Rifles

2:52 PM, a couple miles west of Brady, Nebraska, and I less than three hours away from a hearty serving of Tag Soup. I was on Day Five of a November 2018 deer hunt in Nebraska’s Lincoln County, and though I’d put in many hours I hadn’t seen a buck of any size—antlers or body.

The Stalker QD proved to be a nice piece of light-weight hunting gear that went on at a moment’s notice to provide the stability I needed for a good, ethical shot.

The last day of my Nebraska 2018 deer hunt, mid-November, and I had yet to see a mature buck. I also had a chest freezer back home less than a quarter full. So, when a group of white-tailed does step into the cut-over cornfield, I decided it was time to stock up on some venison.

Ruger has decided to enter the light-weight, long-range hunting rifle game with their appropriately named Hawkeye Long-Range Hunter Bolt Action Rifle. This gun is designed to be accurate, lightweight, user adjustable and tough. The light profile, stainless steel barrel contributes most to this rifle’s low weight and comes chambered in the most popular 6.5 calibers.

Unboxing the test rifle, it was clear at a glance that the First Lite is not Roy Weatherby’s Mark V of yesteryear. The Mark V line got something of a makeover in the last few years, and the result is an updated take on an iconic and distinctly American rifle design.

After looking the rifle over, I was very impressed with what I saw and felt. The rifle was hefty… and I mean really hefty. The bull barrel that this gun comes with adds a lot to it, but the advantage is that you can shoot all day and not see a change in accuracy. The stock felt good to me out of the box, but with the option to change the cheek riser and length of pull (LOP from here on out) I rearranged the stock so that it fit me perfectly.

Let’s face it, in the AR-15 world it’s easy to get lost in the vanilla black-rifle weeds. We reached a saturation point of sorts with semi-auto gas-operated systems quite a while ago, especially in terms of plain black rigs offered by “manufacturers” who simply assemble branded components provided by true third-party bulk-producers. Even so, some not-so-vanilla iterations have certainly risen above the others and deserve to be called out. The Brenton USA Ranger Carbon Hunter is one of them.

Built on the Browning’s X-Bolt action, the Max Long Range comes ready for long range.

Keystone Sporting Arms is kicking off a new series of mini rifle replicas of World War I and II rifles starting with a Mosin-Nagant chambered for .22 LR.