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Firearms
Your Maximum Range Isn't as Far as You Think
The maximum range a hunter can take an ethical shot on an animal is limited by a variety of factors, including the shooter’s skill, the stability of the rest, the ballistic capabilities of the cartridge, and the accuracy of the rifle.
If we’re being honest, it’s that first factor that limits most...
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Firearms
Muzzle Brakes vs. Suppressors: Which Is Better?
Guns are loud. They also recoil. Neither of these features are pleasant for the person pulling the trigger, so gunmakers have spent considerable time and effort creating products that mitigate these effects.
The two most common are muzzle brakes and suppressors. Muzzle brakes are designed a million...
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Firearms
AR-15 Workbench: How to Sight in an AR-Type Rifle
Sighting in an AR-15 isn’t much different than sighting in a bolt-action rifle, but the process does present a few unique challenges. Fortunately, whether you just bought your first AR or you’re an experienced rifle hunter, there are simple ways to overcome them.
This how-to will describe several of...
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Featured Gear
Caliber Battles
Firearms
Caliber Battle: 300 PRC vs. .300 Win. Mag.
When Hornady describes the 300 PRC as an “intelligently crafted 21st century magnum cartridge,” it’s hard not to read that as a dig at .300 Win. Mag. fans.
As perhaps the most popular .30-caliber magnum of all time, the Win. Mag. is the PRC’s direct competition. But it’s not a 21st-century creation...
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Firearms
.300 Win. Mag. vs. 7mm Rem. Mag.
When someone contacted me recently to suggest this Caliber Battle matchup, I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done it before. If you ask your average American hunter which big boy caliber he uses, the .300 Win. Mag. and the 7mm Rem. Mag. are the two most likely candidates. And the data backs that up...
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Firearms
.270 Winchester vs. 6.5 PRC
It seems like whenever anyone mentions one of the sexy new 6.5mm cartridges, someone else brings up the .270 Winchester and argues that it’s just as fast, hard-hitting, and flat-shooting as any of those newfangled whipper snappers.
You can’t get much more sexy or newfangled than the 6.5 PRC. We’ve...
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Firearms
.300 HAM’R vs. .30-30 Winchester
When Bill Wilson began developing the .300 HAM’R in the early 2010s, he wanted to create a .30-caliber cartridge that could be chambered in AR-type rifles and would “at least equal the legendary and time-proven .30-30 Winchester in terminal performance.”
If the Wilson Combat website is any...
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Firearms
7mm-08 Remington vs. .25-06 Remington
There were three popular write-in votes when the MeatEater audience selected The Greatest Whitetail Cartridge of All Time earlier this month: the .270 Winchester, the 7mm-08 Remington, and the .25-06 Remington.
Many of you argued that these three cartridges deserved a chance to compete in the...
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Gun Reviews
Firearms
Is Wilson Combat’s New Rifle All Hype or the Real Deal? (Full Review)
Gun writers are a contrarian bunch, but every once in a while, we agree on something. For the past two years, that “something” has been the NULA 20 rifle from Wilson Combat.
Field & Stream named the NULA 20 the “Best New Rifle of 2023” and On Target Magazine bestowed upon it their “Editor’s Choice...
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Firearms
Rifle Battle: Savage Axis 2 vs. Ruger American Gen II
Christmas is right around that corner, and hunters young and old will be hoping to spy a long, narrow box tucked under the tree. I saw such a box a few years ago. It turned out to be floor mats for my minivan, but I’m not a man without means, so I went ahead and bought myself my own Christmas...
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Firearms
Building the Ultimate Lightweight Magnum
I’ve been wanting to build a custom rifle for about a decade now. I had previously assembled a rifle using a blueprinted Remington 700 action, but this time around, I wanted to maximize performance by using the best of every component.
This rifle is designed with hunting in mind, first and foremost...
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Firearms
Beretta's New Straight-Pull Rifle: The BRX1 (Full Review)
If you asked most American hunters to name every kind of rifle action, they’d probably forget about the straight pull. While fairly common overseas–most famously on the Austro-Hungarian Mannlicher rifle–straight-pull bolt guns never really caught on here in the States.
The reasons for this are...
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Firearms
First Look: Springfield's New Model 2020 Boundary Rifle (Full Review)
Gun nuts love to argue, and one of our favorite arguments pits the traditional against the modern. Modernists think that newer is always better, whether it’s a polymer frame, carbon fiber barrel, or titanium suppressor. The traditionalists, on the other hand, won’t give up their wood and steel until...
