Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i Shooting Times

A Breath of Fresh Air THE .280 ACKLEY IMPROVED ARTICLE IN THE DECEMBER 2020/JANUARY 2021 issue by Joseph von Benedikt was such a breath of fresh air! At last an article that’s not about another PRC this or that or another magic rifle named Creedmoor! I am really tired of reading about rifles and cartridges that are barely better than my high school buddy’s 6.5 Swedish Mauser. When I was a youngster, the .30-06, .270 Win., and other spinoffs were the “go-to” when choosing one’s first big-game rifle. Guess what? They all worked and pretty darn well! But back then we learned to hunt game instead of playing sniper. These people taking 600-, 700-, and 800-yard shots at unwounded game is sickening and tiring. Why not learn real hunting and…

AS A TEENAGER, MY SECOND FORAY INTO THE wonderful world of “modern” centerfire rifles was a 1952 Winchester Model 70 in .270 Winchester. It was a simple, standard Sporter version. During my teens, I trained horses for an old doctor and his wife, and I admired several of the fine vintage guns they owned. When “Doc” passed away, his wife called me and stated firmly, “I don’t believe in giving anything to anybody. Folks never appreciate things they don’t have to pay for, but I’ll sell you a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol for five bucks each.” That .270 Win. Model 70 became my primary hunting rifle. Over the next several years I took some significant big-game animals with it, including my first branch-antlered bull elk and a bona…

MY FIRST THOUGHT WHILE LIFTING THE NEW Model 2020 Waypoint from its factory box was, “What were the decision-makers at Springfield Armory thinking?” Everyone knows 20-inch barrels on bolt-action rifles are old hat and long barrels are in. But the more I handled the rifle, the better I understood the intent of its designers. Everybody is turning out long-barreled guns, but quick-handling, super-accurate, bolt-action deer rifles short enough to maneuver inside a cramped ground blind and to shoot from an awkward position from a tree stand have become a bit scarce. Terrific Touches When choosing a chambering for a Model 2020, I went with 6mm Creedmoor, but the .308 Winchester is also offered with the 20-inch barrel. Longer can be better for some applications, so the 6.5 Creedmoor is in…

THE COMPANY NOW known as CZ was originally Ceska Zbrojovka, or “Czech Weapons Factory.” It was founded in 1936 in the city of Uhersky Brod in what was then Czechoslovakia. This city was chosen for the country’s arms manufacturing plant because it was far away from the German border and Hitler’s bombers, but in 1938–1939, Germany seized control of Czechoslovakia. CZ guns have been available in the United States since 1991 and are now imported by CZ-USA, which is headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas. CZ offers a wide array of centerfire rifles; over-under, side-by-side, and autoloading shotguns; centerfire semiautomatic pistols; and lots of delightful .22 rimfire rifles. CZ’s line of high-quality .22 rimfire rifles began with the introduction of the Model 452 in 1954. The Model 455 debuted in 2010,…

WILSON COMBAT IS WELL KNOWN FOR ITS CUSTOM PISTOLS, RIFLES, and shotguns, and the company also manufactures ammunition for personal defense, hunting, and target shooting. I’ve been shooting some of the company’s 9mm Luger ammo. The High-Performance Tactical 115-grain XTP +P loading has a rated velocity of 1,250 fps out of a 5.0-inch barrel. The High-Performance Tactical 124-grain XTP +P is rated at 1,200 fps out of a 5.0-inch barrel. The High Performance 135-grain HBFN is rated at 955 fps out of a 5.0-inch barrel. The 147-grain RN Optimized for Compact pistols (OFC) loading has a factory-rated velocity of 890 fps out of a 4.0-inch barrel. And the Subsonic 147-grain XTP is rated at 1,050 fps out of a 5.0-inch barrel. The velocities I obtained ranged from 3 to 66…

WHILE WORKING ON THE UPCOMING 2021 EDITION of the Complete Book of the Model 1911 special publication, I was reminded of a tough and fearsome Texas lawman by the name of Charlie Miller. Miller enforced the law for close to 50 years. Charles Edward “Charlie” Miller was born in Frio County, Texas, sometime around 1893. There is some dispute, which I’ll get to in a bit, about his actual birth year. He was educated in San Antonio and attended Old Main High School. Before becoming a regular Ranger in 1919, Miller worked as a special Ranger and as a deputy sheriff in Bexar County. Miller’s first stint as a regular Ranger lasted from December 10, 1919, until February 21, 1925, when he left the service to be a Federal Prohibition…

