Riflescope Blog: Expert's reviews, news, notes on rifle scopes, hunting optics, shooting, binoculars, night vision sights, gun accessories, and more

The Devil gun is running fine. That's great because I was losing confidence I could get it to shoot well enough. Yesterday groups were running around an inch, with one group about .330. Plenty good for anyone, and that is with the cheaper Winchester Power Points. After upward pressure didn't work well enough, I hogged out the stock completely with 220 grit sandpaper around a piece of conduit, then a larger piece of water pipe. The stock does not contact the barrel at all from about an inch in front of the receiver forward. I also polished the crown and cleaned the gun with regular solvents instead of the Hoppes Elite products I've been using. I think that helped, also. One of the testing issues has to do with cooling time after shot strings. It takes quite a while. I shoot other guns in the meantime. Yesterday was an SKS, an Egyptian Maadi AK-47, my drilling, an AR-15, and my Savage 10FP Mcmillan with an illuminated Leupold Mk IV 8.5-25x50 with the TMR reticle in Mk IV rings and bases. I also shot a friend's Savage Mako .22 a bit.

I'll get one more trip to the range in before I go, with the intention of chronographing the loads to determine trajectory better at long distance. I should be able to get a 200 yard zero with the opportunity to shoot 300. I really don't shoot big game too much farther than that.

Last range session was mainly about getting small groups out of my Vanguard. The crappy groups I've been getting had nothing to do with the great glass on it. I'm using one of the new Burris Six-X riflescopes with the ballistic reticle. Nice piece of equipment. It's in lapped Burris XTR rings on top of Burris XTB bases. All quality products.

I had some fun with other guns while the Weatherby was cooling off from my .300 Winchester Magnum shot strings.

Sometime in 1993 I got a call on a Saturday from the owner of the gun shop I managed. He said he had something I needed. I said okay, I need it. What was it and how much? Turns out, a friend of Bill Ruger wanted a barrelled action only in 220 Swift, and then he died or changed his mind or something. I doubly needed it because a barrelled action was never offered, nor was the .220 Swift cartridge at that time. So of course I bought it. I had visions of grandeur about a custom synthetic stock with double swivels and a flat bottom that would ride the bags well. Trouble was, nobody made a stock for the new heavy barrelled gun yet except the factory laminated Ruger stock that I didn't want. McMillan and Six Enterprises wanted about 600 bucks to make me one. Rats. So I kept the thing in a cloth in a safe and did nothing with it for about 10 years. I was gooping up my guns in the middle of the Gunroom floor one day and My Shirley came by. I told her the story about the barrelled action and how I wanted a cool stock for it but wouldn't pay that kind of money for one, and maybe I'd sell it. She said, "Why not get the one that normally comes with it?" I was flabbergasted. I'd had the gun for so long I didn't even think of it. So I put in a call to my friend from Ruger for a cheap dinged and dented one, or one with a chip out of it or something just so I could shoot it. Nothing happened until one day a brand new stock arrived at my door. I guess they never had any banged up stocks they wanted to send, so they just sent me a new one. I shot it for the first time ever last Sunday. I topped it with an old Tasco World Class Plus straight 24x50 scope with 1/8" adjustments that I use for load development. This is an old discontinued Japanese scope and it is an outstanding product. I had some Hornady Custom .220 Swift ammo left over, and after boresighting, my first shot was about 4 inches high and 4 inches left. I adjusted accordingly and put the next three rounds into a one inch target dot. Cool. So I packed her up and went on to another one.

My Martini has a heavy one inch Schneider barrel and is chambered for the sexy little .218 Bee cartridge. It has the most gorgeous wood you will ever see on a gun, and in fact is one of the most beautiful guns you can imagine, with highly polished metal and topped with a 12x 1.5" Unertl scope. Put a few rounds through it and put it away.

My Colt Competition II H-Bar has a Hogue floated forearm with no goofy cheese graters on it. Hogue grip, also. I installed a standard sling swivel so I'm not torquing the barrel when I sling up. I broke this gun in one round at a time with JB Bore cleaner for the first 20 rounds, then sent it to 300 Below for cryogenic treatment. With Federal Gold Medal 69 grainers it's a half inch gun all day. I changed a few trigger parts and scoped it with Burris XTR extra high rings with the Burris Picatinny top on one ring and a Docter mini red dot on top of that. It has a Leupold VX-III 4.5-14x50 in the rings. It also has a Redi-mag on it that I highly recommend. I shot some Federal LE only tactical loads out of it and it shot them only fair, grouping around an inch or so.

