"Dad, I know you want me to hunt with a single shot, but I really need a lever-action or a bolt-action gun. I wanna be a real deer hunter!"
 
"Son, it's the first shot that's the most important," my father replied, "no matter how many backup rounds you have. Hit the target with your first shot, and you won't need a second one," he said, and that was that.
 
As much as I hated to admit it, there was great wisdom and truth in Dad's statement. But if that was indeed the case, I thought, why did Jack O'Connor hunt with a bolt-action rifle? I knew that he and many of the shooting writers of that era were excellent shots based on the articles they wrote. But they hunted with repeating rifles rather than single shots. It was one of life's mysteries at the time. 

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One of the favorite topics for gun writers over the years has been the ".270 vs. .30-06." It's like if you haven't written at least three or four such pieces, you've not yet achieved journeyman status as a gun scribe.

But there's a reason we see such articles on a regular basis. It's because so many readers own a rifle chambered for one or the other, and they're passionate about their favorite cartridge.

With passion comes debate and controversy . . . and reader interest.
 
Perhaps second on the cartridge vs. cartridge list is the pitting of the legendary .270 Win against the .280 Rem, which to my mind is much more of an apples-to-apples comparison. Only .007 inch separates the two calibers (.277 inch versus .284 inch), and both are based on the same .30-06 case.

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It was a glorious September morning. The mountain air was crisp, the sky was washed blue and I was following a brace of incredibly well-trained German shorthairs through prime pheasant cover. We were hunting the famed Flying B Ranch, which sprawled the full width of Northern Idaho's Lawyer Creek Canyon. Guests of the ranch had access to nearly a quarter-million acres of game-rich real estate.
   
The new SAS shotgun I was carrying had been introduced by Weatherby a few years earlier, yet the first time I shouldered the gun, it felt like an old, trusted friend.

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The ruffed grouse has the widest distribution of all the grouse in North America, ranging from Alaska south to California and down the Rockies into Utah, across the Upper Midwest to Maine and down the Appalachian Mountains into South Carolina. Wherever these popular upland birds live, they cling to the thickets of the forest and its regenerating edges. Brad Howard, marketing manager for Beretta shotguns, has hunted ruffed grouse in Utah for years and considers it as physically draining as hunting elk. "It's frustrating when the grouse flush and fly straight up or down the mountain," he says. "Of course, then you have to go after them, and it's tough climbing." Add in busting through tight cover with limbs whacking you, and by the end of the day, you're about done in.
 
Howard sees grouse hunters carrying a variety of shotgun types. In the thick cover of poplars and pines, or creek-bottom willows and hawthorns, most hunters carry a short-barreled gun, a light model they can keep up and ready in their hands. "In some thickets, a 24-inch barrel on an autoloader or a pump would be nice," Howard says, "but a 26-inch barrel is also handy."

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A poet once noted that dusk creeps upon us on little cat feet. But tonight it's loping in, bringing with it the curtain of darkness that signals the end of another hunting day.
 
Confident of its cover, a handsome, wide-racked 8-point buck is following the curtain into the greenfield. I confirm the deer's size and progress through the lenses of my binocular.
 
When he reaches a spot that I estimate to be about 80 yards distant, I place the shotgun scope's crosshairs on his chest and press the trigger.

The buck whirls at the shot and makes an obviously quite healthy sprint across the food plot and out of sight.

I had a steady rest, a good sight picture and a perfect trigger squeeze. How could I have missed?

Pacing off the yardage from my stand to where the buck was standing gives a depressing answer. He was more than 120 yards away instead of 80.

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The number "5" in a Remington bolt-action rimfire rifle model number is not a casual inclusion. All of the greatest bolt-action rimfires offered in the past by Remington have had a "5" designation. The 510, 511, 512, on up to the great 541 and latest 504, are all evolutions of a line of bolt-action rimfire rifles that are dependable, accurate and affordable. The latest, the Model 5, will attempt to continue that tradition, but unlike all of its predecessors, this rifle did not come out of a Remington plant. 

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These days, it seems that all the glory press goes to the upper crust of the shooting world: the latest rifle, the snazziest custom rig or some tweaked-up version of an old standby.
 
