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The Christmas List – Naughty vs Nice

Christmas is coming up quickly and if you’re like me you haven’t even started thinking about what to tell other people to buy you, let alone what to get them.

Hunting Wrecks: Episode 1 [Video]

Welcome to the first episode of Hunting Wrecks! In this episode, titled Don’t do this after surgery, we follow the story of a deer hunting trip on horses that ends in disaster.

DryFireMag – Product Review

The DryFireMag is a dry fire magazine that uses your own gun to provide audible and tactile trigger simulation, making your dry fire practice feel very similar to your real trigger.

FN 509 Compact MRD Unboxed at the Gun Counter

FN America just released the new FN 509 Compact MRD featuring the FN Low-Profile Optics-Mounting System and fully ambidextrous controls. It comes with a soft sided case, a 12 round magazine with pinky extension, and a 14 round extended magazine.

Rugged Maps [Product Video]

Rugged Maps and OnX have partnered to bring you detailed, high-quality maps that last a lifetime and are printed on waterproof anti-rip material.

Hatch Outwest Bipod [Product Video]

Quick video overview of the Hatch Outwest Bipod. It may be the ultimate hunting bipod due to its lightweight, American-made construction, and an incredible range of adjustments.

HK VP9-B 9mm Pistol Review

The HK VP9-B is a semi-automatic pistol chambered in 9mm that features a push-button magazine release, an ergonomic grip, and a rear sight with a shelf for racking on a belt or pocket. It is a variant of the original HK VP9, which has a paddle-style magazine release

Handgunning Hogs: 357’s & 41’s

This is going to be a 3 part article of calibers suitable for handgun hunting feral hogs and we will deal with those calibers that are typically used in revolvers.  I will attempt to cover each group of calibers sufficiently and provide some good examples and information.

Know Your Duck Calls – How to Clean, Repair, & Rebuild

If you are like me you tend to buy calls, use them, like them, hate them and move on to the next one.  Calls take a ton of abuse and often we pay little or no attention to taking care of them both for maintenance and for adjustments.  I sat down with a good friend and someone that calls as well as anyone I know, to discuss the call components and how anyone can disassemble, adjust, and rebuild just about any call with a few spare parts.

Pack Out Bags – Tested With 133lbs of Rocks

First, the Pack Out Bags are designed to have one bag on the back and one bag on the front, like a mail carrier bag. There is a hole for your head to go through and very wide padded shoulder straps. There are also straps and snap-in buckles that keep everything together.

Field to Table: 3 Unique Ways to Make Venison Chili

By now, most hunters have their own “secret recipe” for venison chili. Sometimes, though, I think those secret recipes can be confused with boring – especially if it’s the same way you’ve been fixing chili for years.

Instead, look to trying one of these three unique dishes, which are probably unlike anything else in your cookbook. They’re sure to bring a different flavor, and maybe inspire you to change up that old secret formula.

2017’s Top 5 Best Days of the Whitetail Rut

On the minds of hunters all year long, the rut is a magical time to be in the woods. And although every day spent afield is a good one, mark these dates on the calendar as some of the best for 2017.

Traditions Mountain Rifle – Review – Hawken Style Sidelock Muzzleloader

The Traditions Mountain Rifle is a Hawken style traditional sidelock muzzleloader with a double tenon wedge system. It is deadly accurate with roundballs, and is absolutely gorgeous for the $520 price. If you have always wanted a traditional style muzzleloader, this new entry to the Traditions stable is probably the one.

Kimber Hunter .308 Deer Rifle (vs. Wild Florida Hogs) – New Gun Review

With deer season just around the corner, I thought that now would be a good time to review the Kimber Hunter, which is their entry level deer rifle of a very high end line. If you are a regular here at GunsAmerica, you’ve probably seen the ad for the rifle running on our homepage, and they sent me a review rifle a few months ago. Now that summer is pretty much behind us, it’s time to start thinking new deer rifle, and if you have the budget, the $885 MSRP Kimber Hunter is an option you should seek out. Most people think 1911 when they think of Kimber, but the company started with rifles, and it is still a core component of Kimber Firearms today. The Hunter is the same action as the $1,400 Kimber rifles. If are have been looking for an upgrade this deer season, please watch the video.

