Innehållsförteckning för May 2025 från Shooting Times

SHOOTING TIMES IS THE BEST! YOU ALWAYS FIND WAYS TO SHOW/TEACH me new stuff. The February 2025 issue included a letter from Bruce Hawkins entitled “Don’t Assume Anything.” At the end, he suggested that manufacturers equip their firearms with connections for transducers to monitor chamber pressures. This is needed more than you might imagine. I have a custom wildcat Viersco SnipeTac .338, based on the CheyTac .375 case, that fires a 300-grain SMK at 3,400 fps. Yes, it’s impressive, especially since I can often make groups like the two shots at 100 yards shown in the attached photograph. And yes, I have to make my own ammo. I wanted to check my consistency and bought a strain gauge kit that produced charts showing chamber pressure from ignition until bullet exit from…

FOLKS, THIS IS THE 100TH “THE SHOOTIST” column I’ve written for Shooting Times. It’s my favorite assignment each month, and I’ve had the privilege of handling, photographing, firing, and writing about some wonderful vintage firearms, ranging from a Victory revolver that flew bombing missions in the South Pacific during World War II to a British rifle that took more than 100 documented head of game of more than 30 different species during the early 1900s. And for this month’s column, I borrowed a truly special lever action from a friend. It’s special because it is a Deluxe version of an iconic model, because it was made in 1902 while the West was still wild, and because it is in near-pristine original condition. It’s a Winchester Model 1894 chambered in .30…

WHEN WE SPOTTED THE MASSIVE ALAS- kan black bear, he was feeding alone in a tiny patch of green at the base of a coastal cliff that soared to the skies. My daughter Sophie—age 11—clutched the Proof Research rifle chambered in 7mm Backcountry and edged her way across a tidal pool, tucking into a crack between two jagged boulders the size of Ford trucks. Broadside at 251 yards, the heavy-bodied boar presented a perfect shot opportunity. Steady on her Spartan bipod, Sophie flicked off the safety, exhaled, and squeezed. The 7mm Backcountry cartridge barked softly through the Banish Backcountry suppressor, its 80,000 psi of internal pressure sending a 170-grain Terminal Ascent bullet out the muzzle of the 20-inch barrel at 3,030 fps. Impacting the bear slightly above center on the…

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GUNMAKER AND a gunsmith is simple, but not trivial. A gunmaker can literally build a gun from a block of steel with a file, whereas a gunsmith replaces broken coil springs with a new coil spring he orders from Brownells. Of course, that oversimplifies to the point of absurdity. There is considerable overlap, and any gunsmith with a good reputation who’s been in business for a while can do many gunmaking chores, such as fashioning and tempering a new leaf or V-spring. And I have seen several craftsmen—neither gunmakers nor gunsmiths, technically—who are as accomplished with a file as any graduate of Ferlach, Eibar, or the workshop of James Purdey. To give you some idea of what’s required (or what was required) to graduate from Eibar’s…

NEW FOR 2025, TISAS HAS ENHANCED ITS DOUBLE-STACK CARRY AND Duty 1911 pistols with integral accessory rails, extended slide stops, and 1/3 fiber-optic front sights. The Carry (shown) has a 4.25-inch barrel, whereas the Duty has a 5.0-inch barrel. Both pistols are chambered for 9mm Luger, and they feature skeletonized hammers and triggers, 17-round magazines, hammer-forged steel frames and slides, Tenifer QPQ-coated barrels, polymer grip modules with 25-lpi frontstraps, flat mainspring housings, and beavertail grip safeties. The slides are milled for direct mounting of optics with 507k and RMSc footprints. MSRP: $749.99 tisasusa.com Mossberg 590RM with Rotary Safety Selector Mossberg’s 12-gauge 590RM pump-action shotgun now has a new rotary safety selector and AR-style ergonomics. RM stands for magazine fed, and the enhanced features include a redesigned compact forearm, an integrated…

