Sporting Notes

Double rifles of the quality of this W.J. Jeffery, built between 1929 and 1939, do not come along every day. Just seeing and handling such a rifle is a privilege.

The Fate of the Jeffery

A few of these missives ago, I alerted readers to the presence at the Rock…
Mannlicher Model 1903

Introducing the Ischler

by Terry Wieland This is not, admittedly, a puzzle that has me lying awake nights,…
Over a 50-year period, O’Connor wrote more than a dozen books, and since his death at least four anthologies of his magazine work have been published.

The O’Connor Legacy

The annual gathering at the Jack O’Connor Hunting Heritage Center in Lewiston, Idaho, is part…
Meopta 8x56 MeoPro HD Plus. At roughly $800, this Czech-made glass is inexpensive by today’s standards, yet delivers performance that far out-classes what we considered the best of the best a few years ago.

Crystal Clarity

It seems like the Dark Ages now—that long-ago period when you could name the good…
Oklahoma City gun collector and double-rifle expert Johnny McCharen. He owned the W.J. Jeffery, and considered it the finest double he’d ever seen.

The Finest Double Rifle

Rock Island’s spring premier auction is coming up this month (May 19-21, 2023) and there…
Both plugs and muffs are required for full protection shooting rifles indoors, but for shotguns muffs are rather inconvenient. The small plugs work well in conjuction with muffs, but for plugs alone, the large soft rubber plugs (right) can block out almost all noise. When shooting a shotgun, this helps considerably.

One More Admission

The subject of flinching is delicate, to say the least.  There are all sorts of…
The Winchester Model 12 is an object almost of worship among a certain slice of American shotgunners, and it deserves the respect it gets. Wieland doesn’t shoot them particularly well, but that does not make him admire them any the less.

Shotgun Meanderings

In the course of searching for some answers about some arcane aspect of shotguns, I…
Shooter on the 25 yard line. The ZZ has been released from the trap with the white flap down—a visual signal that occurs simultaneously with the launch of the bird—and its orange wings are visible against the dark green trees.

Helice, a.k.a., ZZ Birds

Most shooters are aware that trap as we know it today grew out of the…
Stevens-Pope in three volumes, by Warren Greatbatch and Tom Rowe. The books are massive, the photography wonderful, and the information enough to satisfy the most voracious lover of single-shot rifles.

Big Books. Big Big Books.

Some years ago, at a cocktail party connected with one of the big gun shows,…
The barrels on this 28-gauge James Erskine from the late 1800s has a kind of twist called “skelp,” which usually originated in Britain. After a life of relentless maltreatement in South Africa, the gun was rescued, restored, and passed re-proof in England with flying colors. It now lives in Colorado.

Damascus

It never fails.  And when I say never, I mean never.  I show up at…
The Dakota Traveler, in .300 H&H Magnum, built by Tony Galazan’s Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company. The mounts are Talleys, the scope is a Meopta MeoSport R3-15x50 RD SFP.

Dakota Redux — We Hope

Dakota Arms, of fond and fragrant memory, could stand as an object lesson to all…
It will horrify Wieland’s side-by-side loving friends, but he’s come to the conclusion that if he ever has to limit himself to one shotgun, it will be the Blaser F3—with its eight sets of barrels, three buttstocks, and two forends. Which is hardly just one gun, is it?

Rainy Sunday in March

As I write, Skeet season is upon us—that is, the two months in which the…