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.
So Which Is It? The notes for the accuracy results table at the bottom of page 50 in the March/April edition state that “Accuracy results are averages of three five-shot groups at 100 yards…” However, in the review text, Mr. Wood states that “the first two three-shot groups at 100 yards...each measured 0.16 inch.” So is the table data the average for three five-shot groups or three three-shot groups. Either way, the results are quite good, but if the results were for five-shot groups, it would indicate a higher precision than the usual three-shot groups. Don Ruth Mr. Ruth: I followed RifleShooter’s accuracy SOP for hunting rifles, which calls for three three-shot groups at 100 yards. Unfortunately, I neglected to note that correctly in the table notes. Thanks for keeping…
Today’s hunters are caught in a bit of a conundrum. The obsession with all things long range has driven the market toward sleek bullets with high ballistic coefficients. These bullets are often match-style projectiles that shoot tiny groups but can perform poorly on game, especially at shorter distances. Two seasons ago I put a half-dozen such rounds into a quartering-away bull elk before he finally gave up. Each bullet broke up before it could reach the vitals. Never again. The solution, of course, is premium controlled-expansion bullets. Federal Premium has always been a leader in this area, loading factory ammunition with bullets such as the Nosler Partition and Trophy Bonded Bear Claw for many decades. Due to its performance, Federal eventually bought the rights to the Bear Claw and brought…
I’ve been using this company’s Master Driver 90 set for several years now, and I love it. The newer Smart-Torq & Driver Master set ($150, REALAVID.COM) is even better, for reasons both large and small. The big addition here is the Smart-Torq driver, which is a key tool for mounting scopes and checking action screws. You can run it from 10 to 70 in.-lbs. in one-pound increments, and the Force Assist feature allows you to get some extra oomph for heavy torques by inserting one of the other drivers in the side of the unit. There are 83 standard and metric bits—flathead, Phillips, Torx and Allen—all hollow ground with a black oxide finish. The larger Smart Drive driver has a free-spinning cap at the top, allowing you to apply more…
Just after the Great Depression, wildcatters were squeezing all sorts of existing cartridge cases down to hold .22 caliber bullets. Most didn’t go anywhere because they were formed from cases like the .30-06 that were simply too big. But a ballistician named Capt. Grosvenor Wotkyns shrank the .250-3000 Savage case to hold a .22 bullet, tweaking the case to optimize function with a .22 bullet. Wotkyns was working as a consultant for Winchester at the time, and the company liked what he had. But the company released the .220 Swift instead. Disgusted, Wotkyns began calling his cartridge the .22 Varminter, and it became a popular wildcat round—so popular that Browning chambered a rifle for it in 1965 even though no factory ammunition was available. Two years later, Remington standardized the…
Handloaders often consider velocity as something to maximize with their handloads, not as a metric by which to refine performance. However, it’s one of the most useful tools for tuning your reloads. Becoming a student of velocity and the way it reacts to propellant charge weight, bullet seating depth, case neck tension, case mouth crimp and so on can benefit accuracy. And how does one accurately measure velocity? With a chronograph. For those unfamiliar with how these tools work, at its base a chronograph is a precision time-recording instrument. Shooting-related versions convert time of flight into speed of the projectile. Traditional chronographs utilize electronic eyes and a timer to record how long it takes for a bullet to pass between the eyes. These still work quite well. Oehler Research’s Model…
The post-Civil War Trapdoor Springfield is now 159 years old. A stopgap arm meant to help the United States husband money after the war, it served for more than 30 years and even aided training in World War I. The Army was certain its next rifle was to be be a breechloader utilizing the vastly superior metallic cartridge. This priority had to mesh with a civilian leadership that insisted the 1 million muzzleloaders in inventory be utilized—somehow. The first effort led to manufacture of the .58 Rimfire Model of 1865 Breech Loading Rifled Musket designed by Springfield Armory’s master armorer Erskine S. Allin. Manufacture of rimfire ammunition was fairly well understood, and the .58 Rimfire duplicated the paper cartridge used in the muzzleloading Springfield musket. The Model 1865 and its…
