Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2023 från Tactical Life

In the early American Frontier days, Rendezvous (Rondy for short) was the annual event no mountain man would dare miss. Here’s how famed frontiersman Jim Beckwourth described Rondy: “Mirth, songs, dancing, shouting, trading, running, jumping, singing, racing, target-shooting, yarns, frolic, with all sorts of extravagances…” Grunge.com adds a bit more Rendezvous color: “Everyone was invited to the emergent wilderness shindig: traders, trappers, freelancers, preachers, ‘white men and Indians’, families, mules, and of course, big name companies. As soon as trading enterprises like the Northwest Company, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Hudson’s Bay Company, and the American Fur Company caught wind of the antics, they helped buoy the event’s popularity while liaising with each other and sending caravans of goods (including copious amounts of alcohol) to exchange for furs. The annual…

JOHN MOSES BROWNING died in 1926 just 15 years after our military adopted his 1911 pistol. At the time, this pistol was considered nothing more than a martial weapon, and even though Colt offered the pistol commercially, most police agencies and civilians relied on revolvers for defensive sidearms. It wasn’t until 1976 that things started to change. It was in our bicentennial year that two very important things happened; Jeff Cooper opened the Gunsite Academy (then called the American Pistol Institute), and the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) was founded with Cooper acting as its first president. Cooper was a huge advocate of the 1911 as a personal-defense gun, and it totally dominated the sport of IPSC. What had once been solely a military weapon had now become a commodity.…

For the first 11 years of my shooting career, I shunned eye protection. Equating it to a motorcycle helmet, I threw caution to the wind and went about my business on the range. That all changed the day I got hit with a ricochet and wound up in the hospital. My leg patched up well enough, but I couldn’t help but realize that if that were my eye, I’d be blinded or maybe even worse. Since that day, I do not step foot out of the car without something covering my eyes, and as such, I have had a chance to try out hundreds of different pairs of eye protection. Gatorz grabbed my attention because they are constructed with aluminum frames that offer protection beyond their lenses while remaining soft…

Blowback operated, delightfully lightweight and just stupid cool, the 5.7x28mm Ruger LC Carbine looks and feels like standard Battlestar Galactica kit. Featuring the same 20-round magazine and basic morphology of the Ruger-5.7 pistol, the new LC Carbine increases the reach and easily doubles the fun. This agile little rifle will make you weep over the high cost of 5.7mm ammo. This thing puts the “HOOT” in sHOOTing. A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY… I cut my teeth on Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers when I was a kid. Forget the craptastic Paul Verhoeven movie adaptation, the Heinlein original introduced such stuff as hopping infantry, powered combat suits and handheld A-bomb launchers. I read my paperback copy until it fell apart. Now, this deep into the Information Age,…

The sixth annual Athlon Outdoors Rendezvous brought together the Athlon Outdoors editorial team, contributors and some of the best firearm and accessory manufacturers in the business. The event offers the opportunity to mingle and get to know some of the latest products from approximately 30 companies. Thousands of rounds were sent downrange, and we came away with an informative sneak peek and will share some of the highlighted products here. A few products have yet to be released, but Athlon Outdoors will showcase these in future magazine issues and online. The pages to follow contain a mix of soon-to-be-released items as well as snippets of recently posted articles on our family of websites, including tactical-life.com, personaldefenseworld.com and ballisticmag.com. 5.11 TACTICAL 511tactical.com Just about everyone needs a pack when they hit…

The laws of physics are incontrovertible. Given known variables and parameters it is possible to calculate results in a predictable manner. For instance, two guns of different weights with identical barrel lengths, firing the same cartridge will produce different felt recoil. The heavier of the two guns will generate less felt recoil and allow the shooter to get back on target faster and fire more quickly. Last year Canik introduced their polymer-framed SFx Rival, a striker-fired 9mm semi-auto designed for competition use. Its economical price and proof in performance seized the attention of competitive action pistol shooters! Building on this gun’s popularity Canik recently unveiled to Tactical Life at the recent Athlon Outdoors editorial Rendezvous a new Rival pistol sporting a steel frame with more recoil-absorbing weight. I did get…

For the average gun owner, recent ammunition prices have been a bit of an inconvenience, though not necessarily a life-changing situation. However, for the hardcore practitioner that trains regularly, supply chain issues and price increases have had a major impact on their way of life. While reloading may offer a shooter the ability to customize loads for their particular rifle, it’s not really a viable alternative to actually reduce costs. So, what’s a person to do if they’re a diehard enthusiast, and they just have to get out and train consistently with their rifle to keep their skills at their peak? Well, Don Fraley of Advanced Weapons Technology in Russell, Kentucky, might have just the answer. His solution was to build and offer a new type of bolt-action tactical rifle…