High-dollar rigs are no doubt capable of pretty spectacular results. Claims of reliable, smooth functioning and the ability to place a bullet precisely where it needs to be, especially at long range, usually accompany these wonders. According to the hype and ad copy, if you dole out big bucks for one of these new rigs, that's what they'll deliver.
 
What you rarely read about is the inexpensive, strong, versatile and easy-to-pack rifle that's been delivering exactly those kind of results since it was introduced decades ago. This little single shot has had many monikers, as company after company seized on and marketed this classic and proven design, but the name most recognized will always be "The Topper." 

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The waters flowing through German firearms history are as muddy as our own. However, it's safe to say that Peter Paul Mauser came up with his turnbolt action in 1897, and that the rifle was in the hands of shooters by 1898, hence the Model 98 Mauser.
 
I submit that the Model 98 is the most successful bolt-action design of all time, and that the action and the 8mm Mauser cartridge have become true American classics, provable in at least five ways.
 
First, take a look at your own bolt-action rifle. Odds are good that the Mauser 98 had a strong influence on its design. Second, American soldiers brought home multitudes of 8mm Mauser 98s, none of which ever saw military service again. They became sporting rifles all the way, either converted or used for hunting in their original form. 

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In the not-too-distant past, showing up at a deer camp with a semiautomatic hunting rifle was an invitation to sarcasm.
 
"How many times do you need to shoot a deer?" or "What happened to your other hunting gun?" you were likely to be asked. 
 
Thirty years ago, anyone serious about whitetail hunting carried a bolt-action Browning, Remington, Ruger, Winchester, Weatherby or Savage. Pumps and lever guns were acceptable, especially in the thick woods, but never "jam-o-matics."
 
Considering how much bad word of mouth the semiauto hunting rifle has gotten over the years - with "unreliable" and "inaccurate" two of the adjectives normally used - it's a wonder that these guns are widely used today.

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Nothing in a shooter's battery is as "Class" sensitive as the shotgun. Among firearms, shotguns are clearly divided into status categories. On my blue-collar end fall the pumps. Not particularly pretty, but hard working, inexpensive and, most importantly, reliable to a fault.
 
In life-and-death situations, for military or law enforcement, reliability is a must. No matter if you use iffy ammo or have shaking hands, a pump will chamber, eject and fire every time. One way or another, you can muscle a shell in or out. Those same attributes make them near and dear to a lot of hardcore hunters, especially when rough conditions are the norm.
 
On the uptown side are side-by-sides and over/unders. These are prized possessions, meticulously fitted wonders of wood and steel that often sport gold engraving and elegant artwork. They leap to your shoulder and hang featherlight in the arms. They are as pampered, admired and cared for as a new high-society bride.

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South Texas' elusive nilgai bulls are fun to hunt and yield some of the tastiest meat on the planet. They are also tough to hunt and even tougher to bring down - two qualities that keep the crew from Winchester Ammunition and Browning Firearms coming back to South Texas each year to test their latest wares on these odd-looking Indian imports.

I had recently run out of nilgai steaks and was contemplating another trip down south when my friend, Kevin Howard, who always seems to have perfect timing, called to invite me on their annual hunt. 

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Each year, manufacturers roll out their latest super-magnum offerings. Some of these rounds, particularly the .270 WSM and .300 WSM, are great. But the majority of them can't do anything that any number of long-established cartridges have been doing since before I was born. In fact, one of my favorite deer cartridges, the .260 Remington, has been around in one form or another for over 30 years.
 
It began as the 6.5-08 short-action wildcat and was soon adopted by savvy hunters and long-range competitors. When Remington legitimized it as the .260 Rem in 1997, silhouette shooters flocked to it, too. I am not an active silhouette competitor, but all of the factors that drew silhouette shooters to it, like low recoil, efficiency, excellent downrange performance and reduced wind drift, drew me to the diminutive cartridge as well. It might not look like much on paper, but thanks to the high sectional density afforded it by those long, heavy-for-caliber bullets, the .260 far outperforms its paper ballistics.

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The Model 750 is Big Green's sharpest autoloading rifle to date.

Remington introduced its first autoloading rifle, the highly successful Model 8, in 1906.
 
Manufactured under a royalty-producing basis with John Browning, the Model 8 was designed as a hammerless solid-breech rifle chambered in .25, .30, .32 and .35 Remington.
 