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Firearms
Sig Sauer’s New CROSS Rifle Is the Thinking Man’s Magnum (Full Review)
Read enough gun reviews and you’re sure to see a rifle design described as “thoughtful.” The term is probably overused, but I think it fits Sig Sauer’s new rifle: the CROSS Magnum.
Sig’s engineers designed the CROSS Magnum with an actual human hunter in mind. The rifle is chock full of small...
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Cartridges By Species
Firearms
The Best Calibers for Bear Hunting
It wasn’t so long ago that black bears were considered America’s premier wild table fare. Bear steaks are delicious, bear grease is useful (and delicious), and bear hunting is challenging and rewarding.
For new and aspiring hunters, however, bears can seem invincible. Even though they’re generally...
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Gear
The Best Deer Hunting Calibers
Here’s the truth about these "best of" articles: the only honest answer is, "It depends." Are these cartridges really the best deer-killing cartridges in existence? It depends.
It depends on where you’re hunting, your experience with firearms, what rifles you already own, how much money you can...
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Firearms
If You Can Only Pick One Big Game Hunting Cartridge, Pick This One
The apocalypse is nigh. As you gather your loved ones and sprint out the front door, you have just enough time to grab a hunting rifle. For some reason only partially explained via flashback montage (the writers on this show suck), you know you’ll need this rifle to hunt every legal big game animal...
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Firearms
The Best Calibers for Elk Hunting
Elk are the largest animals most American hunters will ever have a chance to harvest. For that reason, once a hunter is ready to step up from whitetail deer to elk, the first question they ask is: do I have enough gun to get the job done?
We’re here to help you answer that question. The MeatEater...
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Firearms
5 Best Rifle Calibers for Youth Hunters
Nothing is more discouraging to a new hunter than a loud and intimidating rifle. If you’re hoping your kid will be confident and accurate from the deer blind, throwing them to the wolves with a .300 Winchester Magnum isn’t the way to go. It might make for a funny story when they’re older, but it’s a...
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Firearms
Hunting Whitetail with a Shotgun: Rifled Slugs vs. Sabots
Almost every traditional shotgun-only state now allows hunters to shoot straight-wall rifles, but slug guns remain popular among deer hunters across the Midwest and East. Slugs became mandated as a safety measure in populated areas because they cannot travel as far and are slower than necked...
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Off Range
Firearms
Everything You Need to Know About Rifle Actions
Here’s a scenario most new hunters and gun owners have experienced.
You’re at the gun range when the friendly fellow at the neighboring bench offers to let you shoot his rifle. You happily agree, but when you sit down at the bench and get behind the gun, you realize that you don’t actually know how...
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Firearms
Why Your Hunting Rifle Sucks
Most hunters love their shooting irons (sometimes more than they should), but nothing in this life is perfect. Rifles don’t always perform like you hope, and one bad experience can be enough to banish a once-loved rifle to the back of the safe.
But is it really the gun’s fault? How do you know...
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Firearms
3 Common Myths About Shotguns and Shotshells
The fascinating thing about shotguns is you never really know how one will pattern a shotshell until you pull the trigger and see the results on target paper. A shotshell delivers hundreds of projectiles downrange at the same time. Once these pellets, which vary in size and are comprised of...
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Firearms
Opinion: The Savage 99 Is the King of Lever Guns
When I started hunting in middle school, I was lucky enough to cut my teeth on classic deer rifles. On Saturday mornings during deer-dog season, my grandfather and dad would load me up, and we’d head to their camp and wait for the dog handlers to show up. I have distinct memories of my grandfather’s...
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Firearms
How the ATF Slashed Suppressor Approval Time by 5000%
Purchasing a suppressor has historically been one of the most frustrating experiences for gun owners. The paperwork is onerous, but the wait time is what really gets you. No one wants to drop $1,000 on something (plus a $200 “tax”) just to wait a year or more to bring it home.
Those days appear to...
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Gear and Accessories
Gear
The Best Hunting Rifle Scopes Under $500
During college, I worked in a gun shop. I heard (and saw) a ton of strange things while scrambling to earn rent and not blow my entire check in the used section. Of the things I heard, I remember one particularly wealthy and eclectic regular who claimed he would spend significantly more on a scope...
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Firearms
3 Reasons to Put a Red Dot on Your Turkey Gun
Turkey-hunting shotguns are in a class of their own. Shorter barrels, fancy camo patterns, pistol grips, and custom chokes separate gobbler getters from traditional shotguns you might find in your grandpa’s closet. Red dots belong to this group of turkey-specific accessories, too. While some folks...
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Firearms
The Best Hunting Scopes
For the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to try out a fair number of different scopes through competition, hunting, and helping the MeatEater crew dial in their kits. For those few scopes I haven’t used personally, I also have data points from folks who spend a lot of time behind a rifle...
