The second annual Veteran Adaptive Athlete Shoot (VAAS) took place at the Black Rifle Ranch in Boerne, Texas, in April. Inspired by the Total Archery Challenge, VAAS is a way for adaptive athletes — particularly wounded veterans — to take on their ...
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Starter Kit: Build a Backyard 3D Target Range
Smacking a bag target, arrow after arrow, is hardly good bowhunting practice. Often, it’s done in the wide open and on flat ground in pleasant weather. Plus, the bull’s-eye is blatantly obvious. Anyone who can hold a bow with minimal training can ...
The Many Guns of John Wayne on the Big Screen
Throughout an acting career that spanned more than 40 years, John Wayne wielded a lot of guns on the big screen. Known primarily for his “cowboy” and western roles, the Duke is commonly associated with the Winchester repeating rifles. However, it was ...
Starter Kit: Build Your Own Home Bow Shop With 8 Must-Have Tools
A loud bugle pierced the mountain air and woke me like a double-shot espresso. The bull was on a mission to confront another bull bugling in the background. I nocked an arrow and assumed the position as he appeared about 70 yards out from the timber. ...
The 7 Oldest Pope & Young Archery Records
If you’ve spent any time with old-guard archery hunters at the local greasy spoon or in the garage after a day in the field, you’ve heard the words “there was a time when” on more than one occasion. Those words are faithfully followed by stories of ...
This is How Firearm Suppressors Work
All firearm suppressors work the same way. When a trigger is pulled and the striker ignites a primer and sends a bullet down a firearm barrel, it’s trailed by hot and expanding gases from the combustion of primer and powder. Suppressors collect, ...
The Maxims: One Family Invented the Machine Gun and the Suppressor
On Nov. 1, 1914, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim set the record straight in an article for The New York Times titled “‘How I Invented Maxim Gun' — Hiram Maxim. Outbreak of World-War Moves Veteran American Inventor to Describe for The Times His Epoch-Making ...
Doing Epic Shit Together: BRCC’s Veteran Adaptive Athlete Shoot
Sitting in a mobile chair that bore more resemblance to a tank than a wheelchair, Paralympic athlete and Army veteran Lia Coryell drew back her compound bow. The meadow was briefly silent, save the occasional chirping of birds and rustling of live ...
Archery Exercises That Will Bulletproof Your Bow Draw
It takes a metric crap-ton of reps to be a proficient archer, let alone a good one. There’s so much to work on — drawing, anchoring, finding your sight picture, not getting target panic, and the list goes on. But going from zero to dozens of bow ...
The Best Shotgun Moments in Westerns
Shotguns were the first small arms. The fairly ancient blunderbuss was a smoothbore, muzzleloading firearm that fired little pieces of pretty much anything — rocks, nails, arrows, bits of iron, and, yes, shot. Muskets mostly morphed into rifles as ...
Kifaru’s Aron Snyder on Compound Bow Versus Stick Bow
Not only is Aron Snyder the president of Kifaru International, a company that specializes in extreme outdoor-adventure gear, but he’s also an avid traditional bowhunter. Having hunted exclusively with a traditional recurve (which he both jokingly and ...
Nerf Guns and Can Openers: Neal Currey Ponders the Future of Gun Sales
Neal Currey is a former Army Ranger with 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He is also the owner of Ready Gunner, “Utah’s Favorite Gun Store.” With more than 284,000 Instagram followers, Ready Gunner is also an influential voice in the firearms ...
Here Are the Reasons for the National Ammunition Shortage
Thanks to the pandemic and its one-two punch on the economy, I was furloughed from my day job — at a major health care provider in Michigan — in the middle of last summer. To pass the time, I took a seasonal gig behind the gun counter at a local ...
Going primal: The challenge of traditional bow hunting
I started bow hunting with an old wooden recurve bow that my grandfather gave me for Christmas when I was 12 years old. It didn’t have much draw weight, but I still couldn’t hold it at full draw for very long. It didn’t have any sights, so I had to ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Correy Hawk of Organic Archery
Correy Hawk is more than a renaissance man — he’s a renaissance badass. A Marine veteran, student of the natural world, and teacher of how to live in it, he can spend weeks in quiet solitude deep in the backcountry with the most minimal gear. He can ...
