All posts in Hunting Gear

Practical and tactical should go hand in hand

Although I am a big fan of battle rifles and prefer to carry a gun bigger than an M4, if I gotta carry ammo on my person and it’s not being carried in the trunk of my car, I’ll gladly take the smaller caliber.    The M1 Garand is a great and powerful weapon, but combat is at a much faster pace and being able to suppress a target with small arms is as important as neutralizing it.  If you are a weekend warrior and are considering taking a Carbine Class, even though your training will take place in the Course, you should do research on gear and accessories before you walk in the door.

 

I always try to sit in on training courses whenever I can although I wish I had the time to actually take more classes.   I’ve written on several occassions that one of my greatest joys of watching classes is watching all of the gear fall off or fail a student and watching their slow evolution of losing gear along the way.   Theirs nothing wrong with being a tactical accessory junky, but if you have to carry an M4 all day like i’ve had to, you’ll quickly learn that lightweight, means a happy person.  There seems to be a big craze getting tactical gear with the quad rails even though most people don’t need them, and then having to go out and get rail covers, when a simple stock would have lightend the gun by a few pounds.

 

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The original spotting scope

I rememeber the days when the vast majority of rifle hunters were using lever actions with iron sights.   In the last decade or so, there have been massive improvemenets in the durability of rifle optics and even the less expensive optics, don’t fog up like they use to.   Some of those $20 binoculars you see work quite well in daylight, but in low light, that is the time you will really know how much your optics cost.    My recommendations when it comes to using binoculars is to get fixed power optics and get the lightest weight ones you can buy.

The biggest argument against packing a pair of binoculars up in your shooting bag or on  your tactical vest is the added weight.   My Bushnell powerview optics are compact and lightweight and for target identification with fixed 12x,  that’s a very inexepensive option.   I’ve held all of the Steiner optics, and those are outstanding, but you may not get your moneys worth if you are only using them a few times a year.   Steiner binoculars imho are the Trijicon ACOGS of binoculars and they are outstanding for the people that need them.

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Combat rifle scopes and a backup plan

When you mount your rifle scope, please do some research on how to properly level and mount it.  A properly mounted combat optic should not be over torqued and should have loctite on the screws.  I have yet to see a mount come loose on a gun that used loctite.   When you go out an spend $1000 on a combat rifle scope, ask yourself, what will you do and how will you remove the scope and aim it if the optic goes down.   If one your Trijicon rifle scopes takes a bullet, are you going to be able to see through it and still be able to lay down effective fire if you can’t see through it?  Even if you have a rifle scope that does not allow for co-witness, would it be a good idea to still attach flip up sights to the gun if there is room for them?  Always have a backup plan for your defensive carbine.

The vast majority of M4 Carbines I see at the range have optics that are top of the line.    Aimpoint and Eotech along with the Trijicon ACOG are probable the top 3.   All of these are good for a certain purpose which is mostly for close up fighting.   The Trijicon ACOG is more of a medium range combat optic depending on the type of reticle you choose.   They do have a line of red dot or even green dot optic options, also.   If you are are a weekend warrior and new to defensive shooting and tactical gear, I would suggest you think about this next statement, whenever you attach an accessory to your Carbine, think about what you would do if that accessory mount broke or the actual item failed.

 

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Looking for Zombie killing options

Do search for gun clubs and shooting ranges in your State to find out if anyone is holding a Zombie shoot.   They usually occur in the September to October months.   Having some good tactical clothing that will securely hold your gear.   The Eotac Style 201 pants are my favorite because they hold 6- 30rd PMAGS and they are easy to run in.   Tactical vests like the Style 101 are not heavy and don’t make you feel like you are wearing a flak jacket.   There is a time and a place for different types of tactical vests, but mobility is important.  You may want to try getting your magazines loaded up with all of your gear and then try running 100yds with it and see what it feels like and if stuff starts to fly out of your pockets.   Mobility is extremely important.