Deer Hunter’s Secret Weapon – Get ‘Em Quick

I’m sorry that I didn’t get this out quicker for those of you who have deer season kicking in this week in your state. This product, the Walker Game Ear, shocked me when I got to test it this summer, and I had in mind that I should run the story before deer season, because it is an absolute secret weapon. If you haven’t tried these things, they have super sensitive microphones embedded in them, so they not only protect your ears from your eventual gunshots, they also allow you to hear like…well, a deer.

How to Butcher a Wild Hog – Photo Essay

With so many first time gun owners out there are bound to be a whole bunch of first time hunters as well. Wild hogs are available to hunt year round, and because they have a short gestation cycle, there are almost no bounds to their numbers. Corn feeders can bring wild hogs in to a specific location at fairly reliable regular times, and the wild-caught meat is not gamy at all. Most would agree that especially corn fed wild hog is much better than feedlot commercial pork. This is a photo essay on how to butcher your own wild hog.

Before You Book a Hog Hunt – Ask These Questions

Sometimes we take for granted some of the most obvious things, then when you find out that what you took for granted doesn’t actually exist anyway, it can be terribly disappointing. A lot of people have been asking our resident guide Dwayne Powell of Kissimmee River Hunt & Fish about “free range” game lately, as opposed to fenced in game. The guided hunt market exploded a couple years ago, and this far down the line some people are getting wise to the fact that a lot of guided “hunts” aren’t hunts at all. They make it feel like a hunt, but really what you are shooting are caged animals on very small parcels of land. There are guys selling “open range” hog hunts, turkey hunts, deer hunts, and even alligator hunts, on from 100 down to even 5 acres of land. Around the property is a high fence, and none of the game is native and wild on the property. it has all been deposited, to be caged and killed. On the smaller properties the “guide” will drive around in circles, then take you a feeder you would swear is deep in the woods, but is really only a couple hundred yards from where you started.

Killing Coyotes 101 – Daytime and Night Hunting Problem Coyotes

“Know your enemy” is something of a misnomer when hunting coyotes. They are not creatures of habit, but of instinct and opportunity. Creating what a coyote believes is an opportunity kicks in its instincts, and that is how you get a wily coyote within shooting range. If you are overrun with coyotes and you don’t know what to do, this is an overview of the basics, based on over six months of research with our guide Dwayne Powell in Okeechobee, Florida. The state of Florida is second only to Texas in beef production, and coyotes are an incessant problem on the cattle ranches, especially with newborn calves and birthing mothers.

We have hunted these creatures during the day, at night, when the ground is wet and when the ground is dry, when it is hot and when it is cool, and there is almost never a time when coyotes do the same thing. There are times when you won’t be able to lure them out, and others when they will stand 30 yards in front of you and let you shoot at them. But of one thing you can be certain. Make sure that your rifle is zeroed and that you shoot really well, really fast. She or he who hesitates is lost when hunting coyotes. They don’t give you a lot of time, even on the easiest day. More of Dwayne’s clients miss coyotes than all the other types of game combined. The Creator in His infinite wisdom made the coyote a ruthless, heartless, killing machine that is extremely suspicious and careful. You have to be no less than that if you expect to eradicate them from your property and hunt coyotes successfully. It really isn’t about coyote hunting. It is about coyote killing.

Busting the Magnum Myth! – Choosing YOUR Ideal Hunting Cartridge

Kinetic energy does not matter. Accuracy almost does not matter. The headstamp on the case certainly does not matter. Having more shells in the magazine does not matter. How well you can hit with your rifle is almost all that matters!

What if I were to tell you that there is a rifle out there that will let you take more deer and elk; and bears and sheep and caribou and coyotes; and kudu? Yes, there is a rifle out there that will make you more successful in virtually any hunting situation you can imagine. Now your mind immediately goes to the biggest, fastest, largest, longest and most expensive kind of machine modern technology can create. But alas, this is going to be much simpler and down to Earth than you might imagine.

I am about to offer you the keys to the kingdom of hunting-rifle success; keys gleaned from several decades of hunting and the observation of more than 1000 head of big game being taken. This is not about me, but about the dozens of men, women and young shooters I have guided or known around the world. Folks just like you who I have watched succeed and fail, often very simply because of the rifle, or more accurately the cartridge they have chosen. Kinetic energy does not matter. Accuracy almost does not matter. The headstamp on the case certainly does not matter. Having more shells in the magazine does not matter. How well you can hit with your rifle is almost all that matters!