“THIS PUT HIM RUNNING RIGHT AT US, CLOSING THE DISTANCE TO 150 YARDS. ONE WELL-PLACED SHOT PUT DOWN ANOTHER MANGY COYOTE.” There aren’t many things that excite hunters east of the Mississippi like the anticipation of hunting west of the mighty river. It really doesn’t matter what we are hunting—mule deer, elk, coyote, etc. The western side of the country offers a vast number of species one can target. For me, chasing coyotes is a treat. And, meeting up with friends to burn some gunpowder is never a bad time. GETTING STARTED Once again, we are meeting up with Dustin Evans at his ranch in western Nebraska. I arrive well ahead of my estimated time and caught Dustin in the middle of caping out a beautiful antelope from a hunter’s…

“With all the voices in my head, I'm never alone.”-Drake Woolf, TF Orange- Editor’s Note: This serialized short story feature is based on a fictional military thriller series featuring Drake Woolf, the singleton operator from JSOC’s Task Force Orange. “J.T. Patten” is the pen name of a former mission support advisor to the special operations and intelligence community who has published black ops-themed novels and numerous articles under his true name covering unconventional and irregular warfare topics, all of which can be found at jtpattenbooks.com. Part 1 was published in Tactical Life Nov./Dec. 2022 which is available at outdoorgroupstore.com. YOU CAN HAVE my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, was clear in intent if not words. Drake Woolf stood nose to nose with the CIA Chief…

Shooting suppressed is one of the most enjoyable shooting experiences any shooter could have. In fact, it is so enjoyable that once you experience a suppressed range day, it may be hard to go back to anything else. No one understands this better than SilencerCo. SilencerCo has become a leading industry giant among suppressor manufacturers. This is quite an accomplishment from a company whose humble beginnings originated from working out of a garage. Now, positioned as one of the largest and most innovative manufacturing facilities in the nation, SilencerCo is leading the way with cutting-edge technology manufacturing some of the most sought-after suppressors on the market today. Their relentless passion for the shooting sports industry has enabled their company to zero in on the exact needs of shooters everywhere providing…

The Zev OZ9 is a different sort of gun. Initially inspired by Gaston Glock’s eponymous polymer heater, the OZ9 takes the basic striker-fired autoloading service pistol and simply perfects it. Sporting a unique stainless steel chassis, mission-driven ergonomics and optimized everything, the OZ9 is at the top of the heap when it comes to polymer-framed combat handguns. Now that’s a pretty lofty claim. After all, there are a lot of Glock-oid guns circulating out there. It turns out, however, that this is not just my opinion. Some pretty high-speed operators drew a similar conclusion. What’s the most important tactical mission on the planet? For me, that would be any threat to my wife or children. If we are speaking geopolitically, however, the most critical mission in the world would have…

The curse of being a rifle shooter is that the best ranges are often somewhere remote with the best of the best being nearly inaccessible. Whether it be some adventurous target shooting or the pursuit of deeply embedded game, a compact rifle can be your best friend. Unfortunately, there are some tight rules regarding how short the barrel can be; however, the regulations against overall length are a little less restrictive. Basically, as long as your rifle is wearing a legal barrel, it only has to be longer than 26 inches. With receivers growing ever shorter, CZ took this opportunity to blaze a trail and release a firearm named as such. This past October at the Athlon Outdoors editorial rendezvous held in Victor, Idaho, several of AO’s content creators got…

At first glance, the KelTec P50 pistol looks like an awkward beast—something you would see in a Sci-Fi thriller. After testing the pistol, I hope the U.S. Space Force considers it a standard issue for its troops. It would be ideal for CQB defense of the control room inside mission control or for satellite repair and maintenance soldiers to keep slung across their lower back as they work in the lattice of the rocket towers on the launch pad. The P50 has a lot in common with another Personal Defense Weapon (PDW), the groundbreaking FN P90. As PDWs went back in 1990, the FN P90 was way ahead of its time with its out-of-this-world ergonomic design, bullpup layout, 50-round magazine and unique, low recoil, soft body armor-defeating 5.7x28mm chambering. It…

The optic market is flush with solid products from a variety of well-respected manufacturers. From micro red-dots to optics with integrated lasers and rangefinders, we have it all at our fingertips. At times it can be overwhelming, and you need to pause a moment to get your bearings. At that point, you begin to look at the company and just what brought them to the optic industry. If you spend a little time reading, you will find a very interesting company. Meprolight was created in 1990 for the sole purpose of equipping the Israeli Defense Forces with optics, night vision, thermals and night sights. The tritium and fiber-optic-powered M21 was the first optic that Meprolight produced in the 1990s and was soon adopted by the Israeli Defense Forces and can…

ONE of the things I love about my work is the sheer variety of guns I get to experience. A few weeks before the Mossberg 940 Pro Snow Goose arrived on my doorstep, I was reviewing a Krieghoff K-80 Victoria. From the swing to the scrollwork, the gun screamed “elegance.” While a near-religious experience to shoot, it lacked the “fun” factor. If I could draw a musical comparison, the Mossberg 940 Snow Goose is like going to a Tom Petty concert while the other is more in line with attending the opera. Both are good genres, just different experiences. My first impression of the 940 Snow Goose was how utterly unique it is. In a sea of wood and blue or proprietary pattern synthetics, they all start to run together…