Three days ago I found myself at The Range At Austin with Dan and Jeremy. Jon heard there were donuts and made a cameo. Towards the end of our range session I noticed a plain white cardboard box had appeared. Good things typically come in cardboard boxes of that size and shape. The brand new VR80 […]
Many a young child got their first taste of a ‘real gun’ when they put dad’s slug gun to their shoulder. The awakening, for so many poor, innocent younglings, came rudely. Every November I get to watch the little kids wearing puffy coats and gloves struggle to see through cheap scopes and hold steady while […]
This July, for the first time ever, TacCon was held in the Pacific Northwest (thus becoming Northwest TacCon). During NW TacCon, Chief Deputy at Oconee County Georgia Sheriff’s Office Lee Weems put a group of us through the Rolling Thunder shotgun drill. The drill is designed to put shooters through the paces of reloads, rapid […]
There’s no doubt that twelve-gauge AOWs command attention at the range, in the shop, or out in the field. They have an awesome look about them, they’re a ton of fun to shoot a variety of loads through, are great for breaching, and they make for a solid home defense option (with Laserlyte Center Mass?). […]
As a waterfowl hunter, part of my daily duck season routine includes picking up spent 12-gauge hulls. If we don’t stay on top of it, hundreds, sometimes thousands of them can become scattered across the properties we hunt throughout the course of a season. Unless they’re salvaged, they’re simply rubbish – every one of them […]
It’s something I hear on a regular basis: turkey hunting is boring. Naysayers tend to drone on about the dullness of the kill, the small amount of meat and, in some cases, their apparent dislike of shotguns (yes, I’m looking at you). Well, it’s spring turkey season and I’m here to give you a few […]
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire — where there’s gunfire, there will be spent casings. Okay, so not in all cases, but the vast majority of firearms leave you with an empty cartridge casing after the shot has been fired. And far too many of those casings (and especially shotshell wads) remain on the ground to […]
Throw a stick at SHOT Show and you are sure to hit a Turkish made shotgun. The first stick I threw landed by a Derya Arms MK-12. It’s a bullpup 12-gauge semi-auto shotgun. I must have thrown an ugly stick, cause the MK-12 sure is ugly. That said . . . The IWI Bullpup is […]
Most waterfowlers have a go-to duck hunting load. If you don’t, here are three tips to get you there. The “best” load for harvesting waterfowl is debated about as much as .45 vs. 9mm or GLOCK vs. 1911. I’d rather spend that time shooting than debating. Years ago I experimented with a variety of options […]
As is the case with brass-cased cartridges for personal defense, there will always be, uh, “discussion” about which soft-shell load kills ducks the best. Marketing tactics pushing the newest shot formulas or wad designs will surely tempt even the most seasoned waterfowler. But a 12 gauge cartridge that dropped ducks during the Dust Bowl era […]
Duck hunting season has come to an end for most throughout the country and the inability to drop a limit of drakes means the onset of Duck Depression (yes, it’s real) for many. For those of us who practically live to hunt waterfowl, duck season never really ends…it just bleeds into the preparation period for […]
For nearly 20 years, Mark Serbu’s SUPER-SHORTY has been the standard-bearer among the super-compact shotgun set. Built from either a Mossberg 500 or a Remington 870 that started life with a pistol grip, the S-S is considered an “Any Other Weapon” (AOW) under NFA law, meaning a $5 tax stamp instead of $200 as […]