Alliant 410 Propellant ACCORDING TO ALLIANT, THE COMPANY’S NEW 410 POWDER IS THE ONLY flake powder specifically designed for .410 Bore skeet and field loads. The powder is made in the USA, and its formulation delivers low charge weights and optimal loading characteristics. In addition, the flake granulation yields excellent charging characteristics while minimizing annoying bar leakage. MSRP: $26.99 (1 lb.), $94.99 (4 lbs.), $174.99 (8 lbs.) alliantpowder.com Wilson Combat Supergrade Commander Special Wilson Combat’s new Commander Special is a “Supergrade” version of the classic carry gun. It features a polished blue carbon-steel round-butt frame with 30-lines-per-inch checkering on the frontstrap, a contoured magazine well, and a bobbed high-ride beavertail grip safety. The 1911 also features a Commander hammer, a retro checkered thumb safety, deluxe burl wood smooth grip panels,…

ROY WEATHERBY KNEW HOW TO GET ATTENTION. When I was a kid, “Weatherby” meant “power.” For .30-caliber fans, Weatherby created two powerhouses: the .300 Weatherby Magnum and the .30-378 Weatherby Magnum. The .300 Wby. Mag. (1945) was among Roy’s early offerings of proprietary cartridges based on the Holland & Holland belted case. Those under .30 caliber were built on a shortened H&H case for .30-06-class actions. The .300 upped the game by using the H&H case at full length. The .300 Wby. Mag. was a barn-burner. In an old compendium of advertised specs for contemporary .30-caliber rifle cartridges with 180-grain bullets, the .30-06’s nominal was 2,700 fps, and the .300 H&H was listed at 2,920 fps. The same source shows the .300 Wby. Mag. at 3,245 fps. Current Weatherby specs…

SLEEK 6.5MMS, 7MMS, AND .30S HAVE BEEN all the rage this century, leaving the classic .277-caliber cartridges behind. The new hot-rod 6.8 Western cartridge aims to change that. When hearing of the new short-action magnum 6.8 Western, my first thought was, “As if we need another .270!” Admittedly, I felt a bit jaded by the recent deluge of modern cartridges and was quite skeptical whether the 6.8 Western could offer shooters and hunters anything fresh and worthwhile. This attitude only deepened when I heard that the 6.8 Western cartridge case is really similar—but not quite identical—to the .270 WSM. My inner grinch emerged. “All they’ve done,” I grumbled inwardly, “is put a fast-twist barrel onto a .270 WSM chamber and called it a new cartridge.” But that’s not accurate. In…

THE TWO-TONE .38 SPECIAL TAURUS DEFENDER 856 DOUBLE-ACTION revolver is cool! It looks good and handles well. It’s ergonomic, accurate, and fun to shoot, and it is rated to handle +P ammunition. The Defender 856 has a 3.0-inch, stainless-steel barrel with a full-length underlug, and “38 SPL” is stamped on the underside of the underlug. The muzzle has a recessed crown, and the front sight is pinned to the barrel. (More about the sight later.) The top of the barrel is smooth. The cylinder is also stainless steel and is finished in matte black. It holds six rounds of ammunition. The cylinder rotates counterclockwise when the cocking mechanism is operated, and the design uses a coil mainspring, a frame-mounted firing pin, and a transfer-bar safety mechanism. The frame is stainless…

IT HAS LONG BEEN HELD TO BE INDISPUTABLY true that a firearm is only as accurate as its sighting apparatus and that the better the sights, the more accurate the shooting. Well, I beg to differ. Sometimes—and this runs contrary to everything we think we know about shooting—a better sight can actually make you shoot poorly. This is particularly true with optical sights, and the higher the power, the worse it can be. The apparent contradiction lies in the fact that accuracy in a gun and shooting accurately with that gun are two different things. I first really noticed this about 15 years ago, when Crimson Trace was really making an impact, and having a red dot dancing on the target was all the rage. A dozen of us were…

SOMETIMES I AM ASKED BY SERIOUS HANDLOADERS and novice reloaders, “How do you read chamber pressure?” My short answer is, “You can’t, and no device yet designed directly does, either.” Let me explain. I recently read some articles about how handloaders could “read” pressures. One thoroughly explored assessing chamber pressure by precisely measuring case-head expansion. The author spent big bucks on a digital micrometer that could measure 0.00001 inch! He fired hundreds of rounds of carefully assembled handloads and took about 1,500 measurements. After three pages of text, seven photos, and two charts, he summed up the results by stating, “…based on my experience, I don’t trust it to tell me much.” Another article I read was a reprint from years ago that expanded the scope of reading pressures by…

THE .45 ACP HAS BEEN WITH US FOR WELL over a century. During that time, it has established an untarnished reputation as one of the best personal-defense cartridges for autoloading pistols. And as proven long ago by Bullseye shooters, it is capable of a level of accuracy exceeded by no other handgun cartridge. John Browning’s grand old number has played a key role in the popularity of a number of competitive sports, so here are my favorite 45 ACP competition loads. IDPA Compact Carry Pistol Division Back in 1996, a group of shooting industry leaders headed by Bill Wilson formed the International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA). Invitations for the first match held at the old Chapman Academy, near Columbia Missouri, were sent out, and I had the pleasure of competing…