The gun had a 22-inch barrel that recoiled within the confines of a rigid metal barrel jacket. Made with a straight grip, or English design, the rifle held five rounds within a box magazine, which, at the shooter's option, could be loaded singly or with a full clip. It sold for $30 retail!
 
The Model 8 was so successful, it stayed on the market for 30 years. Its successor was the Model 81 Woodsmaster, which sported a traditional hunting stock and a semi-beavertail fore-end. Like the Model 8, it was available in five ascending grades to satisfy even the most discriminating hunter.

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Anyone who ever held or admired the better bolt-action rifles made before 1960 is immediately aware of a difference - a big difference - between those magnificent examples of riflemaking skills and those of today.

This is not meant in any way to criticize today's rifles. They are, in fact, precisely what we shooters have demanded: lighter, stronger, accurate, no-frills descendants of their predecessors. But the early rifles had a heft, a feel, meticulous attention to fit, finish and detail, painstaking wood selection, precision hand checkering, and silky-smooth functioning and other qualities not found today.
 
They were heavy, often exceeding 10 pounds without a scope, and we demanded lighter. Our preference drifted to composite stocks, and the manufacturers responded. Computer-driven machinery all but eliminated the need for the tedious and expensive hand-fitting vintage rifles demanded, and the ever-present price point has made hand labor a thing of the past. 

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John Moses Browning was a genius firearms inventor, although he never lost an opportunity to borrow from another inventor, such as Herr Mannlicher. He was also an astute businessman, selling his designs for a prime Yankee dollar.
 
John's machine gun - previously developed by another - was extremely important to U.S. troops in at least three wars. But it was the advent of his Model 1894 Winchester that earned Browning greater fame worldwide. When that rifle (and it was a rifle initially) came along in 1894, it made a 6.0 earthquake impact on the shooting world.
 
Hunters appreciated the two blackpowder cartridges chambered in the first edition, the .32-40 Winchester and .38-55 Winchester. But little did these happy sportsmen know that only a year later there would be a second quake, even stronger, as two new smokeless rounds were added to the Winchester Model 94 cartridge line. 

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The .405 Winchester was introduced in 1904, the same year Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected President. The large rimmed cartridge was developed for the Winchester Model 1895 lever-action rifle, which became a favorite of Roosevelt's. He called it his "big medicine" gun.
 
Teddy not only used the straight-walled round on elk, moose and bears in North America; he and his son, Kermit, also considered it their "go to" cartridge for hunting dangerous game. In Africa, they used their .405s to dispatch charging Cape buffalo, rhinos, lions and leopards. Hair-raising accounts of those hunts contributed greatly to the success of the rifle.
 
Those were the days of Martin and Osa Johnson, producers of the "I Married Adventure" travel and hunting films. They swore by their .405 Winchesters, too, using them to stop many a charge of dangerous African game. In India, Charles Cottar, a renowned hunter of "man-eating" tigers, also saw the value of the Big Medicine gun and switched to it from the .32 Winchester.

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We started up the mountain in pre-dawn darkness, with the stars just beginning to fade. We were headed to the top of the Skeena range, hoping to find the band of goats we'd seen in the spotting scope the previous evening.
 
Reg Collingwood, my guide, set a heart-attack pace. As the slope steepened, we were forced to stop every 20 or 30 minutes to catch our breath. At timberline, my legs finally gave out. "Gotta rest a minute," I wheezed, flopping down to lean against my pack. Reg followed suit, breathing as hard as I was.
 
I lay there gasping, silently cursing my rifle. The British Columbia hunt had been sponsored by a gun company, so I was obliged to carry an imported .30-06 wearing a large steel-bodied scope. Complete with sling and a magazine filled with ammo, the outfit weighed 11 1/2 pounds. That much heft was bad enough when I rode horseback, but wore me down when I headed through the woods on foot. The worst was yet to come.

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Ask today's shotgun deer hunters which slug is best, and you're apt to get 4.1 million answers. According to research by the Hastings Barrel Co., that's how many of the nation's approximately 10 million whitetail hunters go afield each season with shotguns. Each, it seems, has a different opinion on the subject.
 
