Table of contents for January 2023 in Gun Digest

Think back to when you were a kid, and ponder what would’ve happened had you told Grandpa that you were consistently hitting a dinner-plate-sized target at 500 yards with those tiny little 40-grain bullets your .22 LR spits out. I don’t think mine would’ve cracked me alongside the head for lying, but he definitely would’ve sent me home with my tail between my legs … for lying. But, oh, if Grandpa could see me now. In his defense, however, he wouldn’t have been wrong: There was no way I could ring steel that those ranges with my wispy little pump-action Model 61 he used to watch me shoot. Hell, to hit anything with that gun, I had to learn how to adjust my sight picture to accommodate for the front…

You might be a gun writer if … you have a collection of tactical lights by the back door to choose from when taking the dogs for a walk. One I pick up routinely is a Streamlight ProTac HL. It was a high lumen (for the time) LED light that runs on a pair of 123 cells, and it now shows its hard use. The ProTac HL is an aluminum body with a rear button and the Streamlight Ten-Tap programmable operating parameters. I just stuck with the basic, so it’s instant-on “high,” a quick second tap gets me “strobe,” and the third gets me “low.” You have two other patterns to choose from if you wish. I’ve used this one for years. I’ve dropped it on concrete, in snow, mud…

01 Bandera OpenTop 11/22 Pistol Rimfire geeks might be familiar with Fletcher Rifle Works open-top 11/22. In simple terms, it improves upon the Ruger 10/22 by allowing access to the bolt, extractor and firing pin without removing the trigger or separating the receiver from the stock. Handy. Bandera has embraced the concept, releasing it in the form of the 11/22 pistol. Aside from its ease of maintenance, the Charger-esque offering has a slew of other assets. Topping this list is a receiver CNC machined from 6061-T6 aluminum, stainless-steel pins, springs and detents, and a 9-inch carbon-fiber-wrapped barrel with ½×28 thread for accessories. Bandera further enhances this with a Ruger BX trigger and shock-absorbing recoil buffer pin. MSRP: $975 02 Masterpiece Arms ESR Rimfire Rifle With the rise of NRL22 matches,…

Ammo is expensive. The only thing more expensive than ammunition is the lack of skills “gained” from not shooting ammunition. However, this isn’t a single, uniform arena in which to step out upon. What comes to mind for me is a question I first encountered when reading Jeff Cooper: “What is the purpose of the exercise?” What are we trying to do here? Are you trying to get in some inexpensive fun plinking? Maybe lower-cost-than center fire practice to keep your carry gun skills up? Or the demanding work of accurate shooting under stress? These require different approaches, so let’s take them in order. THE PLINKSTER For the fun plinking session, you need something reliable. For that, a Ruger .22 pistol or revolver will serve you well. The Ruger pistol,…

Anderson Manufacturing has recently expanded its catalog to include the company’s first handgun, the Kiger-9c. Completely made in America, this new pistol is a fairly standard polymer-framed striker-fire 9mm designed for concealed carry. The Kiger-9c as has an “original” frame, and while it does bear Anderson’s logo, visually it’s otherwise identical to the SCT 19 frame made by SCT Manufacturing. Considering that builders have been giving these frames generally positive reviews since it was released, however, that’s not an issue. The frame features aggressive texturing throughout, covering everything from the grip to the trigger guard to the thumb and forefinger rests. It also features an extended beavertail, an undercut trigger guard, front and rear slide serrations, and of course a standard Picatinny rail for accessories. The magazine well is also…

HISTORICAL NOTES Winchester Ammunition, in conjunction with Savage Arms, introduced the .17 Winchester Super Magnum rimfire rifle cartridge at the 2013 SHOT Show. A Winchester announcement called this “the most revolutionary rimfire cartridge in the company’s almost 150-year history.” Further, the company said, “The .17 Win. Super Mag. offers the downrange performance of a centerfire cartridge at only a fraction of the cost. For the first time in history, hunters can expect pin-point accuracy and devastating performance from a rimfire cartridge, at ranges well past 200 yards.” One of Winchester’s goals with the new .17 was to keep it affordable. A box of 50 retails for about $22, which is much cheaper than almost any centerfire varmint load. According to a Winchester spokesman in 2013, “At 3,000 feet per second,…

Following my professional hunter through the acacia thorn and scrub brush of South Africa’s Waterberg district, the long, spiraling horns of the kudu bull made me forget all about the blistering heat. The late October temperatures had soared to more than 110 degrees, and though the morning hunt had been thirsty work, that bull made it all worth-while, especially when the tape stretched to just over 55 inches. For that safari, I loaded my .300 Winchester Magnum ammunition with IMR 4451—from the then-new Enduron line—in the event of just such a heat wave in late-season Africa. Engineered for temperature insensitivity, the Enduron powders made a considerable splash when they came onto the market; they possess a burn rate correlative (yet not interchangeable) with many of the popular IMR powders dating…

Rimfire rifles have been made as copies of full-size guns for years. In fact, you can find a .22-caliber variant of just about any cool-looking piece, from MP5s to STG 44s. Because rim-fire rifles don’t have to bear the same type of pressure or rigidity as the guns they’re copying, they can be made to mimic almost anything at no cost to function. Dedicated rimfire rifles have always been somewhat smaller—more weight equals more pain in the field, and most people don’t want to be walking around with a 10-pound rifle while going after squirrels. Recently, however, there has been an increasing trend toward rimfire rifles that don’t try to save space in their footprint or their weight. Today, this interesting subcategory continues to grow, and we have a wide…

One of my favorite quotes from classic American literature references shotguns: “… but if there is a law at all, it should be to keep people from the use of smooth-bores. A body never knows where his lead will fly, when he pulls the trigger of one of them uncertain firearms.” These words were spoken by James Fenimore Cooper’s fictional character Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye, from the Leatherstocking Tales. For those who do not completely understand the shotgun, let me educate you: Shotguns throw a pattern of bullets—pellets—and those individual pellets never land in the same place. This causes shotgun shooters to spend hours doing something called “patterning.” This is arguably a waste of time because all they’re really doing is trying to predict the unpredictable. I learned this at…

In 1982, the handgun world changed. That was the year the Austrian Armed Forces selected the Glock as their issue sidearm. Initially, the gun was vilified in the press because its frame was made of plastic and, at that time, plastic was considered a cheap alternative to steel when it came to anything that mattered. Glock jokes were favorites at the range, and the pistols became known as “Tupperware guns” that would melt in the sun … and that your dog would chew up. I’ve never known of a Glock melting because of exposure to direct sunlight, but I have seen some with chew marks. The jokes and aversion to plastic, however, wasn’t enough to stifle what would become the most popular hand-gun in the world. Not only did the…

It was 1955, and I was a 12-year-old kid hunting deer in Minnesota’s heavy timber northwest angle with my dad. The years after World War II had the USA awash with surplus military rifles of every kind. As such, my rifle, as assigned by dad in those days, was a German Model 98 Mauser chambered in the German military standard 8mm. That was my first rifle, and on the hunt resulted in my first harvested whitetail. During the years that followed, the Mauser brand in German surplus rifles, and also a few lookalikes in additional brand names, were a major part of my total experience when it came to learning the craft of using a rifle. Model 95s in 7mm, make-over rifles chambered in 30-06 and even .45-70 (large ring)…