Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

One in .44 Magnum please.  As soon as possible please.  I’ll buy one. Ruger, are you listening?

Just several days ago we were discussing how to get the most distance out of your tactical shotgun, and the corollary issue of how to get the best pattern.

Little did I know this was going to come out on that very issue.  These results are very impressive.

Here’s the catch.  The choke is currently not available.  I’ve written Kick’s Industries to ascertain when it will become available.  I’ll let you know what they respond.

I carried a .44 Magnum when hiking in the Tetons several weeks ago.  Color me still a bit skeptical on use of the 10mm for bear defense.  I guess the advantage is capacity, but only that.

I don’t have a .454 Casull or I would carry that.

Here is a news report of the attack.

American Hunter.

To appreciate the Creedmoor’s design details we must first look back to the mid-twentieth century. At a time when the Beatles were the hottest band in the land and the Bay of Pigs debacle was unfolding, American hunters and shooters were obsessed with belted magnum cartridges. The 7mm Remington Magnum, the .300 Winchester Magnum, and Roy Weatherby’s red-hot cartridges had become the standard for making long shots on big game. If you wanted to improve performance from your favorite belted magnum the answer was simple: shoot a lighter bullet.

Over the decades, serious shooters recognized two things. First, while lighter bullets did offer higher velocities and flatter trajectories at moderate ranges things changed when shots stretched much beyond a quarter-mile. Light bullets tended to drop very quickly when their velocities waned, and the wind shoved them all over the place. Second, hunters realized that powerful magnum rounds kicked hard, burned a lot of powder, and required long actions, magazines, and barrels which increased gun weight and overall length.

Fast magnums remained popular through the end of the twentieth century, and they are still popular choices for those who hunt big game at long distances. But by the turn of the century, shooters were taking a long, hard look at long-range bullet performance, and what they learned was that a bullet’s ballistic coefficient played an important role in downrange performance. Heavy-for-caliber bullets with aerodynamic profiles and high ballistic coefficients make sense for long-range shooting.

The sensible solution would be to load magnum ammunition with high-BC bullets, but there were two problems. First, many rifles had barrel twist rates that were too slow to properly stabilize extremely heavy-for-caliber bullets. Second, most cartridge cases were not designed with maximum-weight bullets in mind, so heavy bullets would rob case capacity or exceed acceptable cartridge overall lengths (COL).

Enter the 6.5 Creedmoor. It’s based on the .30 T/C, a cartridge that never garnered a major following. The Creedmoor was necked down and features a 30-degree shoulder and a long enough neck so that it can accommodate 140+ grain bullets without robbing case capacity, yet still fit in a short action. Muzzle velocities weren’t extremely high—around 2,700 fps with Hornady’s ELD match load—but that bullet boasts a G1 BC of .697, so at 500 yards it retains over 2,000 fps of velocity and almost 1,500 foot-pounds of energy. Compare that to Hornady’s .308 Win. 168 Boat Tail Hollow Point (BTHP) Match ammunition, and you’ll see why the Creedmoor makes sense. The .308 Win. load has a BC of .450 so it’s going to move more in a crosswind. The .308 Win., with its heavier bullet, is actually about 200 fps slower than the Creedmoor at 500 yards, and the .308 Win. produces more recoil.

That’s the best explanation of the 6.5 Creedmoor I’ve ever seen.  Not even the engineers at Hornady have done so well at explaining why they developed the round.

It’s a heavy-for-caliber bullet, but not heavy.  It’s long and has a high BC, but it fits in a short action rifle.  It’s a long bullet but it doesn’t rob the case of powder capacity.  It’s a compromise round.  It achieves moderate to high MV at short ranges, but exceptional velocity at longer ranges.

Its recoil is of course more than say a 5.56mm, but it’s not like shooting a 30-06 or 7mm magnum.  Guns designed for it send the round downrange with enough bullet twist to take advantage of the cartridge design.

There isn’t any such thing as perfect ammunition.  Every decision is a compromise on something.  But this round achieves the best of the compromises that have to be made, and is nearly as perfect as can be for white tail, hogs, varmint, and elk at close range.  “When Emary and Thielen designed this round, they wanted a superb low-recoiling cartridge that was accurate and could take advantage of high-BC bullets, and that’s exactly what they’ve created.”

