Shooting – Page 3 – Wholesale Hunter

RIFLE ACCURACY WITH DIFFERENT LOADS By Craig Boddington

Today’s factory rifles are, on average, more accurate than I thought possible when I started shooting. American hunters and rifle shooters have long been obsessed with raw rifle accuracy, probably more today than ever before because of the growing fascination with long-range shooting. How much accuracy is really needed depends entirely on what you intend to do. Bench-rest and thousand-yard competitors need all they can get, and so do varmint hunters. Most big-game hunters probably have more accuracy than is truly necessary—but it’s a wonderful confidence builder to know that your rifle is capable of producing teeny, tiny groups!

257 Roberts group: There’s no telling exactly what load a given rifle will shoot best…and it may not be the load you prefer to use. So far, Boddington’s Dakota .257 Roberts produces its best groups with Remington 100-grain round-nose Core-Lokt, not the most ideal hunting load for a flat-shooting cartridge. This rifle needs handloading and will get it!

That’s a valid reason to demand extreme accuracy—and it’s amazing how many of today’s basic, inexpensive factory rifles deliver. I think this is because, with modern manufacturing, factory tolerances are tighter than ever, with more consistent barrels. When I was a kid, we figured a factory bolt-action that produced 1.5-inch 100-yard groups was pretty darned good. Rifles shooting one inch and better were cause for bragging. Today it’s amazing how many factory bolt guns retailing for less than $500 will consistently produce one-inch 100-yard groups.

308 Win OR 30-06 Springfield? By Craig Boddington

Right now, the 6.5 Creedmoor is gathering all the headlines and glory. Fifty years ago, the 7mm Remington Magnum was America’s darling, for some years the world’s most popular cartridge to carry a “magnum” suffix. Both, to me, are anomalies. America is .30-caliber country!

308 blacktail: An excellent blacktail from northern California, taken with a Winchester M88 in .308. The 88 is one of several lever-actions chambered to the .308. Able to fit into short actions, the .308 offers a much larger choice of both rifles and actions than the .30-06.

It started in 1892 with the .30-40 Krag, and continued in 1895 with the .30-30, now 125 years old and still selling well. Introduced in 1906, the powerful .30-06 became the American standard. Introduced in 1963, the .300 Winchester Magnum was at first reviled: Too short in the neck, caught up in Winchester’s catastrophic pre-’64/post-’64 shift, and designed to replace the revered .300 H&H. The .300 Winchester Magnum did not take off well. However, the sun, moon, and stars realigned. Over time the .300 Winchester Magnum, a proper American .30-caliber, booted the 7mm Remington Magnum as the most popular magnum cartridge.

308 Dad M70: My Dad, Bud Boddington, took most of his game with this Winchester M70 .308. Dating to the 1950s, it has been shot little since Dad passed 20 years ago—but it still groups extremely well…like most .308s.

It remains to be seen if the 6.5mm Creedmoor will retain its current popularity, but I believe order will return to the universe and we will again become a .30-caliber nation, as we have been since the dawn of smokeless powder. However this plays out, two great and versatile .30-caliber cartridges will remain among our most popular choices. They are, of course, the .308 Winchester (aka 7.62×51 NATO) and the .30-06 Springfield (aka .30 U.S. Government, Model of 1906).

IN PRAISE OF PUMP GUNS! By Craig Boddington

Most upland and waterfowl seasons are over. Spring turkey season is coming up fast, so for many of us this is time to shop for a new turkey gun. Fine, but shotgunning is really about familiarity and fit (probably in that order). Turkey hunting is a bit different than most shotgunning because the birds are (more or less) stationary and you aim, but any time you invest in a new shotgun, it’s wise to also expend time and a bunch of shells in practice. Although they taste terrible, there are no bag limits on clay targets. Clays vary widely in speed, angle, and difficulty, but it really doesn’t matter if you shoot trap, skeet, sporting clays, or hand-thrown targets: Every clay you shoot at (and especially every target you hit!) will make you more effective with that new shotgun.