Long-range accuracy is the ultimate quest for some hunters, while others hunt in thick woods where 50 yards is a stretch. There are also differences in hunting techniques, brand preferences, shotgun barrels, and the priority any hunter gives to slug shooting. Thus, state-of-the-art in shotgun slugs is many things to many people.
 
Contrary to what you might have heard, most slug hunters don't use a dedicated deer gun. They use one shotgun for hunting birds and small game, and simply switch loads when the deer season rolls around. They typically keep their shots short, use smoothbore barrels and rifled or full-bore slugs and no optics.

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"Wanna shoot it?" asked Mr. Bennett, who then quickly added with caution, "It's a .30-06!"
 
I turned and looked up at my dad standing behind me. He smiled and nodded his approval.
 
I could not believe it. For most of my 8 years of life, I'd dreamed of shooting a .30-06. For as long as I could remember, I'd heard campfire discussions between my dad, uncles and their friends about the best whitetail round in all of North America. Two calibers had always been mentioned: the .30-30 Winchester and the extremely powerful .30-06.
 
Some considered the .30-06 far too much gun for our small local whitetails. On the other hand, some of the top hunting writers of the day were '06 fans. I knew that because of the articles my mother read to me from the pages of Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield. While other mothers told their youngsters bedtime stories, my mom read to me from the pages of the best hunting and shooting publications of that era. I strongly suspect there was an innate interest in hunting not only in my mother, but also in me. I came by it honestly!

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Any shotgun used on the whitewing dove fields at Rancho Caracol, Mexico, has to be tough. Offering some of the best dove shooting in the world, the lodge keeps an ample selection of Beretta 391 autoloaders on hand for its American clients.
 
Those gunners burn thousands of boxes of shotshells each year. But because of Mexico's Draconian gun laws, most visitors use the lodge's autoloaders rather than take their own. Those Italian guns see a lot of abuse, not only because of the number of shells they fire or the rough treatment they get in the field, but also due to the quick-fouling Mexican shells they are forced to digest.

"Our guns fire an average of 25,000 rounds per season," said lodge owner Dean Putegnat, whose armory contains a good selection of wood- and synthetic-stocked Beretta 391s and a few over-and-unders used mostly for quail. "Some of those autoloaders are six years old, but every one I bought when I first opened the doors is still in use today. I replace a few parts at the end of the year, and we clean the guns thoroughly after every hunt, but other than that, they just keep on going."

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There was a time when no glass came between a shooter's eye and his quarry. As optical sights became more affordable and reliable, they were so embraced by hunters that manufacturers almost quit installing open sights on big game rifles.
 
However, interest in using open sights is on the rise. This is due to the growing popularity of cowboy-action shooting and a nostalgia for hunting with classic guns. Competitors in cowboy-action events have discovered that, with practice, they can shoot pretty darn well without glass.
 
My father hunted with an open-sighted Winchester Model 100 and never had a problem filling his deer tag. I watched him shoot groundhogs at 200 yards with that .243-chambered gun.

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Most centerfire rifles I own are practical hunting tools. Because they must survive saddle scabbard wear and inevitable nicks and dents as they're lugged through the woods, these rifles forego figured walnut in favor of workaday synthetic stocks.
 
My rimfires are a different story. Used mostly for plinking and hunting squirrels and rabbits, they're not subject to the same kind of abuse.
 
That means I can justify buying high-quality bolt .22s I'm proud to show and own. This is where I indulge my taste for hand-checkered knurled walnut and deeply blued, high-gloss steel.
 
Sure, these rifles cost more, but economy isn't everything. You've gotta kick up your heels every now and then.
 
There are a number of custom-quality factory .22s to choose from. That wasn't true a quarter-century ago. When Winchester discontinued its classic Model 52 bolt rifle back in 1980, the only top-grade production .22s still available to American shooters were the truly excellent German-made Anschutz models a few lucky sportsmen might discover at local sporting goods stores.

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My introduction to the new Sako 85 rifle wasn't really fair, neither to the gun, nor me.
 
I was jetlagged, handed a rifle and scope I'd never seen before and had to pass a rigorous shooting test in front of a bemused audience to get a hunting license. To hunt in Finland, a candidate must group three offhand rifle shots within a 30-inch circle target at 85 yards. No problem, even for the travel-addled.
 
