Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Shooting Times

JOSEPH VON BENEDIKT’S RECENT COLUMN ON THE STEVENS 907B shotgun brought back fond memories of my early teens in the late 1960s. I learned shotgunning with an old single-shot J. Stevens Model 107 (mine was an early model “ejector” 12 gauge with the round-knob pistol grip and steel trigger guard). It was my father’s, and now it has passed to my nephew. Joseph’s 907B must be a rare late variation of the 107 as information on it is hard to find. It appears to have a stronger stock design. I’d like to see a full-gun view of it. I think the early Model 107s were designed for paper-hulled or full brass-hulled shells with paper or fiber wads and had Cylinder or Improved Cylinder choked barrels. I occasionally used then-new Remington…

UNLIKE MOST OF THE DANGEROUS-GAME cartridges of the era, Holland & Holland’s .375 H&H Magnum was designed for bolt-action rifles. This was 1912, still pre-World War I, when the United Kingdom and Germany were on amicable terms. Paul Mauser’s turnbolt was being hailed as the greatest development in sporting and military rifle technology, and H&H chose to use K98s modified to accept and function with the long magnum cartridge. The rifle featured in this column was built with double-set triggers and a drop-box magazine that holds four cartridges. An express-type rear sight offers a standing leaf marked “50/200” and three folding leafs marked from 300 to 500 yards. The front sight is classic Holland & Holland and features a fine brass bead, a large folding ivory bead for low-light use,…

THE BRAND-NEW .300 PRC (FOR PRECI- sion Rifle Cartridge) from Hornady is purpose-built for extra-long-range shooting, known as “ELR.” It will serve admirably for hunting elk in thick timber and for zapping whitetails down Texas senderos, but it gets really, really good about where other .30-caliber magnums begin to droop. It accomplishes this by being optimized specifically for very long, very aerodynamic, high-ballistic-coefficient bullets. We’re talking slippery .30-caliber projectiles that start at 200 grains and go way north from there. Another characteristic that Hornady’s design team was tasked with accomplishing was endowing the .300 PRC with forgiving, easy accuracy. You know, like the accuracy the 6.5 Creedmoor has become legendary for—the sort of inherent accuracy that will eventually make savvy shooters say, “It’s hard to find a .300 PRC that…

IN 1972, UP ON THE TANA RIVER IN KENYA, I RAN into a hunter by the name of David Thompson. He was a thin, little guy, going gray as might be expected of someone who made a living chasing mean game in the thornbush. He was armed with a squat, heavy-looking bolt-action rifle, devoid of bluing but also devoid of rust. Obviously, it was a rifle that had been around but well cared for. Naturally, I asked about it. A .505 Gibbs, he told me. Had it for years, he said, and it looked it. The magnum Mauser action appeared to have seen service at Dunkirk, if not Stalingrad, and who knows what its history was. In those days, anything hailing from Germany (including much of the French Foreign Legion)…

MOSSBERG HAS ADDED THREE MORE MODELS TO ITS SHOCKWAVE LINE The new 12-gauge pump-action Shockwave variants are the 590 Nightstick (a Talo exclusive with matte black finish, hardwood bird’s head grip, and hardwood corncob forearm), the 590 Shock ‘N’ Saw (with breacher muzzle, Raptor polymer bird’s head grip, aluminum M-LOK forearm, and Mossberg chainsaw foregrip), and the 590 Shockwave SPX (with heat-shield, aluminum side saddle, top-mounted Picatinny MSRP: $539 (590 Nightstick), $560 (590 Shock ‘N’ Saw), $560 (590 Shockwave SPX) mossberg.com rail, breacher muzzle, Raptor polymer bird’s head grip, and polymer corncob forearm). Overall length of each 590 Shockwave is 26.37 inches, and barrel length is 14 inches. The guns feature twin action bars, anti-jam elevators, dual extractors, top-mounted safeties, anodized aluminum receivers, Cylinder Bore barrels, brass bead sights, and sling-swivel…

SIZE-WISE, THE .32 H&R MAGNUM IS THE SMALLEST centerfire handgun cartridge with the “Magnum” moniker on SAAMI’s most recent list of standard cartridges. I’ve touched on this cartridge over the last decade, and there must be a bunch of people who share my fondness for it. Friends and acquaintances keep asking, “When are you going to tell us more about the .32 Mag.?” Okay, guys, here you go. The .32 H&R Mag. debuted in 1983–1984 as a joint project between Federal Cartridge and Harrington & Richardson. Many compact .38 Special revolvers were limited to five shots, and their small construction made recoil with high-performance defense ammo unpleasant for some. The .32 H&R was intended to offer stopping power that approached the level of the .38 Special but with less recoil…