JOHN MOSES BROWNING DESIGNED THE .32 Auto cartridge (.32 ACP, 7.65mm Browning) around 1899 for his .32-caliber Fabrique Nationale (FN) Model 1900 semiautomatic pistol. Another Browning patent led to Colt’s Model 1903 .32 Auto Hammerless, which is a far more elegant design with excellent safety features and among the finest pocket pistols ever made. Colt alone built over a half-million Model 1903s by 1945. Popularity aside, the .32 Auto is no powerhouse, although foreign ammo can be found loaded far hotter than U.S. standards. Current advertised specs for one imported brand show a 73-grain FMJ at a velocity of 1,043 fps with a muzzle energy of 176 ft-lbs! For years, U.S. voluntary specs listed only a 71-grain bullet at 905 fps, with 130 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. The maximum average…

Q. IS THERE A COMPILATION OF ALL THE SKEETER SKELTON ARTICLES THAT he wrote for Shooting Times back in the 1970s and ’80s? Are his articles available online? David Hill  Via email A. I’m sorry, sir, but we have not put together a complete compilation of Skeeter’s articles (he wrote for Shooting Times from 1966 until his death in 1988), and we have no plans to do so. However, we did publish two volumes of his most popular pieces in 1988 and 1991 in book form. You can sometimes find them for sale through eBay, Amazon, and used-book websites, but they have been out of print for more than 35 years now. The titles are Good Friends, Good Guns, Good Whiskey and Hoglegs, Hipshots & Jalapenos. Be advised that the…

A SHOOTING TIMES READER WROTE IN AND asked about my experience reloading for a .357 Magnum Marlin carbine. He was specifically interested in .38 Special handloads that would function reliably and deliver satisfactory performance. Although I handload for several vintage Marlin rifles chambered for the various short W.C.F. cartridges, I’d never fired a Marlin .357/.38 carbine, so I borrowed a vintage rifle from a friend, assembled and fired a few representative test loads, and shared the results with the reader. Editor-in-chief Joel Hutchcroft suggested I do a more comprehensive follow-up, so I procured a brand-new Ruger-made Marlin 1894 carbine to implement his suggestion. I also ordered a Burris FastFire red-dot optic to install on the new Marlin carbine. I had plenty of brass on hand, in fact, I found boxes of fired…

TO QUOTE LARRY POTTERFIELD, THE FOUNDER AND chairman of the board of MidwayUSA, “If you shoot a revolver enough, it will go out of time.” This article describes fixing the timing on a Smith & Wesson revolver. What is timing? Timing refers to when the cylinder locks in place when rotated. With proper timing, the cylinder will rotate enough that the cylinder locks in place before the gun fires. Timing is important because if it’s off, the chamber is misaligned, and this can result in poor accuracy and could be hazardous. Timing for a Smith & Wesson is checked by cocking the hammer or squeezing the trigger very slowly to see if the cylinder is locked in place by the cylinder stop by the time the hammer is fully cocked…

AS I WROTE LAST YEAR, ONE OF OUR MOST POPULAR SHOOTING- related shows is Gun Stories, which is hosted by accomplished actor and gun enthusiast Joe Mantegna. Newly added to the offerings on MyOut- doorTV is the 13th season of Gun Stories. Gun Stories takes viewers through a firearm’s history, from the heart of the design through its use on the range, and season 13 features episodes on Merwin & Hulbert revolvers (of particular interest to me), the J.P. Sauer & Sohn Model 1913, the Rogers and Spencer .44, the American 180, the UD M42, the Madsen Light Machine Gun, the Savage 1907, and the FG 42. Other episodes included in this new season discuss sniper life and the Marines of 2/4. In addition to Gun Stories, MyOutdoorTV also has…

ONE RESOLUTE CHARACTER OF THE OLD WEST, mostly in Arizona, was William Owen “Buckey” O’Neill. He earned the nickname of Buckey because during his 38 years of life, he daringly played against the odds at gambling (particularly faro). He also did not shy away from opposing/resisting anything that was dangerous and powerful. Most scholars believe Buckey was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 2, 1860, but some dispute that and say he was born in Ireland or Washington, D.C. He died in battle near Kettle Hill on July 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. When Buckey was just two years old, he and his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and when the Civil War broke out, his father joined the 116th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Buckey attended Gonzaga College High School…