Then the candidate gets 20 seconds to place three shots in the center of a moose target traveling about 10 mph. Only four seconds are allowed per shot as the target traverses between two earthen berms, and the resulting score is flashed on a digital sign for all to see.
 
Doesn't sound difficult for a lifelong shooter. But refer back to the described handicaps in the opening scenario.

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Years ago, when I first began shooting, nearly all rifles came stocked in genuine walnut. The only exceptions were budget-priced models wearing cheap wood disguised by a walnut stain. Walnut stocks were a centuries-old tradition until 1965. That's when custom gunmaker Chet Brown invented fiberglass stocks and introduced them to a skeptical public. Fiberglass stocks offered several advantages over traditional wood handles, but years passed before riflemen - a notoriously conservative bunch - grudgingly began to accept them.
 
Synthetic stocks of laid-up fiberglass, Kevlar or molded polymer have a lot to recommend them. They're sturdy and exceptionally stable. They won't warp like walnut stocks do when exposed to changing weather, aiding consistent accuracy. Synthetic handles are considerably less expensive than AAA-grade walnut, and you don't worry about dings and scratches when you're lugging your rifle through the woods.

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Ever since the invention of the rifle, a common hunter's complaint has been "I couldn't see my sights! I could see the animal, but when I tried to aim, I couldn't see the front sight against its body."
 
As defense against such failure, hunters have put ivory, silver, gold, white paint and even tiny mirrors on open sights to lighten them for a better sight picture. While each of these "brighteners" helps to one degree or another, none matches the visibility of today's fiber optics and "glow-in-the-dark" sights.

What are Fiber Optics?
Advertising being what it is these days, fiber-optic sights are widely misunderstood. Do they really glow in the dark or only in low light? Do they run on battery power, solar power or nuclear energy? Are they truly fibers?
 
Fiber optics used in communications are bundles of thin, flexible glass "hairs" surrounded by mirror-like coatings (called cladding) and protective plastic housings known as buffer coatings. From the outside, they look like regular wire cable, but inside they are a super-efficient conduit for light.

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As a means of gainful employment, I shoot more slugs in a year than most of you will shoot in a lifetime. Every session is brutal, and many are fraught with mystery. There are, you see, myriad reasons why slugs go astray, many of which don't have anything to do with the shotgun.
 
Nevertheless, everyone wants to look at the gun first, so let's start there. If the gun and not the ammo is the culprit, vibration will more than likely be the cause of the problem.
  
Vibration, or harmonics as it is referred to in firearms, is particularly troublesome in slug guns because of their relatively loose construction and the fact that the slug stays in the barrel so long.
 
A shotgun recoils nearly a half-inch while the slug is still in the barrel. Meanwhile, the barrel moves with the recoil and vibrates because of its loose fit in
the receiver.
 
When you figure that moving the barrel the width of a human hair shifts the point of impact an inch at 100 yards, you can better appreciate the evils of vibration.

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When the new crop of .17 rimfires hit the market several years ago, I wasn't sold on them. Sure, their light recoil made them fun to shoot, but too many coyotes I pulled the trigger on trotted off after taking one of those cute little 17-grain pills in the boiler room, never to be seen again.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have blamed the cartridge; I was asking too much of those light bullets. Subsequent plinking sessions with various .17 HMRs and Mach 2s softened my opinion of them, and a recent jackrabbit safari had me wanting a .17 rimfire of my own.

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A variant of the Browning Long Trac, the SXR is the latest in the parade of new autoloaders.

The explosion of flat-shooting magnum cartridges in recent years has brought about another, albeit lesser, trend in the shooting industry -- the resurgence of the semiautomatic hunting rifle. Magnum cartridges kick hard. Semiautos help tame some of that fury. 

Among the new self-loaders are Remington's Model 750 Woodsmaster, Browning's Shorttrac and Longtrac BAR, Benelli's R-1, and the Winchester Super X Rifle (SXR)

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Browning Buck Marks are affordable, high-quality .22 handguns. Introduced in 1985, they’re accurate and fun to shoot. Recently, I brought a 5 1/2-inch bull-barreled Buck Mark Target pistol to a Montana prairie dog shoot. I planned on switching to the Buck Mark when I grew tired of gunning rodents across the county line with a pair of .223 and .22-250 varmint rifles.

