Gear Reviews

A red dot is only as useful as its zero. Follow these five simple steps to get your rifle or pistol optic on target, stop chasing shots, and save yourself from burning through a pile of ammo.

The InfiRay BOLT TH50C packs sharp 640×512 thermal imaging, intuitive controls, and dependable battery life into a familiar riflescope form. It is expensive, but after a week of night hunting, sending it back still hurt.

We’re gun people, but if we gun people are anything, we’re also knife people. And if there’s any tool that virtually every one of us is carrying, it’s a folding knife.

The FN Reflex combines a surprisingly good trigger, .85-inch best-group accuracy, and flawless reliability in a palm-sized carry gun. This little 9mm ran clean, dirty, and gritty without giving us the first problem.

I bought a Silencer Central Banish 30 to find out if getting a suppressor shipped straight to my door is really as painless as advertised. The short version: the paperwork was easy, the wait was not, and yes, the postman eventually brought an NFA item to my house.

The Holosun SCS promises a pistol red dot with direct Glock MOS mounting, solar charging, no battery swaps, and enough toughness to ride on a 10mm Glock 20. I ran it like a defensive optic, worried about the solar power, broke a screw, dunked it in water, and still came away thinking this little green dot is one of the easiest pistol optics to live with.

The Tracer Tactical Burro is not just another rifle scabbard pretending to be tactical. It is a hard-sided, muzzle-up, MOLLE-covered rifle carry system that protects suppressed rifles, thermals, optics, and expensive field gear without turning deployment into a zipper-fumbling circus.

The DNT Hydra HS335R tries to pull off the night-hunting equivalent of a five-tool magic trick. It is a thermal scope, clip-on, scanner, laser rangefinder, and ballistic calculator packed into a 15-ounce unit selling for under $1,800.

The best shooting tripods give you a rock solid rest anywhere, whether you are glassing a mountain basin, sitting over a food plot, or standing in tall grass where a bipod is useless. A good tripod turns an offhand prayer into a supported shot, and for hunters who shoot from sitting, kneeling, or standing, it [...]