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GunHunter Magazine
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DIY Cumberland Deerslayer
By J. Wayne Fears
You, too, can put together a special rifle for the area you hunt. Photo: The author’s Cumberland Deerslayer was designed for tough mountain hunting in the Southeast. It was the hike from hell. To get into the mountainous fold of land so the wind would be in my favor required me to go straight up a bluff thick with cedar and limestone boulders... READ MORE
Maximum Point Blank Range
By Ron Spomer
This simple sight-in system does away with the need to compensate for a bullet’s arc at all but extreme ranges.
Advanced reticle systems in today’s scopes are a great method for pinpointing targets at a variety of long ranges. But multiple crosshairs, hash marks, mil dots and numbers can get confusing, particularly when you’re hy... READ MORE
Ballistic Balance
By Richard Mann
How to sort out which load offers the most balance for your hunting rifle. Balance is important in everything, even in hunting firepower. A ballistically balanced load offers the most power and the flattest trajectory with the least amount of recoil in a sporting-weight rifle. Average muzzle velocity of the most popular big game cartridges i... READ MORE
Bolt Basics
By Richard Mann
Working a bolt correctly can save the day — and your hide. Sustained fire with a bolt-action rifle can be almost as fast as what can be obtained with a semiautomatic rifle. If that statement surpises you, you’re not alone. Several years back, I conducted a test with different rifle actions and shooters. I used a timer to record how long... READ MORE
Coming Clean
By Ralph M. Lermayer
Gun cleaning considerations and tricks beyond the norm. Photo: Complete cleaning kits like this one from Hoppes come with everything you need to keep your guns in top shape. Note the Bore Snake, for one-pass field cleaning If you are one of those rare individuals who enjoys cleaning guns, then drop me an e-mail, I’ve got a pile of fun waiting... READ MORE
Cheap Scopes, High-Dollar Performance
By Ron Spomer
Fierce competition among scope makers is improving quality and driving down prices.
When it comes to inexpensive riflescopes, there’s good news and bad. The bad news is there's worthless junk out there, scopes that will cost you a shot. Scopes that will fog, leak, break or transmit such a blurred image as to be worse than open sights.
The g... READ MORE
What’s a Magnum?
By Jon R. Sundra
The line between standard and magnum cartridges has long been blurred. There was a time when the term “magnum” was fairly well defined. I’m talking back in the ’60s and ’70s when the word pretty much meant a cartridge more powerful than normal and was usually based on the belted Holland & Holland case. In fact, in ... READ MORE
One-Shot Group
By John Haviland
All the work that goes into a hunt rides on the first bullet. Make sure it will hit on the mark. Many hunters go on about how tightly their rifles shoot five-shot groups. Well, the real measure of a hunting rifle is how it shoots a one-shot group. All the money and work that goes into a hunt rides on the first bullet shot from a cold barrel. For th... READ MORE
The Hunter’s Glass
By Ralph M. Lermayer
A practical hunter’s guide to riflescopes, binoculars and rangefinders. The subject of optics for hunters is one that gets a lot of press. Rightfully it should, since our choice of scopes, binoculars and now rangefinders can literally determine the success of a hunt. The choices are endless, as each manufacturer extols the virtues of its part... READ MORE
Do You Need a Pocket Binocular?
By Clair Rees
Quality full-sized binoculars aren’t the best choice for all hunting situations. I first began hunting as a cash-poor teenager who could barely afford a knife and a box of ammo. The Arisaka rifle I carried was on loan from my favorite uncle. My young eyes were sharp, so buying a binocular never even crossed my mind. A few years later, a more ... READ MORE
Knock ‘Em Flat
By John Haviland
Some shots are better than others for putting big game down quickly. The fallacy that a rifle bullet will knock a deer off its hooves never seems to die. If a bullet did thump a deer that hard, the recoil from such a load would also kick the shooter out of his boots. A bullet fired from a big-game rifle has about twice the momentum as a thrown base... READ MORE
Pick Your Performance Range
By Richard Mann
A hunter wanting to push the limits of long-range shooting with more room for error needs a flat-shooting rifle. Remington’s .300 Ultra Mag, launching a 180-grain bullet at over 3,200 feet per second, is one of the flattest-shooting cartridges available.
But let’s say a .300 RUM rifle owner is going on a black bear hunt in Canada, wher... READ MORE
Blue Collar Custom
By Larry Teague
The E.R. Shaw Mark-VII rifle has the options of a custom gun at a working man’s price. Lofty observations are common in articles on custom hunting guns. Shooting writers rave over fancy walnut, fine-line checkering, scroll engraving and other touches that you, the discriminating buyer, can add to make the firearm truly one of a kind. What&rsq... READ MORE
Laser Rangefinder Primer
By Bob Ross
How laser units work, and why they’ve become indispensable to modern hunters. It was really, really cold out. So cold, the fabric of my daypack froze like a potato chip. So cold, the soda pop in the plastic bottle inside my daypack turned to slush. So when I looked out into the cornfield about 3 p.m. and saw the big white-tailed buck scraping... READ MORE
Winterize Your Big Game Rifle
By Clair Rees
Don’t let gun or gear malfunctions spoil a hunt in seriously cold weather.
Our bush plane landed on a tiny ice-rimmed lake a dozen miles from Gravina Bay, Alaska. It was early November. Randy Brooks and I were there to hunt the big brown bears for which the area is known.
Snow fell throughout the night and was knee-deep by morning. Guide E... READ MORE