What if I were to tell you that there is a rifle out there that will let you take more deer and elk; and bears and sheep and caribou and coyotes; and kudu? Yes, there is a rifle out there that will make you more successful in virtually any hunting situation you can imagine. Now your mind immediately goes to the biggest, fastest, largest, longest and most expensive kind of machine modern technology can create. But alas, this is going to be much simpler and down to Earth than you might imagine.

I am about to offer you the keys to the kingdom of hunting-rifle success; keys gleaned from several decades of hunting and the observation of more than 1000 head of big game being taken. This is not about me, but about the dozens of men, women and young shooters I have guided or known around the world. Folks just like you who I have watched succeed and fail, often very simply because of the rifle, or more accurately the cartridge they have chosen.

Duck Hunting in September

Duck hunting is very different depending on where you hunt. In the Northeast, a good day of duck hunting might mean a few shots at a few pairs of Mallards. But down here in Florida, we have several kinds of ducks and the state has created a four day mini-season in September for hunting a small duck called a Teal, which if I researched it correctly, is technically the Blue Winged Teal. The season also includes wood ducks, but we won’t cover them here. Teal travel in flocks, not pairs, and it is not unusual, on a good duck pond, to see dozens in a morning. We went out for the first morning of this year’s mini-season, hosted by our guide Dwayne Powell at Kissimee River Hunt & Fish, and we were able to experience birds flying over our heads in the hundreds. The limit is 6 birds, and several of our party limited out in a short time. Even our 11 year old shooter shot several birds, and we are all eager for the next phase of the season November 17-25. If you haven’t duck hunted, especially in Florida, you are missing a good time and a lot of shooting.

Gator Season is Here! – Alligator Hunting in Florida 101

While most of the nation is beginning to dream about hunting whitetails in the fall, in sunny Florida where the leaves don’t turn and whitetail season already started, everyone is talking about GATORS! Dwayne Powell, our resident guide at Kissimee River Hunt & Fish, took us out for a learning expedition this week for the season opener, and even took this eight foot monster on a private tag to show us how it’s done. Alligator hunting in Florida is a lot of fun, but the devil is in the details, and even if you manage to pull a tag in the public lottery, the chances of actually bringing home a gator are slim, unless you know how to prepare. On private land the rules are different, and easier, but you will need to pay a guide to burn a private tag for you. If you have never bagged a gator, one way or the other, there is no game animal that compares to these mighty giant lizards. Get yourself a tag and get out gator hunting!

DRT Frangible .223 Ammo vs. Charging Wild Boar

You may never have even heard of the biggest innovation in terminal ballistics since the hollow point. It has been around for more than five years, and the bullets are made from compressed powder, wrapped in a standard copper jacket. Loaded ammunition is available in most common rifle calibers, as well as the usual handgun suspects and even some exotic hunting calibers. The bullets alone are also available in bulk for the handloader. The company is called DRT, or Dynamic Research Technologies. If you hit a living being with a DRT bullet, it will become our definition of DRT, “(D)ead (R)ight (T)here.”

Summer Hunting Anyone? – Varmint and Predator Hunting All Year Round

Calling all hunters! While most of the hunting world is off thinking about whitetails in the fall, varmint and predator hunters are gearing up for an exciting summer. I decided to write this article in collaboration with our regular hunting contributor Carlos Lopez, and our newest discovery, Dwayne Powell, who runs Kissimmee River Hunt and Fish in Okeechobee, Florida, to see if you guys would like to see a summer full of hunting here at GunsAmerica Magazine & Blog. Carlos and Dwayne are passionate hunters and hunt all year, and if we all would like them to share some of their summer experiences with us, they have agreed to put it together. Some folks would argue that hunting goes away until after the kids go back to school, but we disagree. Varmint and predator hunting is all year round, and even if you can’t get out this summer, there is a great deal of merit to keeping your head in the game. Please comment on this article, like it on Facebook, and tweet it on Twitter if you feel like you’d like to see the tactics, the guns and gear in action that you will use this fall, or during the summer yourself.