If you want something else, then get something else (e.g., use a 7mm magnum or 7mm PRC for ridge-to-ridge hunting in Idaho or Wyoming).  Don’t criticize the 6.5 Creedmoor – its design has a purpose.  Know what your bullet and gun are designed for, and stay within the boundary conditions of the analysis.

Field & Stream.

• You’re Probably Putting Too Much Pressure On Your Rifle
• Shooting Bags Aren’t Just For the Range
• Blading Your Shoulders Leads to Bad Shooting
• Learn to Build Good Shooting Positions
• Light Rifles Can Be Accurate, Too
• You Don’t Need A Lot of Ammo to Practice
• Respect the Wind and Your Limitations

See the discussion at F&S.  I’ve tried to put some of these principles to practice recently in my own rifle shooting.  I’m a long ways from mastering them all.

This seems like a fair test for a run of the mill shotgun with offhand shooting.  I don’t think it’s a fair test of more expensive shotguns or guns that have been modified and adjusted for distance.

Most shotgun manufacturers have much longer barrels, and trying different chokes would have helped with his shot spread.  Beretta has a longer barrel “forcing cone” than other tactical shotguns, and using different ammunition might have helped (e.g., Federal FliteControl).

So if I wanted distance versus a more portable close quarters battle shotgun, I’d install a 32″ competition barrel and use different ammunition.  I’m willing to bet that he could land pellets at 100 yards.  I wouldn’t want to get hit by a 9mm bullet at any range, including 100 yards.

By the way, I think he meant to say Vang Comp.

American Rifleman.

The .444 Marlin was a brainchild of Marlin employees Thomas Robinson and Arthur Burns. They made the first cases from unfinished .30-06 Sprg. brass before it was necked down and the rim turned to its final diameter. Burns presented prototype ammunition and a rifle chambered for it to Earl Larson at Remington, and since an official name for the cartridge had yet to be decided on, the first test ammunition loaded by Remington was head-stamped “.44 Mag”, because that bunter was on hand. It was later changed to “444 Marlin.” The ammunition featured the same 240-grain bullet being loaded by Remington in the .44 Mag.

Advertised velocity was 2,400 f.p.s., reduced to 2,350 f.p.s. soon after the barrel of the Model 444 rifle was shortened to 22”. The 240-grain bullet proved to be sudden death on deer, but elk and moose hunters desired more penetration on quartering shots, so in 1982, a 265-grain soft point at 2,120 f.p.s. was added. It was discontinued around 2010, but has returned to the Remington Express ammunition lineup with an average velocity of 2,239 f.p.s. from my rifles. Demand for the .444 Marlin increased when several shotgun-only states legalized the use of certain straight-wall centerfire cartridges.

The .444 Marlin is often incorrectly described as a lengthened version of the .44 Mag. The two cartridges do share the same rim and bullet diameters, but body diameter just forward of the extraction groove of factory ammo usually measures 0.464” to 0.467” for the .444 Marlin and 0.451” to 0.453” for the .44 Mag. SAAMI maximum chamber diameter for the .444 Marlin is 0.4747” so firing the .44 Mag. in a .444 Marlin rifle could result in a ruptured case and should not be done.

It would be interesting if Marlin came out with a new Model 444, but given the similarity of this cartridge with the 45-70, it may not happen.

See also Chuck Hawks, and American Hunter.

The wheel guns do actually experience muzzle rise before the bullet leaves the muzzle, albeit small, but small at the muzzle means big at the target.

I haven’t done a detailed analysis of it with a “free body diagram,” but I’m willing to bet that the reason this effects revolvers and we didn’t see it with semiautomatic handguns is that the round is in front of the hand rather than at the back of the gun, providing a force “couple.”

I won’t attach a picture here.  You can research “couple.”

This is a good video.  I’ve shot trap, and I didn’t know some of the rules of etiquette he covered.  By the way, if you don’t shoot clays, you’re missing out on the most fun you’ll ever have.