Gear Reviews

O.F. Mossberg & Sons https://www.mossberg.com/ I would argue that the Mossberg 500 Series platform is the best pump shotgun on the planet. I have used and shot them so much over the years that I can operate the gun in my sleep, and have had them in no less than six varieties. Until now the [...]

High end optics have historically not done well in the American market, We will spend any number of hard earned dollars for the newest and greatest rifle in the newest and most devastating caliber, but when we go to buy a scope for it, we cheap out. Europeans tend to go the opposite way. They will take much more pride in a fine optic than a fine rifle, and that is where they prefer to spend their money. An American will put a $500 scope on a $3,000 rifle, whereas a European will put a $3,000 optic on a $1,000 rifle.

I don’t know when this changed, but it is recent. All of a sudden, right here in the good old USA, optics in the $1,500 plus range have come into focus in the market (pun intended), and people are buying them.

The Slide Fire is a $369 replacement stock for your AR-15 that when used properly, simulates automatic fire. Since the invention of the semi-automatic rifle people have been learning to do what is called “bump firing” the gun. You hold the gun in a loose way and allow it to rock back and forth against the trigger finger, which simulates automatic fire. It is fun, but it burns a lot of ammo without any real ability to aim at anything.

With all the talk we have around here about long range accuracy and long distance shots, very little of it applies to actual big game hunting. Punching paper has almost no relationship to hunting in the field. Paper targets just sit there. You don’t have to work hard to find them. They don’t move. It is almost like they were made to sit there and let you shoot at them. Oh yea, they were. Most shots on deer, hogs and even most African game is taken well inside of 100 yards, and often less than 50 yards.

None of those things are true with actual game, whether it is a Whitetail deer in the Pennsylvania woods, or a hog in the Everglades, or a Kudu on the plains of Africa. Wild game is almost always moving somewhat, and they are usually pretty darned hard to find, especially the big ones. When it is time for your shot, the shot you worked really hard to get and probably prayed for by your bedside the night before, you don’t want to look down your rifle and discover that you have the wrong optic for the job. Even at 4 power magnification a moving deer 75 yards away can be a difficult target to find in your scope when split seconds count. Yet optics are preferable in many ways to iron sights, because you don’t have to align them.

I’m not sure anyone has any faith in the free gun cable locks you get with most new firearms these days. The ones I have tested are a struggle to get the key into, and when you do get the key in and manage to open it the cable stubbornly clings to the side of the action. It is hard to get the gun from a safe and locked up condition to ready to fire.

MagVault, who you probably know from their biometric handgun safes, has recently introduced two products that take the place of those pesky cable locks for not a lot of money. If you aren’t locking your gun in a safe and you feel you need to provide a foolproof measure to keep your gun safe from firing, one of these might be for you. Neither can be eliminated with a $5 pair of bolt cutters from Wal-Mart, and one is even on sale for a few days more for $13.95 Read the rest…

Bullet drop, and compensating for it, can be extremely confusing, even for those of us who are good in math. But bullet drop itself isn’t that complicated, especially if you always use the same factory ammo with the same bullet from the same manufacturer. Nikon took this realization, concept, whatever you want to call it, to the next level in their M-223 series and designed scopes that are specifically for the bullet drop of the .223/5.56 NATO cartridge. Read More…

See a need, fill a need. That’s the foundation of American ingenuity. While browsing through new ads coming onto GunsAmerica a couple of weeks ago, I happened upon a nifty homemade tool for adjusting the rear sight on a pistol. We’ve all gotten guns that came from the factory not shooting to point of aim, and while it isn’t an expensive gunsmith visit, it’s still a gunsmith visit. I’d rather have a tool I can bring to the range and adjust it myself, and also have to help others who I see dealing with the same issue. Read More…

Pellet guns let you to bring your shooting home and AirForce, a small manufacturing company in Fort Worth, Texas, makes some great guns to do it with. We tested their two most popular models, the Talon SS and the Condor, out at the ranch on a typical north Texas summer day.
There are basically three types of air guns: spring guns which must be cocked prior to each shot, CO2 guns which use small canisters of carbon dioxide as propellant, and pre-charged pneumatic (PCP) guns which use compressed air. The advantages of a PCP gun over the other two types are that they can be more powerful, they shoot more consistently, there is virtually no recoil, and follow-up shots are faster and easier since the gun doesn’t have to be cocked between shots. Read More…

Out of the cool closet comes a quad-rail for side by side shotguns from LaserLyte that would make even Doc Holiday come out of his grave and get out his credit card and laptop. The OK Corral would have gone a little different if he had a laser on that there doublegun, and whether you own a Rossi Coach Gun like you see here in the pictures or a fancy engraved high grade upland game gun, your home will be a little safer with this nifty easy to use device from LaserLyte. Read More…