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.
Do the Math It doesn’t look to me like the Christensen Arms MPR in .22 LR (September/October) quite hit the half m.o.a. mark at 50 yards like the author of that rifle’s review claimed. At 50 yards, m.o.a. would be about 0.26 inch. The best 50-yard average reported was 0.32 inch, achieved by both Lapua loads. It’s an accurate rifle, but didn’t quite get to half m.o.a., at least with the ammo used for the test. Enough nit-picking. I’ve got the rest of the magazine to enjoy. Bob Burton, Wisconsin Guilty as charged, Mr. Burton. Math was never my strong suit, but I would point out that the groups I shot with the MPR were five-shot groups and the company’s halfm.o.a. guarantee is based on three-shot groups. Like you said,…
Piercing pain shot through me. The clock was ticking, and I was down on one knee, searching for a solid connection with my rifle. But all I could feel was the stabbing pain in my knee. My brain was spinning crazy thoughts: “Will I be able to get back up? Is this position good enough to shoot from? I hope my lower back pain doesn’t start next.” The plan was to spend a fun day at the range ringing steel, but pain can bring the fun to a grinding halt. You must adapt to many challenging shooting positions when you leave the benchrest behind and decide to shoot PRS or NRL. You’d better be ready, or your body will push back. Maybe you can’t overcome every injury or ailment, but…
In 2017 the U.S. military began solicitations for a new cartridge to replace the 5.56 NATO for the Next Generation Squad Weapon. It found what it was looking for in SIG’s 6.8x51. Its dimensions are similar to the 7.62x51 NATO—.470-inch case head, 2.83-inch overall length—but in place of the traditional brass case, the SIG case has a brass body, steel case head and aluminum locking washer. The case design allows the SIG cartridge to attain pressures up to 80,000 psi, which is well above the safe operating pressures of brass-cased cartridges. SIG later released a “civilian” variant, the .277 SIG Fury. In late 2021, Winchester released its own new .277 cartridge, the 6.8 Western. An updated .270 WSM with a .535-inch case head and a 2.020-inch case length, it accommodates…
Marlin is reflexively associated with classic lever guns, both centerfire and rimfire. Sure, there have been some excellent Marlin bolt-action and semiauto rimfires along the way, not to mention some hell-for-stout bolt-action shotguns. But by and large, lever actions were what put the company on the map. But one of the company’s most intriguing, and relatively obscure, offerings was the Model 27-S pump, a nifty little takedown chambered in .25-20 and .32-20, plus the .25 Stevens rimfire. The rifle’s production life was from 1913 to 1932. Marlin had, of course, produced a number of pump-action rimfires prior to 1930, but the 27-S was a center-fire standalone. It was essentially an improved version of the slightly earlier Model 27. The major difference between the two? The 27-S featured a safety button…
Sierra Bullet Co. recently launched a new thin-jacketed, hollowpoint hunting bullet. Named the Match-King X, it is aimed at the demographic of hunter who chooses to use target-type bullets on big game. Sierra’s Tipped MatchKing—along with similar competing designs from other companies—was already becoming popular among hunters, so one might ask why the company would introduce a non-tipped, target-type hunting bullet. The answer is that the new MKX is for hunters who want their bullets to penetrate a few inches before expanding violently inside the vitals. “The reason the MatchKing X was created was to give hunters a bullet capable of match level accuracy and consistency while also providing exceptional expansion at low impact velocity inherent with long-range shots that this bullet enables capable shooters to be able to make,”…
Target-type hunting bullets—thin-jacketed bullets with a boattail, a small hollow nose and a soft lead core—have a different expansion mechanism than traditional softnose and composite-tipped hunting bullets. Rather than mashing from the nose back into a mushroom shape, target-type hollow-points typically do one of two things when they impact big game. They may destabilize a few inches inside the target—tumbling end over end, breaking into pieces and causing havoc in the vitals. Alternately, the copper nose portion might crush back like an accordion, building pressure against the front of the lead core until the sides of the bullet blow out and the entire projectile ruptures. Neither is a conventional way for a hunting bullet to kill, but both approaches work. There are advantages and disadvantages, to be sure. Target-type bullets…