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Firearms
Janis’s Season 12 Turkey Gun Setup
If you watched the recent MeatEater Florida turkey episode, you’ll know that I shot my first Osceola turkey. And you’ll also know that it was a long shot. But I felt comfortable and confident in that 60-yard shot because of my turkey gun set-up and ammo.
The last two seasons I’ve used a Beretta A30...
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Firearms
Should More Duck Hunters Be Using Red-Dot Reflex Sights?
Red-dot reflex sights are widely popular amongst turkey and slug gun deer hunters for good reason—they can increase your accuracy with a shotgun to ensure you don’t miss when a shot presents itself. If a red-dot has been sighted in properly prior to the hunt, all you need to do is put that ball of...
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Firearms
Video: Testing Lead and Copper Bullets in Ballistic Gel
The debate has raged for as long as gun hunters have taken animals with tiny, fast-moving metal projectiles: what type of bullet is best?
These days, that debate revolves mainly around solid copper bullets and various jacketed lead bullets. Unfortunately, as MeatEater’s Janis Putelis pointed out...
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Choosing A Gun
Firearms
5 Best Rifle Calibers for Youth Hunters
Nothing is more discouraging to a new hunter than a loud and intimidating rifle. If you’re hoping your kid will be confident and accurate from the deer blind, throwing them to the wolves with a .300 Winchester Magnum isn’t the way to go. It might make for a funny story when they’re older, but it’s a...
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Firearms
5 Best Rifles for New Hunters
Access to hunting ground is the number-one barrier to entry for new hunters, but firearms are usually also towards the top of that list. It can be intimidating to select, purchase, and learn to shoot a rifle, especially if you’ve never done so before.
If that’s you, you’ve come to the right place...
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Firearms
Ask the Eagle: What’s Your Favorite Big Game Rifle Caliber?
Introducing Ask the Eagle, where I’ll be answering your questions about everything from hunting to butchering to marriage. This week, an Instagram follower wants to know what rifle caliber I’d recommend to hunt all big game with.
Have a question of your own? You can write to me asktheeagle...
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Gear
Best Rifle Cartridges for New Deer Hunters
Caliber selection can be intimidating for new deer hunters. There are so many options, and every gun writer with a blog and an Internet connection has an opinion he’s more than happy to share.
You can read our recommendations below, but first, know this: almost every rifle caliber can take down a...
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Firearms
The Best Deer Cartridge You’ve Probably Never Shot
Remember that old children’s story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears?” Some take the moral as a warning against breaking and entering, but most folks probably remember the story’s lesson about moderation: not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft—just right.
The .257 Roberts is the...
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Getting Dialed
Firearms
How to Restore an Old Gun Stock
Synthetic stocks and stainless steel barrels have rightfully earned their spot on contemporary hunting firearms. MeatEater fully supports the rifle revolution, as you can see in our collaboration with Weatherby.
That being said, hunters tend to be a nostalgic bunch. Geriatric shoulder mounts, honey...
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Firearms
How to Correctly Clean a Shotgun
The shotgun is often the forgotten firearm when it comes to cleaning. Maybe it’s the simplicity or lack of rifling, but when cleaning day comes around, the smoothbores are usually last to get the grease. That’s not smart if you want your rig to keep dumping gobblers and greenheads for decades to...
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Turkey
How to Pattern a Shotgun for Turkey Hunting
When it comes to turkey shotguns, modern choke-and-load combinations are capable of throwing ultra-tight patterns out to 40 yards or more. At the same time, turkey hunters should remember that a properly outfitted scattergun’s pattern is likely no larger than a baseball at 10 to 15 yards.
I learned...
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Firearms
4 Things Hunters Can Learn from Competitive Shooters
The first time Steve and I met, we sat on a patio discussing competitive shooting and hunting. The conversation was exciting as we connected the dots on how closely related the two really are. Competitive shooters and hunters tend to exist in separate worlds, but many of our methodologies can be...
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Big Game
Ask MeatEater: Will You Shoot at Running Game?
You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers (and if we don’t, we’ll make them up). Every day, fellow MeatEaters send us more than 100 emails regarding hunting, fishing, cooking, conservation, and more. So, we decided to publish a series dedicated to our favorite FAQs. This is Ask MeatEater.
Several...
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Firearms
Video: How to Clean a Rifle Barrel
Whether your rifle is brand new or passed down through several generations, regular and proper cleaning is imperative to keep it in good shape and shooting accurately for hunting seasons to come. It all starts with the right tools and a solid understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish.
When...
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