Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i RifleShooter

Play Fair Just read the article on the .240 Wby. Mag. versus the 6mm Creedmoor (January/February). Why didn’t you compare like bullet weights? The Weatherby has a 100-grain offering. Looks like you are favoring the Creedmoor out of the gate. Mark Kenzy That's a fair and accurate point. The 100-grain InterLock does well in the .240, but it still can't beat the 6mm Creedmoor at long distances. The 80-grain TTSX from the .240's trajectory drops below the 6mm Creedmoor at about 800 yards while the 100-grain InterLock hangs on to roughly 900 yards in equal conditions. Wind drift is, as stated, 45 inches at 800 yards for the 6mm Creedmoor and 68 inches for the 80-grain .240 Wby. The InterLock is closer to the 6mm Creedmoor with 55 inches of…

Glyn Bindon reimagined optical illumination with the release of his Spectrum tritium fiber-optic riflescope in 1985, and since then the company he founded—Trijicon—has continued to produce some of the best illuminated optics for the military, hunters and target shooters. The company also offers several scopes that do not rely on tritium or fiber optics to power their illuminated reticles. Among that number are the Tenmile and Tenmile HX riflescopes. They are designed for long-range target and tactical shooting. The primary difference is that the Tenmile uses mil adjustments while the Tenmile HX uses m.o.a. adjustments. The Tenmile HX is available in 3-18x44mm, 5-25x50mm and 6-24x50mm versions. The 30mm main tube is made from 6061 aircraft grade aluminum and has a black satin finish. The 3-18X is 15 inches long and…

With all due respect to Winchester and Marlin, the Savage 99 was the best lever-action rifle of all time. Arthur W. Savage’s internal-hammer design was strong, accurate and damn good looking. Sadly, the 99 is no longer with us—it ceased production in the late 1990s—and we will probably never see its like again. But Savage Arms is back in the lever-action game with the Revel takedown, a tube-fed rimfire available in Classic and DLX versions. Currently the only chambering is .22 Long Rifle, but .22 Mag. and .17 HMR rifles are planned. The Classic I received for testing is, well, classic. It features a nicely grained walnut buttstock and fore-end. The wrist is straight, not a pistol grip. The butt has no checkering, and there’s a subtle ridge in the…

Recoil is something most of us learn to live with, and bodily injury is usually no more serious than an occasional sore shoulder or at the very worst a half-moon scope cut above an eyebrow. Rarely is it more serious, but bad things can happen. Years ago, friend and colleague John Wootters suffered retinal detachment in an eye, and as best as I can recall he was shooting a rifle chambered for the .416 Taylor. Far more common than that is an incurable flinch, something trap shooters who have been breaking clay targets with heavy, shoulder-pounding loads for many years are often forced to contend with. Some shotgunners fool their brains into thinking recoil is not coming until it has come and gone by installing a release trigger on their…

Our July/August 2024 issue featuring the new Browning X-Bolt 2 had been out only a couple days before a reader wrote in to complain about the stock, which he found unattractive. He wanted to know why our review gun didn’t have an “honest to goodness walnut” stock. Well, here you go. The X-Bolt 2 Hunter dispenses with Browning’s Vari-Tech polymer stock in favor of a good-looking black walnut stock—albeit one that doesn’t provide any of the adjustments the Vari-Tech offers. The wood on my sample was excellent. It had a slightly wavy grain pattern with nice contrast and a low-glare satin finish. The hand-filling grip has a slight palm swell on the right side, and its bordered point-checkered panels sport the Browning Buckmark. The straight-comb buttstock has a subtle shadow…

Once a new wildcat cartridge design becomes popular—but before it is adopted and legitimized by a big ammo company—shooters form cases for it by shortening and/or necking up or necking down readily available parent cases. A classic example would be necking up the .30-06 to make .35 Whelen cases. Eventually, the most popular wildcat cartridges get SAAMI approved and become factory rounds. But even then some shooters prefer to form cases out of some other cartridge—either due to lack of supply or cost. My old shooting mentor had thousands of once-fired .30-06 Lake City Match cases, and he made everything from .25-06 cases to .35 Whelen Improved cases from them. Whatever the reason, a basic understanding of how to form cases for your favorite cartridge out of something else is…