The Buck Mark Target pistol sports a full-length rib resembling a Picatinny rail, making it easy to mount a Bushnell Holosight. With the Holosight attached and fired from a sandbag rest, the Target Pistol regularly printed five-shot groups measuring just under an inch at 50 yards.

My test gun sported a crisp 2 3/4-pound trigger and had absolutely no feeding problems with Winchester Power-Point or CCI Mini Mag loads. The Buck Mark/Holosight combo counted coup on several prairie dogs incautious enough to show themselves at reasonable rimfire range.

During that shoot, I’d set my rifles aside for an hour or two each day. This gave me a chance to get rid of the crick in my neck caused by spending too much time hunched over a rifle stock. Walking and stalking provided a welcome respite from mornings spent at the bench.

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Best known for its highly accurate bolt rifles, Savage recently added a new over-under shotgun to its lineup. Following the lead of other American gunmakers, the company imports the new stackbarrels instead of manufacturing them in the U.S.

The vast majority of today's twin-tubed scatterguns are made overseas. "American" classics like the Browning Superposed and Citori have always been imported from other countries. American manufacturers can't be beat when it comes to mass-producing quality bolt rifles and pump or autoloading scatterguns. However, Old World gunmakers excel in producing fine side-by-side doubles and stackbarrels requiring specialized, painstaking craftsmanship. 

Introduced in 2006, the twin-tubed Milano succeeds earlier Savage over-unders like the Italian-made Model 440 and Model 312, along with the Model 330 and 333 Valmet field and target guns once made in Finland.

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About five years ago, an executive for a company that makes reloading powders lamented that fewer shotgunners were loading their own shells because of the budget-priced factory ammunition on dealer's shelves. The skyrocketing cost of shotshell components over the last couple of years has exacerbated that situation to the point that about only one in 10 shooters at my local trap and skeet club now load their own shells.

On the shelves of the local mega-mart sit boxes of Federal Field & Target, Remington Sport Loads and Winchester Universal 20- and 12-gauge shells at a bargain price. These loads were introduced a few years ago to compete with inexpensive imported shells. The American-made shotshells apparently did a good job of competing because there are now far fewer imported shells on the market.

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Story by Greg Rodriguez

-- Through tests, the author finds that T/C's new bolt gun is aptly named.

Photo: The Icon's solid receiver top is visible here. The rifle has an attractive high-grade walnut stock with cut checkering and distinctive, curved accents.

Thompson/Center's line of muzzleloaders, switchbarrel rifles and hunting handguns has made them an industry leader. Most companies would be content to own those market segments, but T/C's Greg Ritz felt a new bolt-action rifle would help grow his company's share of the firearms market to an unprecedented level.

Ritz tasked the T/C design crew with creating a rifle a cut above anything else on the market in looks and accuracy. T/C queried prominent custom rifle builders like George Gardner of GA Precision, as well as key players in shooting competitions and hunting circles for feedback on their idea of the perfect rifle. T/C's designers and engineers took that information and added a few twists of their own to come up with a slick action that would serve as the heart of the new gun.

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There were lots of things I liked about the Howa action upon seeing my first one back in 1970 when Weatherby introduced it as its then-new Vanguard. I recall Roy Weatherby telling me he was a bit apprehensive about offering a second line of rifles with his name on it, even though he felt it would not compete with his flagship Mark V Magnum. His reasoning was simple enough: Not only was the Vanguard line priced considerably lower than the Mark V, but also Roy vowed it would never be chambered in Weatherby Magnum calibers.

Well, you know what they say about never saying never. Today, 36 years later, the Vanguard is indeed available in Weatherby Magnum chamberings (though only two, the .257 and .300), and it remains a very stable and profitable line for Weatherby.

So much for the Vanguard. Many of you may be familiar with Howa as a Smith & Wesson or a Mossberg. Strange as that sounds, in 1979 the old Interarms Corp. began marketing what was essentially the Weatherby Vanguard rifle under the name of the Japanese company that manufactured it: Howa. Shortly thereafter, Howa also private-labeled the same basic rifle for S&W and Mossberg, but in both cases they lasted only a few years. All three companies used the same Model 1500 designation, and the only difference between them was the roll stampings on the barrel and receiver, and slight differences in the configuration of the stocks.

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