Columns

Last month in Part I of this series you may have been shocked to find that I didn’t instruct you to go out and buy my “pet” favorite carry pistol. I have one of course, but I have changed what I carry over the years as my preferences changed. The point was that there are a lot of factors, but the most measurable “correct” answer is to measure what you are shooting well, and weigh those choices against the standard “bigger is better” considerations when choosing a handgun for carry. No, I’m not going to tell you what to buy this month either, but we will get into some interesting details about aspects that many people just gloss over, but that are vitally important and will affect your ability to survive your gunfight.

Choices have consequences. People have died for the inability to stay in the fight until they prevailed. Just recently I had a student report that he won his second fight, immediately following his first, because of a technique we taught him for reloading in combat. An enemy fighter suddenly materialized after the first fight was over, presumably out of “nowhere.” He was able to choose the best option, and simply shot said bad guy, because his head, and his gun, were still in the fight! He did not “unload to reload”. He did not stick his muzzle into the air where it might take a lifetime to re-index or block his vision (or act as a flag to tell every bad guy in the vicinity that someone is going to be out of action for a brief period). Rather, he had kept up his guard up when his first attacker fell and, after a threat scan to insure there wasn’t another immediate threat, he started to execute a reload. When a threat did materialize without warning he was able to stop mid-stream and change gears. I could not, of course, be more pleased.

Within the same week we received a report (in the form of an excellent but sad magazine article) from a young Marine who is disabled for life because he did not know how to do this. That of course was not pleasing. Forward this article to your friends! Nobody wants to learn these lessons the hard way, whether carrying a gun as a CCW, as a Police Officer on duty or off, as a security guard, or in the sandbox so far away protecting our freedom.

I am a .17 lover, in spite of my reputation for liking really big guns. Being a .17 shooter is sort of like other things your friends and family would like to keep in the closet. But trust me; it is okay to like the wee rifles because there are few things that go bang that are as much fun.

To buy and like a .17 of any size you have to overcome the opinions of “experts” and writer types who will tell you all of the “bad” things about them. If you begin with the foundation that it is likely few of these naysayers have ever fired a .17, it immediately makes you feel better about the smallest of the commercial rounds. That they foul badly, are inaccurate, blow like feathers in the wind and have no killing power is simply untrue. My sweet seventeens have mostly been centerfires, and their emphasis has been on speed. Many of them are honest 4000 fps propositions and the fastest bullet I have ever chronographed was a .17, fired over the Oehler at 4600 fps. I have shot numerous sub-half-inch groups, thumped lots of various small critters, a few coyotes and some deer. With my long term affection for .17s it will not surprise you that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Hornady Rimfire when it was released over a decade ago.

Hello and welcome to our first attempt at a “pro tip” column for GunsAmerica Magazine from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). If you haven’t been following the previous columns on the history and purpose of the USAMU, as well as a great article from the custom shop last month on Cartridge Overall Length, I suggest you check them out.
A few quarters in between your pad and the gun will allow you to test the proper pitch so that the gun is recoiling straight back into your shoulder. This is an example of adjusting pitch in the top of the stock with quarters.

My name is SSG Ryan Hadden and I shoot on the US Army Marksmanship Unit Shotgun team. As I write this I have just returned from China where I won a bronze medal for US in Men’s Trap. This is the second shotgun event in the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) World Cup Championship for 2010, and my teammates SSG Josh Richmond and CPL Jeffrey Holguin won gold and bronze respectively in Men’s Doubles Trap for the first event in March that took place in Acapulco. We shoot under the governing body of USA Shooting when we compete, but we are all United States Army Marksmanship Unit Soldiers. Medal winners in the ISSF World Cup earn slots for their home countries, and this is the first year that counts. So far the USAMU Shotgun team is coming out Army Strong.

That is a question I get a lot. Sometimes it is from folks who have little or no shooting experience and sometimes it is from folks who just want me to tell them that the latest weapon they have chosen wasn’t a really stupid choice.