I consider myself a traditionalist, so it’s easy to understand why I like the new CZ 600 American bolt-action rifle. The gun is an example of what was once commonly called a sporter, a term that referred to “sporterizing” military surplus bolt-action rifles to make them lighter, sleeker and more appropriate for hunting. These guns generally had wooden stocks, and on this side of the Atlantic sporters typically had straight-comb stocks instead of the hogbacks popular in Europe. Barrel diameters were trim to make the guns lighter for field use, and most sporters came with drilled-and-tapped receivers. If you look at the current CZ 600 American, you’ll see it checks all those boxes, with its straight-comb Turkish walnut stock, relatively slim barrel profile, and a receiver set up for scope…

While the basic function of centerfire hunting rifles hasn’t changed much over many decades, the materials and styling of today’s sporting rifles are certainly different than firearms produced 50 years ago. Walnut stocks with white spacers and oak leaf checkering have given way to strong, lightweight polymer stocks. Blued and matte stainless were once the only color options for barreled actions, but with the advent of Cerakote finishes you can have your firearm in sand, magenta, salmon or tangerine if you’d like. But perhaps the most pervasive trend in modern sporting rifles is carbon fiber. Hunters and shooters can’t get enough of the stuff. If you’re a big fan of carbon fiber, you’ll simply love the new Christensen Arms Modern Carbon Rifle. Virtually every component on this turnbolt rifle is…

The American gun owner is quite the conundrum. In a country where we can own as many firearms as we want, there is still the desire to get everything done with just one. To that end, when Springfield Armory introduced the Model 2020 Waypoint, it wasn’t long before folks started asking, “Well, what about elk and moose?” Although some of the cartridges that it chambered were certainly capable, some hunters wouldn’t settle for anything less than something that requires a long action to feed, so Springfield made it for them. The 2020 Waypoint Long Action is chambered in 7mm and .300 PRC, as well as classics such as .270 Win., 7mm Rem. Mag., .30-06 and .300 Win. Mag. I was excited to further my experience with 7mm PRC, so I…

These days, America’s sportsmen and women are clamoring for more “content,” as we call it in the media: more articles, more television shows, more website info. Outdoor Sportsman Group—which publishes this magazine as well as bringing you the Sportsman Channel and Outdoor Channel—has answered that call with the My Outdoor TV (MOTV) app. It’s a resource like no other, a curated treasure trove of outdoor-oriented television shows and videos. Think of it like your own personal Neftlix, with episodes of “Gun Stories” with Joe Montegna, the gun restoration show “The Gunfather,” “Guns & Ammo,” “Shooting USA” and more. The universe of content is even bigger when it somes to hunting, and I know a lot if not most of you enjoy your time in the field. Check out “Petersen’s Hunting…

Okay, I admit it. Diminishing visual acuity drove me to the reflex or red-dot sight. There’s little wrong and almost everything right about the magnifying riflescope—except it is always a big appendage on a rifle. While the larger image is a benefit at distance, magnification isn’t needed up close, and too much can be counterproductive. The reflex sight doesn’t replace the magnifying scope. It’s also an appendage but, in the worst case, it’s 50 percent smaller and lighter. At best case, it has 75 percent less weight and bulk with lots of capability. Open sights ask the eye to focus back and forth on three planes: rear sight, front sight, target. The aperture or “peep” sight is a major improvement, reducing the eye’s workload to two focal planes. By contrast,…

As a rifle nut, I’ve spent a great deal of time agonizing over the ideal setup for a given hunting scenario. The fact is, though, that I have enough experience to make most rifles work in a pinch. Besides, I’m 6-1 and 215 pounds, so just about any off-the-rack rifle fits me reasonably well. When I became a father, though, I faced a completely different dilemma: What is the ideal hunting rifle setup for my children? The fact is that there aren’t many good factory options when it comes to big game rifles for smaller hunters. But the new B-14 Stoke from Bergara was created to fill this important niche. The Stoke is built around the proven Bergara B-14 action. This push-feed system is loosely based on the Remington 700…

Beyond politics and the appropriate use of mayonnaise, there are two things that Americans and Europeans can’t seem to agree on: units of measure and bolt-action types. They’re never going to convince me to fully embrace the metric system, no matter how logical it is. Straight-pull bolt actions, on the other hand, are growing on me. The new Strasser RS 700 barreled action may just be what puts me over the edge. The ingeniously built and very adaptable Austrian-made Strasser RS 14 rifle has been available in the U.S. for several years. I have tested a handful of them in the past, always with impressive results. The problem for me is that they are a little too, well, Austrian. As much as I appreciate the mechanics, the aesthetics just aren’t…