-century. Today that title is held by the .300 Win. Mag. I can’t say when the worm turned, but I have some data. In 1989, I surveyed all the African professional hunters I could find for my Safari Rifles book. Under recommendations for “medium plains game,” the 7mm Rem. Mag. was second only to the .30-06. In the African context this makes sense,…

Mauser has offered sporting rifles on the famous Model 1898 action for more than 125 years. In the beginning they were quite affordable, but prices gradually increased (see sidebar) and over the years have remained a bit steep when compared to rifles of American design that were just as accurate and equally effective on game of various sizes. In other words, if Mauser wanted to sell rifles in America it would have to be competitively priced. Enter the Mauser 18. Reducing the price of a product to the consumer is commonly accomplished by reducing its production cost, a solution long used by American manufactures of firearms. Unlike rifles of yesteryear that were built to withstand hard use when handed down through generations of hunters, most economy-grade rifles are engineered for…

Like so many other deer hunters, I keep tabs on the whitetail herd where I hunt using a trail camera. I was a little distressed that deer numbers were so low this year, and as I rolled through the previous night’s pics from my Bushnell camera, I came upon a scene that should send shivers up the spine of every deer hunter: a single image captured in the wee hours of the morning that showed a pack of seven coyotes in one frame. It takes a great deal of protein to feed seven hungry predators, and whether the arrival of the coyotes coincided with the drop in deer numbers cannot be proven. However, the ’yotes chose a poor location to set up shop in search of a meal, as they…

If you were to survey several of the top long-range shooters in the country which factory rifle offers the best performance and accuracy, many would likely list Sako’s TRG family of guns. The first TRG bolt-action rifle, which was chambered in .308, appeared in 1989 and was an immediate success. Over the years the TRG family has been refined to meet the changing demands of shooters and make use of new technology, and that refinement has led to the most recent addition to the TRG family, the TRG 22/42 A1. The TRG 22 A1 is chambered for short-action cartridges including the .260 Rem., 6.5 Creedmoor and .308 Win., while the TRG 42 A1’s longer magnum action is chambered in either .300 Win. Mag. or .338 Lapua. Both the 22 A1…

Holland & Holland introduced the .275 H&H in 1912. Using a .284-inch bullet, it’s based on the belted .375 H&H case shortened and necked down to 2.5 inches. Its 175-grain factory load was rated at 2,680 fps. Western loaded it in this country before World War II. Per Ryan Selby (see main article), Jack O’Connor gave Les Bowman a .275 H&H, but because of the body taper Bowman couldn’t get the velocity he wanted, so he moved on to the .338 case. There were several fast European 7mms, starting with the 7x64 Brenneke (1917), which is similar to the .280 Rem. The list includes the 7x73 Vom Hofe, almost alone as a belted European cartridge. Except for the 7x64, none of these achieved great popularity, but they prove that a…

OPTICS REPORT You may remember 1992’s Leica Geovid—7x42mm rangefinding binoculars that were the first of their kind. Today the company is back with another cutting-edge optic: the Geovid Pro 32. Right away you’ll notice these don’t look like other binoculars. That’s thanks to the Geovid Pro 32’s open bridge and its Pergo Porro design. The Pergo Porro, which as far as I can tell is unique to Leica, gives the optics a “banana” shape—one that coupled with the open bridge creates lightweight, ergonomic binoculars. Optically, the Pergo Porro promises better light transmission, 91 percent in this case, and what Leica engineers have described as a “3D” perception of the image. Curious, I compared the view to a couple other binoculars I have, and by golly I think they’re right.…

OPTICS REPORT A few months ago I had the opportunity to take Leupold’s Mark 5HD for a spin at the company’s test range in Oregon, and it was an eye-opening experience—not to mention a whole lot of fun as we got to engage steel out to 1,700 yards with this optic, which was mounted atop Browning’s excellent X-Bolt Target Max in 6.5 Creedmoor. I’m far from an expert in long-range shooting, but the Leupold guys definitely are. The scope they came up with works because they are hardcore long-distance competitors. Let’s look at the scope itself first. In developing the Mark 5HD, Leupold designed it with an eye toward producing an optic that’s versatile and offers value for customers as varied as the military and Precision Rifle Series and…