Friends, I don’t have an ambiguous bone in my body but I cannot give you an answer without more input. Even then I don’t usually make specific make and model recommendations for I cannot know the totality of your circumstances or, without spending at least a day on the range with you, your skill level. It is truly a case of the Biblical admonition to “work out your own salvation”. All I can do is report on what you might expect to find, but you will have to go shoot the guns and do more study on your own in order to make an informed decision.

Choosing the optimal bullet seating depth for your firearm when handloading is very important. It can significantly affect both accuracy and functioning. Even within the same caliber and even within the same brand there have always been large differences in chamber design. Different chambers may all “fit” a factory cartridge, but there will be a difference in the distance between the back of the cartridge to exactly where the bullet engages the rifling after leaving the mouth of the case upon firing. This measurement can vary greatly within the official SAAMI caliber specification. Factory ammunition will be loaded to the shortest of the specification, so that it will chamber in all guns for that caliber without jamming into the rifling as the action is closed.

The whitetail deer is the #1 sought after big game animal in North America, and years ago hogs were just considered target practice while one was out during the deer hunt. Today in Florida, where I live, the wild hog is gaining ground quickly as a favorite to hunt. There are several different reasons why I believe wild boars are gaining such increased attention. The main reason? The excitement. There is a definite element of danger that you don’t have while hunting deer.

A mature wild boar weighing over 200 pounds will attack viciously without prejudice and so will a sow with shoats. Be careful when hunting these formidable wild creatures. It baffles me how the state of Florida can classify wild hogs as small game. This classification must have been determined by someone who has never seen the cutters or whetters on these animals. I recommend always carrying a sidearm when hunting boar; I don’t ever go without one. It’s better to be safe than sorry. I have seen a few videos showing wild boar attacking a hunter, and in most cases, the hunters have been cut to the bone with those razor sharp cutters. As for average shooting distances, most are relatively close, within 100 yards. While many calibers will suffice, my personal favorite is my Marlin CS 3030 Lever Action that used to be my New York brush gun for whitetails. I believe, for most people, a 223 would be the minimum caliber I would humanely use.

Surviving a gunfight isn’t what you think it is. Don’t let conventional wisdom get you killed. A well place round to “center mass” in your attacker may not take him out of the fight. Lots of people stay in the fight after “center mass” hits, and some even win it. If you expect to win your gunfight, you have to make sure that you have effectively ended the threat of your attacker. One, two or even several well placed “center mass” shots may not do what you think it will, and learning to recognize this before you gunfight may save your life.

There is a self styled self defense “expert” under every rock, and perhaps two behind every bush, these days. If you have a pet theory on what might work on the street then you can probably find a champion for that idea who actually charges people to teach them that skill. But few of the experts out there have ever been in gunfights, and even fewer have studied real gunfights to see how things really work out when the bullets really fly for blood.

The cartridge first known as “Ball Cartridge, Caliber .30, Model of 1906” is without question the most famous American rifle cartridge, not only in our own country but throughout the world. In 1903 we replaced the Krag-Jorgensen in .30-40 Krag with the long-serving and much-loved 1903 Springfield and a new .30-caliber cartridge. The Springfield was a Mauser clone, its rimless cartridge similar to Mauser’s designs, but longer with more case capacity. The initial 1903 cartridge was loaded with the same 220-grain roundnose bullet as the Krag, but in 1906 the bullet was changed to a faster and more aerodynamic 150-grain spitzer. At the same time the case neck was shortened by .07-inch, thus the Model of 1906—the .30-06—went forward to make history. The .30-06 served the United States in both World Wars, the Korean conflict, the early years of Vietnam, and a dozen banana wars in between. It was chambered to the Springfield, the Pattern 14 Enfield, the Marine Corps’ Johnson semiauto, the Garand, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), and several versions of the Browning machinegun. Clear into my time, the 1970s, the .30-06 was still seeing use both with snipers and in the Browning light machinegun.