I bought the metal from a best quality German drilling (correctly pronounced DRY-LING [drei is German for three]) made by a gunmaker named Edgar Keiss around the turn of the century. Just a small piece of the foreend was left. No other wood, and it was also missing some metalwork. I bought the gun because it was a work of art. I kept it in a cloth for years, until one day a friend showed up at the gun shop with a cheap Stoeger Coach Gun with the nicest chunk of wood ever to be put on a cowboy gun. I asked him why he would pay so much for nice wood just for a cheap shotgun. He told me he had an acquaintance with an autistic son that couldn't hold a conversation but was a whiz with wood. He said the guy worked cheap and liked to keep his son busy. I went home and gave my friend the pieces and asked him to tell his acquaintance to just put a fence post on it and make it shootable. Nothing fancy, and keep it cheap. Months later I got the gun back and I was shocked. I said, "Oh my God, I wanted something cheap! I can't pay for this!" Turns out the guy never saw a three-barrelled gun before, so chose a beautiful piece of crotch walnut for both the stock and the foreend, made it with a shadowline monte carlo cheedpiece, hand checkered them and even made the missing coined metal pieces. I paid him either $225.00 or $275.00, I forget. But it was gorgeous. Now I had to find out what cartridge the bottom barrel was chambered for. Turns out it is 8x57JR. Sellier and Bellot still loads for this cartridge. It is basically a rimmed 8x57 with a .311 bullet. The top barrels are 16 bore 2.5 inches that I reamed out to 2 3/4. I finally got a chance to shoot the gun and love it. What a creation, and beautiful.

I shot some other stuff, too, but those were the most interesting on that particular day.

The "Devil Gun", my 9999 serial number Weatherby Vanguard just wasn't shooting for me. I'm getting flyers like a bad habit. The stock was contacting the left side of the forearm when it arrived, but since it's a sub-MOA rifle with a test target I disregarded it. Then the bedding broke off so I rebedded it. Still large groups and flyers. Spoke to Weatherby a couple times, and they're great, but I didn't have time to send it in. The gun is tested for accuracy potential, then threaded for a brake if one is requested, which I did. Works great but it's so obnoxious it's not worth it to me to use. Noisy bugger. Then it's stocked and bedded but not shot again. It never did shoot well enough for me to live with. I gave it some more upward pressure with an old Meister Brau beer coaster, trying for even pressure on the barrel, and it helped a bit, but not enough. Then I pulled out the stops and hogged the stock out to float it. I'm got an inch or so with the ammo I had, so I guess I fixed it, but not before shooting lots of expensive ammo. Federal Premium Nosler Accubond 180s, Federal Premium Nosler Partition 180s, Winchester Supreme XP3 180s, and Federal Premium Barnes Triple Shock 165s. None worth a darn from the gun the way it was. I'm about out of time. My local store had some Winchester Power Points 180s in the same lot number. I bought three boxes and this was the last chance for this gun. If it didn't work well enough for me during this last range session I would use a different gun. The floating worked. I bought two more boxes of the same lot number, so I have enough to use for both upcoming elk hunts. I wanted to use premium bullets, but I have what I have, and they should be fine. This is one of the only times I haven't used the best bullets available. We'll see what the cheapos do.

Instead of cutting the foam for my Pelican 1750 gun case, I think I may remove the middle piece of foam and insert a soft gun case, since a hard gun case doesn't travel well besides in airports. The Kolpin case I may use is one of the nicer padded soft cases I have been using lately. I also have a Butler creek rubberized sling, which won't slip off my shoulder, especially over backpack straps. I'll get another chance or two to do some more testing before I go, so I hope all goes well.

Spent a few days in Modesto, California last week on a dealer retreat with 5.11 Tactical, a favorite company of mine. It was refreshing to see such a competently run large business. 5.11 is mostly oriented towards the brick and mortar retail stores, but we at OpticsPlanet do a large bit of business with them as well. The embellishment section of 5.11 is state of the art, with complex looking machines hooked up to Macintosh computers directing the embroidery and silk screen operations. OpticsPlanet doesn't use this service, but we may in the future. Their warehouse was expertly run, and was packed with the most modern picking and shipping equipment and methods. Very efficient.

The Light For Life is the most exciting product on the 5.11 menu at the moment, and it is revolutionary in every sense of the word. It has a polymer body and is fully charged in 90 seconds. Maximum lumens are 270 peak, and 90 lumens standard, plus a strobe. The unit is comfortably large but light. This is a superb light for uniformed officers, as well as home use. The mid-sized Light For Life will be on the market shortly. The 5.11 Light For Life can be charged up to 50,000 times!

The 5.11 Tac-Lite pants and shirts will also prove to be favorite items of mine. I like the bit more freedom of movement and comfort over the standard 5.11 Tactical pants and shirts, which are superb. The covert pants are great, too.

Dan Costa's famous prime rib was excellent, and one night after product training in a vineyard we sampled some fine red and white wines. Well, some people sampled. I just drank it. The fantastic blues band was a fabulous treat to compliment the excellent food, and Dan's brother plays a mean guitar. A good time was had by all.

Input was received by the upper echelon of 5.11 at every stage of the retreat, and they are very receptive to ideas suggested by their dealers. They will not put up with less than outstanding performance from their products or their people. A big atta boy to the managers there. Keep it up.

This company has nowhere to go but up. Look forward to new releases of Blade-Tech holsters, knives, uniforms, and footwear to excite 5.11 Tactical to even greater heights. My thanks to Dan and everyone at 5.11 for a fun and informative retreat, and I can't wait to send Mark and Ryan next year. They will eat it up.