1979 AZ quail: Warner Glenn and Boddington in 1979 after a great morning on Arizona desert quail. Warner has a very early straight-gripped Model 12; Craig’s is his factory skeet Model 12, made in the 1950s. In ‘79 he’d had the gun for a decade, and it had seen a lot of use.

I am probably best-known as a “rifle guy,” not so much as a shotgunner, and definitely not a turkey hunter. The latter is valid: I hunt turkeys, but I am no turkey expert! Shotgunning in general is a slightly different story. The Kansas I grew up in had few deer and zero turkeys, but we had oceans of bobwhites and lots of pheasants.

UNLEADED BULLETS Some love ‘em, others hate ‘em…but they work! By Craig Boddington

The fancy term is “homogeneous alloy,” but we’re primarily talking about all-copper or copper-alloy rifle bullets, absent any trace of lead. There are two primary reasons to hunt with this type of bullet: Because you have to; or because you want to.

Barnes X, TSX, TTSX: The Barnes X-Bullet was the first effective copper-alloy expanding bullet. The TSX, center, added driving bands to reduce copper fouling, while the TTSX, right, added a polymer tip, which drives into the bullet upon impact to initiate expansion.

Without question, lead is a toxic metal, and lead poisoning is a serious and potentially fatal health hazard. Waterfowlers have been required to use non-toxic shot nationwide since 1991, now with multiple alternatives including alloys of bismuth, iron, tungsten, and zinc. A legal requirement to use non-lead bullets is newer and still uncommon…but that depends on where you live. Since 2007 California has banned hunting with lead bullets throughout the range of the endangered California condor. The condor, really the world’s largest vulture, is primarily a scavenger. Hard evidence is sketchy, but there is a chance a condor could ingest lead fragments or particles by eating carcasses of animals taken with lead bullets. California’s Central Coast, where I’ve lived for 25 years, is part of the so-called “condor zone.”

44 Magnum: Not just for handguns!

Nobody said it better than Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry Callahan: “The 44 Magnum is the most powerful handgun in the world.” At that time this was true, but the .44’s reign as the most powerful handgun cartridge has long since ended. Today it is surpassed in power by several factory cartridges, including the 454 Casull, 480 Ruger, and both the .460 and .500 S&W. However, these cartridges also surpass the .44 Magnum in recoil.

44 handguns: The .44 Remington Magnum, designed as a handgun cartridge, has been chambered to numerous pistols and revolvers. Boddington’s T/C Contender with .44 barrel and his S&W Classic Hunter are shown with Garrett’s 310-grain super-hard-cat “Hammerhead” load…which will not cycle in all lever-action carbines.

The big .44, properly the .44 Remington Magnum, is a handful in a handgun! Some find it difficult to master, but in a heavy revolver it’s really not that bad. It remains my favorite handgun hunting cartridge, very accurate and plenty powerful enough for anything I desire to hunt with a handgun! For years gunwriter Elmer Keith had been experimenting with heavy handloads for the old .44 Special, using that case because the brass was thicker and stronger than standard cases for the .45 Colt.

REMINGTON’S BIG SEVEN By Craig Boddington

I’m on the record as stating (more than once!) that the 7mm Remington Magnum isn’t one of my favorites. It’s a popular cartridge so this always brings howls from its many fans. More importantly, at least to me, is that it’s not good journalism—or business—to contradict myself. Since I’ve been writing about this stuff for 40-odd years I think it’s possible (and allowable) for my opinions to change over time. But this opinion has not changed: The 7mm Remington Magnum is not among my all-time favorite cartridges.

7 mag line-up: Left to right: 7mm Remington Short Action Ultra Mag, .280 Remington, 7mm Remington Magnum, 7mm Weatherby Magnum, 7mm Shooting Times Westerner, 7mm Remington Ultra Mag. The 7mm Remington Magnum is hardly the only “fast 7mm,” and certainly not the speediest—but it is by far the most popular and most available, a world-standard hunting cartridge.

My reasons are simple: There are lots of excellent cartridges, and it’s impossible to love them all equally. I love the .270 Winchester because it shoots just as flat as the 7mm Remington Magnum…but burns less powder, has less recoil, does fine in a 22-inch barrel, and can be built into a lighter rifle. If I feel I might need (or just want!) more power I’ve generally stepped up to a fast .30-caliber, which can offer more bullet weight and frontal area with similar velocity…albeit with more recoil.