2 Contemporary Movies That Get Hunting Right — Mostly
For the many unfavorable, unrealistic depictions of hunters and hunting in movies, you’ll find only a small handful that feature more positive, truer-to-life examples. Two films from the past couple of decades stand out in this regard, and believe it ...
Suburban Hunting: Bringing Bowhunting to a Neighborhood Near You
It’s a sunny, abnormally warm early evening in October, and Taylor Chamberlin is about 20 feet off the ground. Looking down from his treestand through the dense canopy, he sees his target: a whitetail cruising for acorns. Chamberlin draws his ...
How To Pick Out Your First Deer Rifle
Whatever your reason for reading this piece, you’re somewhat interested in the subject of deer hunting — the adventure, the benefits of harvesting your own meat, or the camaraderie with friends and family. Choosing your first deer rifle shouldn’t be ...
10 of the Best Archery Movie Moments of All Time
A bow is a great weapon for a movie hero to wield. It connects them to warriors throughout time and allows them to take advantage of a bow’s stealth and accuracy (in the right and experienced hands), the same reasons hunters value them today. While ...
5 Reasons Why Hunting, Fishing, and Shooting Will Be Awesome in 2021
By pretty much every metric, 2020 was a dumpster fire. A global pandemic and civil unrest the likes of which haven’t been seen in a lifetime rocked the globe. Normal has gone out the window, and who knows when it will be back. But not everything is ...
How Shooting an MP5 Can Make You a Better Archer
Whenever learning a new discipline or teaching a first-timer how to do something, the most important thing is finding a way to relate to the individual. If someone can tie a new task to something they know well, it invariably “clicks” in a way that ...
Photo Essay: Elk Hunting Sucks, or The Life of an OTC Archery Hunter
For the last four years, I have been archery hunting Colorado’s over-the-counter, or OTC, units for bull elk — with mixed results. OTC means the elk tags are sold to the general public literally over the counter, anywhere you can buy a Colorado ...
Relax in the Shot: Tension Only Magnifies a Miss
It happens to every hunter and every target shooter: A particularly difficult target presents itself, and the stakes are high. Naturally, you make an effort to try harder, to bear down and concentrate — to not fuck it up. But those who know, know ...
Ishi, Pope, and Young: The History of Modern Bowhunting
In 1912, Ishi crouched behind a bush and put his index and middle fingers to his lips. He made a sharp, high-pitched kissing sound — a rabbit distress call. To his left, Saxton T. Pope watched in amazement as a small group of rabbits came within ...
9 Ways to Actually Get Better at Shooting Your Bow
I am not a professional archer. You won’t see me winning any national 3D tournaments or catch me doing burpees before the Total Archery Challenge. But I am, proudly, an effective average-joe bowhunter. I started shooting a compound when I was 12, and ...
Camp Pendleton Marines Engage in the Ancient Art of Bowhunting
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Appreciation and understanding of various weapon systems are a part of Marine culture. Typically, the M16 or the M240 are the first to come to mind. However, there is a more traditional weapon system being utilized by Marine ...
Taran Butler is More Than the Man Who Made John Wick
Taran Butler is a better shot than you. Sure, there are people who may be better at very specialized skills within shooting, or who shoot better with a particular style of firearm under certain conditions or at a specific range of distances. But ...
Review: The American-Made VSKA AK Rifle from Century Arms
From the sun-baked deserts of North Africa to the tropics of Central America, the venerable AK47 rifle has been used in international conflicts around the world for decades. Few firearms share the name recognition of the AK47, and Mikhail ...
Hornady, NSSF Weigh in on Walmart Decision to Drop Handgun Ammo
Last week, Walmart announced its decision to discontinue the sale of .223 and 5.56 ammunition — which they referred to as “short-barreled rifle ammunition” — calibers commonly used in AR-15 rifles. Perhaps even more startling to the firearms industry ...
The Everyman’s Approach to DIY Archery Elk Hunting
I’m a self-taught bow hunter with a passion for elk hunting. The first time I heard the bugle of a bull elk echo out of my computer speakers, I knew I had to go and experience it in person. So that’s exactly what I did. In 2017, my first season, I ...