It's been a busy two weeks. After starting to break in a couple of guns in my basement (see "Barrel Break in Procedures...") I planned to take four .30 caliber guns to the range. While taking the stock off my new Weatherby Vanguard Sub-MOA in .300 Winchester Magnum, the factory bedding broke off around the front recoil lug. Crap. It seems as if some of the bedding material that flowed into the action screw hole wasn't attached very well to the surface of the pillar bedding, and it just gave up its grip.

I had some brown Brownell's Glasbed in the Gunroom. After drilling small holes in the bedding area and heating it with a pencil torch for better purchase, I rebedded the front recoil lug, tightened it to the recommended 55 inch pounds of torque with my Wheeler FAT wrench, and set it to rest in a Tipton gun vise on a chair next to my furnace. After 10 hours I broke the barreled action free and was able to take a look. Perfect. Better than factory. The color doesn't match the stock, but you can't see it, and I couldn't care less. After cleaning the barreled action of release agent, reinstalling, and waiting the required additional 2.5 days drying time the gun was ready to shoot. I think of it as the "devil gun" because the last three digits in the serial number are 666. My warranty no longer applies, but I leave to hunt in just a few weeks. To be fair, the techs at Weatherby are excellent and they wanted to help, but I couldn't afford the down time.

I brought my Steyr SSG in .308 with a Zeiss Conquest 6.5-20x50 with the Rapid Z 1000 reticle. Shooting Federal Gold Medal Match I shot a measured .225" 3 shot group at 100 yards, one of my best groups ever. The gun shoots ridiculously good, and almost all groups were under a half inch, but this was one of my best. The target is in my office for posterity. The gun has set triggers, so if you pull the rear trigger first, the front trigger becomes as light as I want it. Have you ever trained a puppy to sit by gently pushing down on his butt? The front trigger on this gun when set feels as if you are pushing down on a mosquito's butt, it's so light. It takes some getting used to. Using the front trigger even when it's not set will make you squirm with delight with the crispness. One of my favorite guns of all time.

Then I brought out my go-to gun, my Howa 1500 in 30-06 with a superb Nikon Monarch 2.5-10x42. I still have plenty of ammo from my last safari, and just to keep it from feeling lonely, I let it shoot its 1 to 1.5" groups confidently. This gun has been used very, very hard in the last ten years or so. It's a good and trusted friend.

I shot the new Vanguard anyway even before I rebedded it. I didn't expect much out of it, so I wasn't disappointed. Groups of around two inches with the muzzlebrake and broken bedding and only one kind of ammo. I don't care. I just needed to get familiarized and throw some more lead downrange to continue seasoning the barrel. Next trip out this Tuesday I'll see how she shoots with four different loads and good bedding. The gun is currently wearing one of the new Burris Six-X 2-12x40 scopes with the Ballistic Plex reticle. It is settled in two piece Burris XTB bases in lapped XTR rings in low. I lap all my important rings with a Wheeler lapping kit.

I also brought my last year's Christmas gift from My Shirley, a Russian Mosin-Nagant model 44 carbine in 7.62x54. It shoots like a surplus gun should. Fun. Recoil is not objectionable. These guns are currently available everywhere for around a hundred bucks.

Cleaned the darn things again after shooting. By the way, the new non-hazardous, biodegradable cleaning chemicals still burn your eyes and sliced thumb flesh. It's great fun experimenting to see which liquids burn cuts the most. But fingers are a pretty useful tool when cleaning guns, and you just go on with it.

It's not only fun at the range, though. I have fun other ways, as well.

My Shirley came in for a lunch visit last week. I proposed to her on my knees with a bouquet of black-eyed Susans and a Hershey's Kiss on the flying bridge at OpticsPlanet, and what do you know...she said YES! Coming out to my car after lunch I found a lucky penny. Maybe that's why I got lucky that night. We actually got married in 1992, but I keep asking her in case I'm dreaming.

I took a video of some insane monkey climbing the inside of an abandoned water tower with just a headlamp for light. This same knucklehead even got to the top and spray painted a love note to some girl named "My Shirley". For posterity, I guess.

I'm in pretty good shape for my two elk hunts this October. Lost some weight. I even ran a bit after some range time with some sandbags in my pack. I did okay.

My stupid living room table jumped up and smashed my toe, and the bright purple will go well with the new clothes I'll be wearing to Modesto, California, when I go to visit 5.11 tomorrow. I'll be there for a few days to press the flesh and strengthen relationships with this excellent tactical clothing manufacturer.

Other things in the last couple weeks.... My cooking never stops, and the herb and vegetable gardens have been fruitful this year. I eulogized my friend Don and participated in his Masonic funeral. It was very touching. I later inventoried his dozens of firearms for his lovely wife and honorable son, and I'll be able to put values on them next week when I get a chance. Cleaned and fixed my gutters this week while My Shirley was helping relatives this weekend at the Southern tip of the state, like the thoughtful and considerate and beautiful person she is. Also repaired and resealed my driveway, cleaned up my mess from my gameroom shooting range, went to a friend's party via a wild motorcycle ride, and all in all had every minute taken up like the flailing tarnished pinball I am. I will continue next week when I get back. Man, what a wild ride this life is. God bless.