Gibbs “Pig Buster”—A Hard-Hitting Hog Hunting Rifle With A Little History

The folks at Gibbs Rifle Co. have a history of taking surplus military rifles of arguably minimal collector interest and turning them into sport specialty rifles that have a serious “fun gun” factor and “tough as nails” demeanor. Perhaps the best known of them are the Summit and Quest chambered in .45-70 and .308, respectively. Those were built on surplus Enfield actions and were not attempts to reproduce any sort of historical military gun at all. Instead, they were practical, utilitarian rifles that made good use of surplus military and some new parts. “Commercial sporterizing,” probably best describes it, and as Gibbs puts it, they “…take the best features of historic military arms and translate them to meet modern sporting needs.”

Get Out Turkey Hunting!

While I will never claim to be anything close to being an expert in turkey hunting….I have pursued the quarry on more than a few occasions. I’ve named all those turkeys the “Roadrunner” which of course, makes me “Wile E. Coyote” and no… I am not the “Super Genius”. Far from it, according to my wife. I do give myself an “A” for effort though. How an animal whose head houses a brain the size of a pea can beat me and thousands of other hunters time & time again…for that I definitely do not have an answer. I make no excuses for not being able to routinely beat this Old World majestic game bird. I suppose that is what draws the strange breed of turkey hunters that obsess, scout, gear up, & lose countless hours of sleep and family time to outsmart a gobbler. It can be done and gets done thousands of times each year every Spring and Fall all across this great country of ours. While I will never claim to be anything close to being an expert in turkey hunting….I have pursued the quarry on more than a few occasions. I’ve named all those turkeys the “Roadrunner” which of course, makes me “Wile E. Coyote” and no… I am not the “Super Genius”. Far from it, according to my wife. I do give myself an “A” for effort though. How an animal whose head houses a brain the size of a pea can beat me and thousands of other hunters time & time again…for that I definitely do not have an answer. I make no excuses for not being able to routinely beat this Old World majestic game bird. I suppose that is what draws the strange breed of turkey hunters that obsess, scout, gear up, & lose countless hours of sleep and family time to outsmart a gobbler. It can be done and gets done thousands of times each year every Spring and Fall all across this great country of ours.

Buying Side by Side Shotguns Right – 25 Tips

As much as I love, own and shoot modern shotguns, there is really nothing like a classic side by side doublegun. If you have never tried one, do yourself a favor and go heft one up to your shoulder in a gunshop. You may say eh, no big deal, but you also may fall in love, I warn you. The side by side shotgun has a contagious kind of energy to it, something like a built in romance, for a lot of us anyways.

Minute of Angle (MOA) Accuracy Out of the Box

Pick up just about any gun magazine these days and you will see ads for MOA accuracy, guaranteed, out of the box. MOA means “minute of angle,” which is 1/360th of a circle. It seems like a great selling point and I’m sure it sells a lot of guns, but I wondered if the claims were actually true. If you don’t understand MOA it is understandable. what does a fraction of a circle have to do with the accuracy of a rilfe? But we’ll get to that.

Not everyone is capable of shooting MOA, even with the most accurate rifle, so I employed our local neighborhood US Army Sniper (and GunsAmerica Magazine contributor), Ben Becker. The results are astounding. All of the rifles we tested (and we didn’t just test rifles that advertise MOA) shot into or nearly into a minute of angle at 100 yards. Some even did it for 10 and more rounds in a row, without cool down. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we are living in the Golden Age of firearms manufacturing. This is incredible stuff.

Please don’t take this as a “head to head” comparison for these rifles against each other or against other rifles in the market we didn’t test. The list of guns we tested is in no way comprehensive. We were able to get rifles from Beretta (Sako, Tikka), Savage, Thompson Center and CZ. Noticeably absent are of course Remington, Browning, Winchester, Weatherby, Ruger and others. This article was not meant to be comprehensive. We just wanted to see what is going on out there in some quality production rifles and these are the ones we could get. There is no reason to believe that the rifles missing from this test wouldn’t perform just as soundly as the rifles we were able to shoot.

