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.
What’s in a Name? I was going to take the author and editor to task for making such a grievous blunder in the “French Connection” article (November/December 2022), but lo and behold, they’re the same person! I guess your “fair bit of experience” with the “Springfield” Impulse didn’t include the fact it’s offered by Savage! Isn’t it the duty of the editor to proof the entire publication from cover to cover? Patrick Ryan Well, they both begin with ‘S’ and have two syllables, so… But seriously, I apologize for the error.—Scott Bring Back Wood It appears everything you and other mags are promoting these days, with rifles at least, has carbon-fiber, plastic or anything but traditional walnut or excellent laminated hardwood. Most of the stocks I see are plain Jane…
LANDS & GROOVES Rifle shooters and car guys have a lot in common. While casual observers might note a Corvette’s sleek lines or the burly, broad-shouldered look of the new Ram 2500, gear heads want to talk motor design and displacement, and that’s not unlike the way in which rifle cranks focus their attention on a gun’s action. The action is, after all, the building block upon which a gun is built, and a good one can last for years and produce exceptional accuracy. It’s no surprise, then, that custom actions are the cornerstone of high-quality rifle builds. We’re going to look at some of today’s best custom rifle actions and discuss the machining, materials and design elements that make each of these actions outstanding choices for a build. AERO…
The late 1800s were the golden age of ballistics. In the years spanning the start of the American Civil War to the turn of the 20th century, firearm and ballistics advanced at a breakneck pace. In the heart of that period of innovation came the .45-70 Gov’t, originally known as the .45-70-405. A brass-cased cartridge designed for use with blackpowder, the original ballistics of roughly 1,400 fps from a Trapdoor Springfield made the .45-70 cutting edge. It was a popular choice for frontiersmen and was adopted by the U.S. Army. The .45-70 also coincided with a new generation of repeating rifles that were much more capable than cap-and-ball guns. The .45-70 survived the advent of smokeless powder and competing bottleneck cartridges that blew it away ballistically. Fans of the cartridge…
When choosing a component bullet to handload, it’s crucial to pick one that’s compatible with your rifle’s rate of twist. Traditional, common bullets in any given caliber will be fine with nearly all factory rifles. However, there’s a common issue in this era of today’s long projectiles optimized for extended-range aerodynamics: Traditional rifling twist rates are often too slow to adequately stabilize such bullets in flight. If you’re a bit vague on the concept of rotational velocity stabilizing a bullet, imagine a spinning top. If the top is short and fat, it can spin very slowly and still stay upright. If the top is tall and skinny, it must spin quite fast to stay upright and spin cleanly. As it slows down, the tall, skinny top will begin to wobble,…
The Winchester Model 63 is rightfully considered one of the handsomest .22 autoloaders ever. Well, at least for those among us who still like our sporting arms to come in blued steel and walnut. A loading port in the stock-situated tubular magazine may bring to mind Browning’s SA 22 bottom ejecting classic, but the side-ejecting Model 63 and its immediate and nearly identical predecessor, the Model 1903, was designed by Winchester’s T.C. Johnson (1862-1934). Johnson joined Winchester in 1885 and was responsible for designing more than his share of New Haven classics—notably the Model 12 pump shotgun, the Model 1907 .351 Win. Self Loading auto, the Model 52 target .22 (along with Frank Burton), and the Model 54, which was predecessor to the legendary Model 70. But of all Johnson’s…
When I was seven, my dad bought me a Swiss army knife, and he explained to me that with all those various tools at my disposal—even a toothpick!—I would be prepared for any situation I might encounter. I was ready to take on the world. The new Leupold BX-4 Range HD rangefinding binoculars are the shooter’s equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. They combine superb optical clarity with the convenience of an onboard laser rangefinder and ballistic data, which means when you’re hunting or heading to the range there’s no need to bring along separate binoculars and rangefinders. There's also no need to plug the range data into your phone or reference a ballistic table on your rifle stock or wrist. The BX-4 Pro Guide line of binoculars have been…