There seems to be a new craze in competition shooting in recent years.   I’ve seen more high school boys coming home from class with Zombie survival guides, the recent 28 Days later type movies and the doomsday virus outbreaks.    I guess IDPA has lost some traction to the present generation, but I’ve attended a few Zombie survival competitions and they were very good training events.   The best thing about it was the amount of tactical gear that I watched fail, and the number of really novice mistakes people made.   Out of the 5 stages I attended, there was 1 stage that we saw about 18 firearms go down.   About half of those were AK variants and they were mostly magazine related.  Some guys never knew how hard it was to do a tactical reload on an AK if there was a round in the chamber and a fully loaded 30rd magazine.  People found out what happens after firing off the 1st round and the magazine falls out.

 

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The move away from red to green

I really don’t have a problem shooting with regual optics in low light, but I’ve never been in the streets for combat missions in low light.    I’ve done plenty of hunting in the early mornings and since I could clearly tell that some of my lower end optics really sucked as far as brightness, I still got the job done when the sun came up.   I never liked many of the red dot reticles because the red dots all seemed to blurry to me.   I guess its a disadvantage for those of us with good vision, but I found the blurry bright red dots annoying.   They tend to obscure targets because they are either too big or too hazy.

Trijicon ACOGs are well known for their reliablility and clarity and for their unique illuminated reticles.   I find many in the gun community like the fancy reticles, but I still prefer my reticles small and thin.    The only time I don’t mind a larger reticle is with the Eotech rifle scopes, but that is only for close up fighting.   Trijicon has also discovered that the green illuminated reticles are preferred by military and law enforcement because the human eye picks up the light better.    Very interesting.

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M4 Carbine setup for murphy’s law

I’m sure you’ve done plenty of research into combat optics, which is the toughest and which reticle is best for you,  but are you setup for a backup plan if your sighting system goes down?   Using loctite on all of the places that need to be locked down does wonders for reliability, but in combat, sometimes your optics can get smashed or even shot.    There have been several advertisements showing up about ACOGs getting hit by bullets and even surefire flashlights that took bullets and still worked, but sometimes a broken scope that is loctited to your gun will become a nightmare in a combat situation if it is broken.

I personally do not like the idea of fold down front sights because I never thought the permanent front sight obscured my targets if I hed the gun right, but some people really don’t like the front sights there when using red dots or Eotech gun sights.   Quick detach rifle scope and rifle sights are becoming more common because this is a reality of combat.   I think this is being a little too anal, but if it works for them, that’s their decision.   I do see some people operate Eotech gun sights with no backup sights and I think it’ll  be a matter of time before they show up a range with dead batteries and realise that their gun is going to be as accurate as a blunderbuss.   If you set your cowitness sights up, you can use them as primaries or backups at any point.   Using fold down front sights is an extra step to getting your Carbine backup if the primary optic goes down, but that’s just my opinion.

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Limitations and advantages of handgun sights

The real advantages I see to actually altering the front sights on handguns is for home defense.   Even if you have a flashlight on or there is some lighting  in  your home, it’s still can have a lot of shadows and moving from room to room will give you areas where it would be good to be able to see exactly where your front sight is pointing.   Hunting with a handgun or rifle usually means hunting in early morning with limited light and the same for late evenings in later afternoons.  Hi visiblity sights should give you some advantages for speedy target acquisitions.

A lot of this is really going to be about conditions that you are shooting in, and it will also depend on how good your eye sight is in the first place, but traditional gun sights that are solid black can sometimes be hard to pick up in low light and even if they are being used in sunlight, they are too thin or too thick for a shooters taste.   Depending on the type of shooting that  you are doing sometimes the gun  you have is a good format, but some changes need to be made to your rifle sights or handgun sights.  Even today there are some red dot optics that I do not like because the dot is so big that it obscures the target and it makes it very difficult to shoot tight groups.   Low light can make it even hard to see objects behind the the target.

