All Outdoor

Don’t Pull The Plug

Nikon makes good optics; I know that from experience. It comes as no surprise that they’ve upped the ante for 2014, and have come up with an interesting and unique approach to long-range shooting.

Wind meters are handy little things. Properly called anemometers, they can tell you wind speed, from low to high and everything in between.

Busse and big knife lovers, your eyes do not deceive you: that is indeed a Busse ASHBM with a Bowie-style swedge. I call it the ASHBM Pappy, or ASHBMP, for short. When I ordered this knife, I had Busse run it through their Custom Shop, where Busse’s Garth Reckner ground the swedge in.

Not only does it look amazing, but it feels light as feather despite its obscene size. The handles are hand-shaped black canvas micarta, which I intend to darken up a bit with some treatment that I’ll detail in a subsequent post.

If you want one like it, you’d better hurry. Busse is out of blanks for the choilless model, but you can still probably get one with a choil in it.

I would’ve taken more pictures but the camera ran out of battery power. I’ll do another post with more photos and thoughts on the knife, soon.

Ready-made survival kits, in theory, seem like a smart idea. Usually created by established companies to appeal to the layperson or an amateur survivalist, survival kits are intended to be a one-stop-shop for everything you need in the event of a disaster or emergency. Common pre-made kits include first aid kits (FAKs) or bug-out bags; some are food-focused, whereas others are made specifically for vehicles. But there are some downsides to purchasing a kit that promises to cover all the bases for you.

As if mishandling firearms isn’t prevalent enough in popular media (anyone else constantly cringing at bad trigger discipline?), a viral video of a young man brushing his teeth with an Airsoft gun (a Glock 18c, to be specific) is making its way around the internet. Happy Monday!

Good news, gearheads and pack aficionados; gear company GORUCK is hosting a major 50 percent off deal just in time for summer recreation. If GORUCK packs have been a bit out of reach for you in the past, these knocked down prices might be a bit more budget-friendly. The GR1, for instance, is now $195 compared to the normal $295 price tag. For those unfamiliar with GORUCK, $195 might still seem like a hefty price compared to more accessible options, but GORUCK has a strong reputation in the gear community for making high-quality packs that can withstand a beating for a long time. And because we encourage quality over quantity, it might be time to invest in a pack that doesn’t wear out after a season. If you have any summer plans on the horizon, a GORUCK is a worthy addition to your gear kit. Apparel and accessories are also marked down in the sale.

Ok, it wasn’t really a competition — more like a joint exercise. Special Forces sniper Nick Irving, along with a few other former military shooters, took Olympian Amanda Furrer out into the El Paso desert for a few days of long-range precision shooting. The Irving wanted to learn more about the world of Olympic sport shooting, and Furrer wanted to get a feel for the sniper’s craft as it’s practiced in the wild.

Reblogged from our sister site TFB, it’s the Z Hawk from DS Arms. From a distance, it looks straight out of Weta Workshop — maybe an orc or goblin weapon from one of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies. But when you take a closer look, you realize that it’s a combination of a tomahawk and an AR-15 armor’s tool.

OK, I admit it, I’m getting old–old enough to remember the TV series Wanted: Dead Or Alive starring the King of Cool, Steve McQueen. McQueen played bounty hunter Josh Randall. The gun he carried was called a Mare’s Leg (or Mares Leg), and it was a cut down 44-40 lever-action Winchester Model 1892 rifle. Everyone wanted one when I was a kid, even the adults, but they were expensive. I never forgot wanting a gun just like Josh Randall carried in a custom-made holster on his right leg. The funny thing was, Josh Randall carried 45-70 ammo on his gun belt, but the gun was chambered in 44-40–but let’s not get too technical here, it was still a good show to watch.

ITS Tactical tells you how to forecast the weather by looking outside (as opposed to at a TV, computer, or smartphone screen).

Now keep in mind that if the national weatherman equipped with Doppler radar and satellite imagery gets it wrong from time to time, you will too. Taking that into consideration, it is probably best to avoid making high dollar wagers with your buddies when you are confident that it will begin storming in the next few minutes. And yet, by utilizing nature’s telltale signs, you can make some fairly safe assumptions regarding what is around the corner weather-wise. Let’s take a look at some of the basics:

This is definitely a good skill to develop, and it’s one I used to practice a lot more when I was a boy scout than I do nowadays. So buy a barometer for your porch, and bookmark this article for future reference. And if you see the UFO cloud in the picture above, then it means that it’s time to make crop circles.

In Part 1 of this series, I updated my 1920s vintage Browning A5 with the Browning Speed-feed capability for faster and smoother reloads and cycling, and added some magazine capacity in the form of a Nordic Components MXT tube extension for a 9 +1 total capacity. All the upgrades tested out perfectly, but I knew there was more that could be done to update the nearly century old Browning.

Around the Pandemic household, we have always been dog lovers. Whenever possible we attempt to adopt rescue puppies. Our late lab/doberman mix was a one-in-a-million terrific dog who was easy to train, understood and immediately responded to English and Japanese commands and hand gestures, and rarely did anything remotely aggressive or out of line. And then there are the two idiots, AKA the Doberman wonder twins, whom we adopted a little over a year ago.

The Browning A5 shotgun is a stunning achievement of engineering. Disassembling the Browning A5 will confirm the genius of the design and confound most amateur gunsmiths, but a properly setup A5 is the fastest and softest shooting shotgun of anything still on the market. It was and still is a revolutionary design which still outperforms many, if not all, new shotgun designs.

Battle Arms Development has posted a sneak peek at an ultra-lightweight, sub-4-pound AR that they’ve been working on for over a year now. Most of the lightweight builds that Major are over 6 pounds, so under 4 pounds is a seriously light AR.

Like many, I recently found myself having the need to extend the top rail of my AR for simpler optics mounting.  In this case, the hand guard broke on my DPMS Oracle kit.  The Oracle kit has been featured in a number of previous articles, and honestly the gun gets the hell beat out of it on a regular basis.  Apparently it cracked one of the 100 times I slammed it against a support. Although not a big deal, the last thing I wanted to do was pull off the gas block and remove the flash hider just to mount another handguard.

Big game hunters know that wind is perhaps the number one environmental factor that can impact hunting tactics and strategies. Hunters can tell from what direction a wind is blowing by tossing a milkweed in the air, but the speed of that breeze can also be a critical piece of information to have.

This week’s KnifeTests.com destruction test features the Browning Crowell/Barker Competition Knife, which retails from Browning for $183. While last week’s test also showcased the Competition knife, Noss didn’t quite put it to the destruction test, instead trying out basic bushcraft tasks. In this four-part destruction test, Noss starts by peeling and slicing an apple with the large knife. It does decent enough given its size. Then, the knife cuts several large notches into a plank of wood, and is also able to slice through webbing.

Things tend to get a bit muddy and wet during spring thanks to unexpected rainstorms and the influx of sprinklers fired up again in neighborhood lawns. But without the chill of winter, wearing water resistant-boots results in sweaty feet, especially as the weather inches closer to summer. A good pair of shoes can make all the difference, so features like mesh fabric and breathable design are a must-have for spring recreation.

Everyone knows that California is in the midst of an epic drought, and many of us are already seeing the impact in our grocery bills. But if an Arizona State University professor’s projections are to be believed, the worst is yet to come.