10 Pro Tips for Planning a Hunting Trip

So… you have finally saved up enough money and made up your mind to take that hunting trip of a lifetime. If you have never taken an extended hunting trip …you ask yourself “What do I need? At this point, you probably have already picked a game species to hunt and the state or province where you plan on pursuing that game animal. If you haven’t, don’t panic, you still have time to put something meaningful together but you need to start right after you finish reading this article. In order to point you in the right direction I have listed the top tips to help you plan for that memorable hunting trip you are about to take. If you are going with friends or family members make sure that everyone is on the same page. Make your plans and coordinate your equipment together. Proper planning and preparation will benefit everyone. I can go on and on about this topic, but I will touch upon the main points of groundwork in order to keep things in perspective.

The Mighty .17 Rimfires – A Tiny Little Cartridge With Great Big Fun

I am a .17 lover, in spite of my reputation for liking really big guns. Being a .17 shooter is sort of like other things your friends and family would like to keep in the closet. But trust me; it is okay to like the wee rifles because there are few things that go bang that are as much fun.

To buy and like a .17 of any size you have to overcome the opinions of “experts” and writer types who will tell you all of the “bad” things about them. If you begin with the foundation that it is likely few of these naysayers have ever fired a .17, it immediately makes you feel better about the smallest of the commercial rounds. That they foul badly, are inaccurate, blow like feathers in the wind and have no killing power is simply untrue. My sweet seventeens have mostly been centerfires, and their emphasis has been on speed. Many of them are honest 4000 fps propositions and the fastest bullet I have ever chronographed was a .17, fired over the Oehler at 4600 fps. I have shot numerous sub-half-inch groups, thumped lots of various small critters, a few coyotes and some deer. With my long term affection for .17s it will not surprise you that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Hornady Rimfire when it was released over a decade ago.

Craig Boddington DON’T BLOW THE SHOT OF A LIFETIME

Life isn’t always fair. It’s possible to spend an entire lifetime of hard hunting and never get a chance at a truly fantastic, world-class trophy. It’s also possible to take a Boone and Crockett whitetail on the very first outing. The strange nature of hunting is that, while both effort and technique certainly count, ultimately there is a major element of random chance that places a great animal and a hunter in proximity at the same time.

Not Your Daddy’s White Tail! — Hog Hunting is Always in Season

The whitetail deer is the #1 sought after big game animal in North America, and years ago hogs were just considered target practice while one was out during the deer hunt. Today in Florida, where I live, the wild hog is gaining ground quickly as a favorite to hunt. There are several different reasons why I believe wild boars are gaining such increased attention. The main reason? The excitement. There is a definite element of danger that you don’t have while hunting deer.

A mature wild boar weighing over 200 pounds will attack viciously without prejudice and so will a sow with shoats. Be careful when hunting these formidable wild creatures. It baffles me how the state of Florida can classify wild hogs as small game. This classification must have been determined by someone who has never seen the cutters or whetters on these animals. I recommend always carrying a sidearm when hunting boar; I don’t ever go without one. It’s better to be safe than sorry. I have seen a few videos showing wild boar attacking a hunter, and in most cases, the hunters have been cut to the bone with those razor sharp cutters. As for average shooting distances, most are relatively close, within 100 yards. While many calibers will suffice, my personal favorite is my Marlin CS 3030 Lever Action that used to be my New York brush gun for whitetails. I believe, for most people, a 223 would be the minimum caliber I would humanely use.

THE .30-06 – Still America’s Best!

The cartridge first known as “Ball Cartridge, Caliber .30, Model of 1906” is without question the most famous American rifle cartridge, not only in our own country but throughout the world. In 1903 we replaced the Krag-Jorgensen in .30-40 Krag with the long-serving and much-loved 1903 Springfield and a new .30-caliber cartridge. The Springfield was a Mauser clone, its rimless cartridge similar to Mauser’s designs, but longer with more case capacity. The initial 1903 cartridge was loaded with the same 220-grain roundnose bullet as the Krag, but in 1906 the bullet was changed to a faster and more aerodynamic 150-grain spitzer. At the same time the case neck was shortened by .07-inch, thus the Model of 1906—the .30-06—went forward to make history. The .30-06 served the United States in both World Wars, the Korean conflict, the early years of Vietnam, and a dozen banana wars in between. It was chambered to the Springfield, the Pattern 14 Enfield, the Marine Corps’ Johnson semiauto, the Garand, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), and several versions of the Browning machinegun. Clear into my time, the 1970s, the .30-06 was still seeing use both with snipers and in the Browning light machinegun.