 

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Mini 14 Magazines and hunting

I must admit, I was  lucky enough to be able to stock up on PMI magazines in the 1990s and never had to worry much about finding after market rifle magazines for the Mini 14.   While admit I have seen plenty of poor performing Mini 14 rifles on the ranges, it was always because the user was not using Ruger factory rifle magazines.  If you are fortunate enough to live in a State that allows the use of semi-auto rifles for deer season,  there is no lighter and faster Carbine for Coyote or white tails than the Mini 14.   I have personally witnessed deer being taken with 75gr HPBT with the Mini 14, so don’t tell me the .223 isn’t good for the job.
Inside of 200yds and with a 4x optic, a Mini 14 is well within the tolerances of being able to take a 150-200lb animal.   Considering the flat trajectory, hold overs are virtually none existant at these ranges.  Since you can get 20rd and 30rd factory magazines for the Mini 14 again.   There still are reasons to not want to heat up the rifle and it is well known that the Mini 14 is not a military rifle.  The accuracy will begin to decline after approximately the 3rd shot is fired which gives good reason to only stick with the factory 5rd magazines.

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Hunting overkills this Fall

For most of the Northeast, hunting will start in about 6 weeks for archery and then small game begins.   Archery has gained a  lot of ground in this region because so much of the good hunting areas are populated and it’s hard to safely manage deer populations if areas where it’s not really safe to use a firearm.   I still don’t know why so many people go with monsterous optics that when put under any kind of realistic hunting test, will always slow you down.   Whenever I ask people what they are doing with a 50mm objective on a gun that is really meant for something that weights 800lbs and they are out hunting white tail, they usually say they are afraid of making bad shots.

From my own personal experience in the military and law enforcement community, I think hunting with a red dot is probable more practical than any optic that magnifies more than 5xs.   For small game I’d recommend against using a red dot, but there have been times I’ve been tempted to just bring a Mini 14 with an Eotech out for while tails just because the speed I get with that configuration is better than any lever action or 7mm bolt action.   Whenever you are thinking about doing long range shooting, go ahead with magnification, but wheneve you are thinking about rifle scopes for hunting applications, do a realistic gauge of how good your eyes are and what kind of opportunities you may expect when out in the field, and don’t slow yourself down with too much magnification or an optic that has an eye relief inhibits your mobility.

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Marlin 925 range report

rifle casesWhen getting asked the question how many guns we own, the question should be asked “what do I not own?”   After several  years of dealing with the high speed, low drag weapon systems, and after watching the 2008 election results, there was huge jumps in ammo prices.    I thought to myself when 5.56 ammo was hitting close to the $700 per 1000rds range, that maybe ammo was going to be worth more than gold soon.   After putting a little thought into why the ammo prices were going up, I pretty much guessed that they won’t stay up that long in a bad economy, because nobody in their right mind would spend money on something that was 200-300% over  inflated.   I decided that if It was reloaded ammo, I wasn’t going to touch any factory ammo, and it was now time for a 22lr bolt action rifle.
I picked up a Marlin 925 bolt action rifle with iron sights and I was planning on not ever putting a scope on this.   As a firearms instructor, this was a basic platform for teaching basic shooting skills.   There is nothing wrong with teaching to shoot firearms to new shooters with a scope, but in my opinion iron sights are a better starting point.    This Marlin 925 was extremely accurate, but I  noticed that my groups were always left of center.   I looked at the rear sight adjustment and noticed I really couldn’t accomadate for the windage.   I was a little depressed and packed up my Marlin in a one of the rifle cases I had with me.  As a kid, I always compensated for a guns accuracy flaw by aiming at a different point, but as somoene who’s been able to hit the X at 600yds with other firearms, this off center accuracy really bothered me.   I’m looking to put another adjusteable rear sight on this or possible put a scope on this and pick up another bolt action that has better sights.

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