Guns Illustrated 2011. Dan ShidelerЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The 94 Big Bore XTR .375 appeared in the 1980 Gun Digest at a princely suggested retail of $220.

      The standard 94 Big Bore featured a 20-inch barrel and walnut stock and forearm. They were attractive rifles, as are all Model 94s. But they didn’t succeed in the marketplace, probably because the cartridges just weren’t a good fit with the basic 94 design, at least as far as the .307 and .356 were concerned. A 20-inch lever-action is a woods rifle, plain and simple, and the logic of chambering a woods Rifle for a hot-rodded cartridge apparently escaped most potential buyers. I’m one of them. If we set the extreme limit of a woods rifle at, say 150 yards -- in my stomping grounds of northern Michigan, 50 yards is more like it -- the truth was that the .30-30 and .35 Remington have things pretty well sewn up. In the case of the .375, the modernized .38-55 really wasn’t an improvement over the .35, and the .444 left it eating dust. In 1989, USRAC called it quits and quietly deep-sixed the Big Bores. (Marlin also experimented with the .356 in a version of the 336 lever-action called the Model 336 ER -- another strong sleeper -- but that’s a story for another day.)

      Winchester played fast and loose with the Big Bore/XTR designation. A Deluxe version (the “Winchester 94 XTR Deluxe”) was offered in 1987 and 1988, but this fancy little gun was chambered not in a high-performance cartridge but in the plain old .30-30. Winchester’s .444 Timber Carbine was also known for a year or so as the “94 Big Bore Timber,” but to collectors, the term “Big Bore” will always refer only to the .307/.356/.375 fl avors.

      Two or three years ago, you could pick up a Winchester 94 Big Bore in excellent condition for $275 to $325. That situation is changing. Excellent examples are now bringing upwards of $750. Yet it’s surprising how many of these guns are floating around out there, some in NOS (new old stock) condition. The .375 is most frequently encountered, the .307 and .356 less so. My bet is that the .307 will appreciate more rapidly than its brethren.

      If you’re looking for a good deal on a 94 Big Bore, I wouldn’t expect to find one on the internet, of course. On the web, you’re competing with tens of thousands of other bargain-hunters, many of whom also recognize the collectibility of the Big Bores. No, the best way to find an affordable Big Bore is to check the pages of Gun Digest Magazine regularly and to do as I do: prowl the racks of the hundreds of gun stores and gun shows scattered throughout the Eastern and Great Lakes regions. It’s a tough job, but. . . .

      When you find a Big Bore, grab it. The value of these ill-fated but unarguably neat rifles has nowhere to go but up!

OPTICS BY WAYNE VAN ZWOLL

      In cover, a 3-9x variable works fine – if you keep it at 3x! This hunter takes aim with a Redfi eld.

      This shooter catches quick aim with a Blaser R8 and a new Zeiss Compact Point red dot sight.

      Author fires a Blaser R8 with a Zeiss 6-24x56 scope, one of three new Victory Diavaris this year.

      Yes, I found plenty of new hardware at January’s SHOT (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade) show. The Las Vegas Convention Center, SHOT’s traditional home, was, alas, not available. Hundreds of exhibitors converged on the town’s Venetian and Palazzo Hotel complex and the rat-runs of conference rooms opened to add square feet to the refurbished Sands Convention Center. “Plenty of traffi c…. Better than I expected…. Needed more space” pretty much summed it up. The recession has surely influenced the choices of hunters and shooters; but it has hardly kept them home. They’re buying rifles, ammo and optics. Dealers and distributors are writing orders. Product lines continue to grow – especially those that deliver value for the dollar.

      An upbeat SHOT Show can trigger irrational exuberance – the marketing of products with no real utility. Alas, such items appear even in somber times. In this report I’ll try to winnow that chaff and separate the worthy from the merely recent.

      AIMPOINT

      Since its start in 1974, Aimpoint has worked to offer the best red dot sights. Early on, that was easy, because red dot sights were then new. In fact, Gunnar Sandberg’s first “single-point sight” had no optical tunnel. You couldn’t look through this sight; you looked into the tube with one eye while your other registered a dot superimposed on the target. Sandberg refi ned the device and founded Aimpoint to produce it. Hunters liked the illuminated dot, suspended in a wide field they could see from almost any place behind the sight. The front lens of a modern Aimpoint is a compound glass that corrects for parallax – unlike most red dot sights, whose refl ective paths shift with eye position. Aimpoint’s doublet brings the dot to your eye in a line parallel with the sight’s optical axis, so you hit where you see the dot, even when your eye is off-axis. A 1x Aimpoint gives you unlimited eye relief too. Advanced circuitry on the newest models reduces power demand. Batteries last up to 50,000 hours with a mid-level brightness setting.

      Author took this Montana Rifle with a 1.5-5x Leupold to Africa, shot game from 12 to 250 yards.

      The lightest of Aimpoint’s 9000 series weighs just 6.5 ounces. Each windage and elevation click moves point of impact 13mm at 100 meters. The newest Hunter series comprises four models: long and short tubes, 34mm and 30mm in diameter. They all feature 1x images, 2-minute dots, half-minute clicks. A 12-position dial lets you fi ne-tune dot intensity – low for dim light, high under sunny skies. One CR-2032 battery lasts five years if you never turn the sight off! Hunter sights are waterproof. Fully multi-coated lenses (43mm up front on the 30mm sight, 47mm on the 34mm tube) deliver a sharp image, and as with all Aimpoints, the internal design gives you unlimited eye relief with zero parallax. Sturdy enough for military use, Aimpoints have been adopted by armed forces in the U.S. and France. They serve sportsmen in forty countries. One of every ten moose hunters using optical sights in Sweden carries an Aimpoint. I’ve killed moose with these optics in dark timber, then shot golf-ball-size groups on paper at 100 yards. The company’s line includes a Micro H1, ideal for bows and handguns. (Aimpoint.com.)

      This Weaver Grand Slam scope, one in a big stable of fi ne variables, tops a Tikka T3 Rifle.

      ALPEN

      A young optics company, Alpen has surprised everyone over the last few years with “great buy” credits from such venerable sources as Outdoor Life. While 2010 brings only a few new products to the catalog, many established optics in the Alpen line deserve another look. In short-summary fashion, then:

      The Rainier 20-60x80 spotting scope accommodates a camera adapter for photography at long range. AR riflescopes for air guns were designed to endure double-shuffl e recoil. Carriage-class Rainier binoculars now come in 8x32 and 10x32 versions that are 20 percent lighter than the 42mm originals but still wear BAK4 lenses, phase-corrected coatings, a locking diopter dial and twist-out eyecups. The AlpenPro Porro series includes an 8x30 that’s ideal for the woods. Alpen’s energetic Vickie Gardner is busy “scrambling to fill back-orders from 2009!” Why? “Alpen offers great value; the riflescopes and binoculars truly are great buys.”

      Also, some 2009 introductions were premature; stock didn’t arrive until late in the year. Wings binoculars, for example. Choose 8x42 or 10x42, with ED glass as an option. The

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