Back to Bucks and Bears

Back to Bucks and Bears

Deer hunters don’t need exotic, expensive ammo, just accurate, reliably lethal loads. Herewith an update! Hitting far-off targets, informally or in competition, has shooters spending wildly on rifles, ammo and optics. Per backyard mechanics burying speedometer needles...
P.O. Ackley: Man of Sharp Shoulders

P.O. Ackley: Man of Sharp Shoulders

“That’s gone. It sold right away. Sorry.” I had phoned on an ad for a rebarreled Mauser. He did sound genuinely sorry. My reply—“Oh,”—must have had an authentic ring, too. I truly was crushed. “You wouldn’t want a Springfield, would you?” As if he owed me something....
On The Nose

On The Nose

Once merely a bullet’s front end, the tip has become an engineering project. Here’s why.

Arthur Savage and His Inimitable 99

Arthur Savage and His Inimitable 99

Unlikely seed of cattle, coffee and a torpedo, his rifle failed. Its revival blessed hunters for a century. Gashes in the old snow pulled me into a riot of swamp-grass. Yards into it, a speck of red winked from the tangle. Confirmation, not a promise. I’d called a...
Death by Ivory

Death by Ivory

Powerful and tireless, quiet and quick, elephants proved smart enough to avoid hunters. Or kill them. It was another time. We’d picked him up at dawn, a slight, expressionless, middle-aged man who nodded to every query and directive. Motoring along a track toward our...
Paul Mauser: The Man Who Repurposed the Door Latch

Paul Mauser: The Man Who Repurposed the Door Latch

His rifles armed world powers in titanic wars, and hunters in the greatest game fields on Earth. The spoor, braided at first, was unraveling. “Ready to bed,” John mouthed the words. Short yards ahead, a patch of dried mud came to eye—two feet off the ground....
Roosevelt the Rifleman

Roosevelt the Rifleman

With horse and rifle he explored frontiers, indulging a lust that would transcend politics.  Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. defined the bully pulpit, spared the teddy bear and led the strenuous life. “I do not believe,” he declared in a late retrospective, “that any...
Aiming At Night

Aiming At Night

Still in the dark about night vision and thermal sights and gobbledegook thereof? To enlighten… The feral pig appeared with the first stars. I was already hiking to the car. A quick sit steadied the rifle; but the reticle vanished in night’s shadows and the boar...