.204 RUGER: THE BEST VARMINT CARTRIDGE? BY CRAIG BODDINGTON

It was a perfect setup for prairie dogs; we had a big shade tree to our left, three of us in line on portable benches, with a big colony stretching away before us. Stephen Shen was on the left, Gordon Marsh in the middle, me on the right. Interestingly, all three of us were shooting the .204 Ruger cartridge: Stephen a Savage 116, while both Gordon and I were shooting Ruger No. Ones, his in blue/walnut and mine stainless/laminate.

The .17s run from very fast to “medium” and all are useful but, in common, the light .17-caliber bullets hold up poorly in wind. Left to right: .17 Remington, .17 Remington Fireball, .17 Hornet,

It wasn’t universal; Bill Green was off the right, popping away and having a ball with a semi-auto .17 HMR . This was Gordon and Bill’s annual prairie dog shoot out of Cheyenne, hunting with Craig Oceanak and Nick of Timberline Outfitters. It was my second shoot with them; for Stephen, CEO of Vector Optics, his first ever. We had other rifles, .223s and .22-250s. However, except for Bill, who clung to his .17 HMR and walked in some amazing shots, the .204s did the majority of the work. There are many excellent varmint cartridges, so it struck me as unusual that three among our foursome were shooting .204s…but I think we made good choices.

CLASSIC CARTRIDGES ON SAFARI By Craig Boddington

We American riflemen (and women) traditionally crave velocity…whether we need it or not. There’s a long-standing belief among African hunters, not just professionals, but experienced sport hunters, and meat hunters, that performance on game is actually better at moderate velocities.

It’s obvious that, given equal bullet aerodynamics, higher velocity flattens trajectories, and also increases energy yield. The “extreme range” fad, primarily (but not exclusively) an American phenomenon, generally adds to the thirst for speed. With the amazing array of great modern hunting bullets that we have today, I’m not convinced that performance is “better” at lower velocities, although bullets may perform more consistently. For sure, higher velocities increase recoil and muzzle blast. And, despite all the hype, not everybody shoots at long range.

This is the .275 Rigby presented to Jim Corbett in 1907 after he killed the infamous Champawat maneating tiger. Dan Baker’s .275 Rigby follows the pattern exactly…but Baker’s .275 has much more embellishment and is fitted with a scope in detachable rings.

Shooting game at seriously long distances is frowned on in Africa, where making a careful stalk to close or moderate range is considered part of the art. Also, from a purely practical standpoint, the standard rule in Africa is one drop of blood equals a license filled and a trophy fee payable. So, it behooves one to get close enough to be sure of the shot!

Getting a Tune-Up with Field Practice

Some of us are smart enough to service our vehicles regularly to forestall problems. Others, unfortunately like me, are constantly late with scheduled maintenance. It’s a testament to good design and manufacturing that I don’t have more mechanical problems than I do.

target shooting, steel targets, Weatherby Magnum — Boddington working out on steel targets, shooting over a pack with the rifle and scope he used in Mongolia, a Blaser R8 in .300 Weatherby Magnum with Zeiss 4-16x50mm scope.

Shooting is a bit like that: Constant maintenance, meaning practice, really is essential to keeping your shooting skills honed. I’m pretty sure all competitive shooters, in all disciplines, and at all levels from beginner to distinguished would agree. Practice is essential not just to get better, but to maintain skill levels.

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Benchrest Shooting Tips

Serious benchrest shooting is one of the most demanding shooting disciplines. It’s essentially a scientific search for ultimate accuracy. I don’t pretend it’s my game. I’m primarily a hunter, and my preference is to get away from the bench and spend as much practice time as possible shooting from field positions.

However, shooting from the bench is essential for achieving the desired zero, as well as determining the level of accuracy your rifle delivers and which loads produce optimum accuracy. So, although I have never been and probably never will be a benchrest competitor, I do a lot of benchrest shooting.

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