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.
Africa Plains Game Rifles on Steroids I enjoyed Craig Boddington’s plains game article in the November/December issue. I have done one safari, and my plains game rifle was a .338 Win. Mag. with the 225-grain Barnes TTSX load. I had no problems on any plains game encountered, but I was also glad I had my .416 Rem. Mag. and 400-grain Barnes TSX loads for a through-and-through shot on a Cape buffalo and one through and through on a zebra. That convinced me the .416 is the ultimate driving machine! Jim Britton, Texas 3-Rifle Batteries In case you missed November/December’s “Last Page,” we asked readers what their favorite rifle batteries are if they were limited to just three. Following are a few responses. Never having had a desire to hunt Africa,…
A higher percentage of shooters own suppressors than ever before, and that’s a good thing. Suppressors—or silencers or cans, if you prefer—are a fantastic tools for hunters and shooters because they cut down on recoil and muzzle blast, the primary catalysts for developing a flinch. It’s more fun to shoot suppressed, and most shooters find that their accuracy improves with a can in place. Last but not least, they’re quieter to your neighbors at the range and fellow hunters in the field. Since suppressors make shooting so much more enjoyable, it only follows that shooters should want to carry suppressors with them wherever they travel. But while companies like Silencer Central have demystified the rules for owning a suppressor, there are still some unknowns when traveling with a suppressor. I…
The new KnockDown line from Fiocchi USA features an all-copper hollowpoint that is Fiocchi’s own design: a boattail with two cannelures forward of the boattail to assist in compression and reduce bore fouling. KnockDown is part of Fiocchi’s EnviroShield program, an effort to produce zero-polluting ammunition without sacrificing performance. KnockDown features a lead-free primer in addition to the non-lead bullet. I don’t believe it’s fair to evaluate ammunition for accuracy out of a single rifle, and I had only one .243 on hand, so I just measured velocity: A 10-round average through a 22-inch barrel yielded 3,211 fps with an extreme spread of 65 fps and a standard deviation of 19 fps. I also measured runout and weight on 10 cartridges. Runout was a tiny .0013 inch on average, and…
Roy Weatherby was the king of fast cartridges, and he was an instrumental player in the magnum craze of the mid-20th century. Weatherby began designing cartridges in the 1940s, but it wasn’t until 1968 that he took aim at the 6mm market. Heretofore Weatherby had based his hyper-velocity cartridges on the .375 H&H Mag., shortening, necking down and applying his signature Venturi shoulder. But for the .240 Wby. Mag., introduced in 1968, he designed a unique case. It looked very Weatherby with its belt and rounded shoulder, but the rim diameter was 0.473 inch, and case length was reasonably close to a .30-06 so the new .240 Wby. Mag. could fit in a .30-06-length action. The .243 Win. and 6mm Rem. Mag., both released in 1955, had beat the .240…
Bipods are the hot ticket among rifle accessories these days, both with hunters and the competition set. Warne’s new Skyline Pro has a lot to offer both. Built of aircraft-grade aluminum, it’s available with Lite or Precision legs and with Arca rail or QD Picatinny rail head. My sample incorporated the Lite legs and Pic head, a configuration weighing just one pound, four ounces. This version had an introductory price of $450 at press time. I think the key feature here is the ability to quickly set the stance at 22, 48 or 72 degrees—both legs moving simultaneously with the push of a single button. That’s a really fast way to get the right position, whether you’re dealing with terrain in the field or scenarios at a match. Locking leg…
The smokeless powder revolution caused rapid rearming worldwide. The 6mm Lee Navy grew out of the U.S. Navy’s early enthusiasm for the 6.5 Mannlicher-Schonauer in the early 1890s. A logical discovery was there is no task a 6.5 does that a 6mm can’t do better while using fewer resources in making ammo, and the ammo weighing less while shooting flatter with less recoil. The Navy eschewed the Army’s .30-40 Krag for the same reasons. A flat-shooting cartridge was paramount if sharpshooters were to engage enemies ship to ship or ship to shore. Still, a 6.5 was adopted by Japan, Italy and Sweden to name a few. Only the U.S. Navy went smaller by adopting the .236 USN or 6mm Lee Navy as it was called commercially. The Model 1895 Lee…
