Guns

I rose from my blind, Stoeger 3500 semi-auto shotgun pressed to my shoulder. In seconds, I’d fired off my three shells and was sure I’d missed everything.

Traditions Firearms is launching an expanded series of projectiles for muzzle-loading firearms just in time for hunting season.

A couple of months earlier, Jones and I were on the phone talking about two of our favorite things–hunting and shooting. Jones told me about a friend with a ranch located in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio, and the guy was having problems with hogs and had given Jones an open invitation to come out and kill as many as he wanted.

In 1945, Roy Weatherby introduced three cartridges that became synonymous with speed. That has always been Weatherby’s calling card: high velocity equals flat trajectory, and they’ve stuck with that concept.

But, why I really love shotguns is because they are so versatile. Seriously, if you can find me any other gun that you can shoot a quail with at 15 yards and also shoot a whitetail with at 150, I will be very impressed. Not to mention all the different gauges, styles and brands.

I love to look at Professional Hunter’s firearms; they show the rigors of day-to-day hunting life and are often beat nearly to death. While we all have our safe queens, I appreciate those beat up, well-hunted guns that invariably have a story to tell, be it that one shot that even surprised the owner, of those hair-raising tales of dangerous game at close quarters.

The mere mention of the word obtains my undivided attention; it is the concept of a hunting adventure in the wild places of Africa, and is undoubtedly my happy thought. The word safari is taken from the KiSwahili dialect of East Africa, and it simply means ‘journey.’ It represents the challenge of shooting a big-bore rifle and being in an environment where there are animals large enough to take your life with ease. The CZ 550 rifle is, in and of itself, a journey, in that it has its roots in the Czechoslovakian Brno ZKK 602 rifle, and has come a long way to get to the current inception. That ZKK 602 is still revered among those who enjoy the big bore bolt-action rifles; the action is considered as rock-solid and reliable as a Mauser 98.

Here are some top gift ideas for the hunter and backcountry adventurer in your life. With candy canes and gum drops dancing in your head, it’s never too early to start scheming and dreaming of Christmas.

The whitetail deer has to be our most popular big game animal in the Continental Forty-Eight, yet the settings in which we hunt them, and the means with which we hunt them has got to be the most diverse ever.  Entire volumes have been written on what makes up the consummate deer gun, and while I’m not going to attempt to define that within this article, I would like to talk about some ideas to optimize your existing deer rifle, or perhaps to choose a different rifle in order to try a different means of deer hunting.