TAURUS SAYS ITS NEW SPECTRUM IS A “GROUNDBREAKING, GAME- changing” auto pistol design. It’s a striker-fired, double-action-only .380 ACP personal-protection pistol that’s been carefully engineered for shooter comfort and ease of use. Special Features The company points to five areas where the SPECTRUM has received special attention—ergonomics, slide racking, trigger, recoil management, and takedown. Before I get to what Taurus says about those elements, let’s get the preliminary information out of the way. The double-action-only .380 ACP SPECTRUM has a 2.8-inch barrel. Its magazine capacity is six or seven rounds, and it comes with two magazines. The seven-rounder has an extended base pad that serves as a grip extension. I have medium-size hands, and with the flush-fitting magazine inserted, I can get two fingers fully on the grip, and my…

TO MY WAY OF THINKING, THE PREMIER II is the flagship of Les Bear’s superb Model 1911s. Sure, the company has a bunch of fine models, including the Black Bear, Boss, Bullseye Wadcutter, CMP-Legal National Match Hardball, Commanche, Concept, Custom Carry, GT Monolith Stinger, GT Monolith Stinger Heavyweight, Hemi, Monolith, Monolith Commanche, Monolith Heavyweight, P.P.C. Distinguished Match, P.P.C. Open Class, Shooting USA Custom Pistol, Stinger, Swift Response Pistol, Ultimate Master, Ultimate Recon, Ultimate Tactical Carry, and a limited-edition presentation-grade model. Phew! That sure is a lot of models. But as its name implies, the Premier II is the top gun. I’ve been fortunate to work with several Premier IIs over the years. The first was a .45 ACP Super Tac model that was built sometime around 2001. The next one…

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, BEN LILLY WAS AN OLD COOT who dressed like a mountain man, didn’t shave his beard from the time he was 17 years old until he died at the age of 80, and preferred the company of wild animals to that of humans. He was a legendary houndsman and a bear and lion hunter extraordinaire. And by lion, I mean mountain lion. One source has Lilly killing 500 mountain lions and 600 bears. Others say he killed thousands. Regardless of the actual number, he is thought to have killed more black bears, grizzlies, and mountain lions than anyone of his time. Benjamin Vernon Lilly was born in Alabama in 1856. He grew up hunting, primarily for bears and mountain lions who preyed on his family’s livestock, and…

Q : I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED “THE RELOADER” COLUMN IN THE February issue, and I’d like to have a brief list of how to safely handle the powder when I am handloading. I want to copy it and tack it up on the wall next to my loading bench and use it as a checklist whenever I hand-load some ammo. Can Lane Pearce please provide that info? Brian Michaels Via email A : Here are my rules for properly handling and dispensing propellant: 1. Select an appropriate propellant for the handload from reliable data sources. These include reloading equipment and component manufacturers, such as Alliant, Barnes, Hodgdon, Hornady, Lee, Lyman, Nosler, Sierra, Speer, Swift, and others. 2. Consult at least two reputable reloading manuals (three or more is even better) to determine the…

ANY TIME YOU START HANDLOADING FOR AN obscure round—especially a wildcat—the process is challenging. But when the outcome is finding a load that a special rifle shoots well, it’s definitely worth the effort. Case in point: the .375-CCC. The .375-CCC is a big-bore belted magnum wildcat cartridge that first appeared sometime in the 1940s. It is very similar to the .375 Weatherby Magnum. What little information I discovered while researching the history of this wildcat is interesting. Two fellows (E. Baden Powell and R.W. Miller) came up with the idea for a series of “improved performance” cartridges in the early 1940s. They would accomplish this by rechambering an existing rifle to accommodate an oversized case. They set up a company, and the PMVF (Powell-Miller Venturi Freebore) concept was in business.…

BROWNING OFFERS ITS X-BOLT RIFLE IN A NUMBER OF CONFIGURATIONS, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with one of the more recent ones: the X-Bolt Pro. It features a stainless-steel receiver, a spiral-fluted bolt with enlarged knob, and a stainless-steel fluted barrel in sporter contour. The external surfaces of the metal parts are coated with Cerakote in the Burnt Bronze color. The stock is a carbon-fiber composite material and finished with a coating of Burnt Bronze Cerakote. Instead of checkering, the stock has textured gripping surfaces. It also has a slight right-hand palmswell and Browning’s Inflex recoil pad. The rifle comes with two sling-swivel studs, also finished in Burnt Bronze Cerakote. Length of pull is 13.63 inches; drop at the comb is 0.69 inch; and drop at the heel…

ONE OF MY FAVORITE ARS IS THE ALEXANDER ARMS AAR-15 IN 6.5 GREN- del that was gifted to me by a friend several years ago. It has a 16-inch fluted barrel with an A2-style flashhider, an MK10 composite free-float hand-guard, an Alexander Arms Tactical blade-type trigger, an A2-style pistol grip, and a collapsible M4-style buttstock. It’s accurate and functions perfectly. I’ve always liked everything about the carbine except the buttstock, so I decided to replace it with one that better meets my needs. I use a SIG SAUER ROMEO4H red-dot optic on the carbine, and I don’t have a comfortable cheekweld with the original buttstock. There’s no shortage of aftermarket buttstocks for ARs, but I chose TacStar’s fully adjustable match-grade AMRS. (AMRS stands for Adjustable Match RifleStock.) The TacStar AMRS…