Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters How come there is never any real technical meat in the articles like

Some articles over time I would pay money for the specific article if detailed enough.

For example, I've never found a really detailed review of the BOSS. I have one on a 3006 and thought about cutting it off. For a detailed article that would tell me the true ins and outs of it, I'd pay $5-$10 for that article from AGW alone.

If Nick is still writing, he would be nearing 50 years at it, so he would have a huge backlog of data to tap into. He was one of the first to learn "cut and paste" if I can say that without sounding derogatory. Briel was a great ballistic reviewer. He worked up loads for the review piece which was helpful if the item was new with little information available. He also had similar tastes to me in that, when I was working on the .338/378 he was working on the .30 cal version, neither of which was commercially available at the time and little detail available.

Both live in rural areas which his very helpful when culling a few for added flavor to the article. I hope they stay at it and wish them both well.
John

I haven't got the articles on disc and the mags are long filed away or lost but I first tested a Browning .270 Bolt action which had a short 20" barrel so the BOSS unit took the overall length to about 22". I kept this one for 6 months to fully test and learn the unit but I also never had a 20" barrel on this cartridge so wanted to see how it performed in the field.

There was no brochure or instructions with this first test rifle so through constant persistence, I learned that this unit actually worked better if subdivisions of the gradient markers were used. Instead of turning the unit point marker to point marker, I moved it the slighted amount that I could "feel" it move. Once the group opened up, I reversed the setting and found it tightened up. This indicated that barrel vibrations were being modified as the barrel was very light.


This rifle also outshot the others with many groups ahooting as low as .2's and .3's and the far majority going under a half MOA. The basic rifle was a surprise. When I thought I had a good load, I removed the BOBB and shot terrible 2" verticle stringing groups. I checked the bedding and it was a clear honey colored almost template poured substance that was more gel like than hardened epoxy. In the field, I shot the then new 100gn X bullets that chronograped around 3300fps which is about 200fps less that that weight would produce in a standard 24" barrel. 150 grain bullets were too slow to impress me but the 140gn X bullets were pretty good out to long range even with the reduced velocity. I made the front cover of Gunsports Magazine with a black billie I shot in tne south end from about 350 yards. The bullet raked the spine and I found it in the 4th vertebrae behind the skull. It later weighed 139.5 grains. Enough said.

The other rifles I tested with the same BOSS option included a Browning .22/250 Varmint model with heavy 26" barrel and Laminated stock, Winchester Stainless Model 70 (struggeling to recall the caliber) and a Browing Semi Auto in .308 Winchester. None of these rifles shot as impressively as the first but they all dictated good hearing protection which was a huge downside to the reviews. By the time the last rifle was tested, a blind option was released that did not include the porting/muzzle Break, but permitted the attenuation of the barrel vibrations to be "adjusted".

As a reviewer, I was interested in trying everything that came along but in the end, for myself, I felt that a properly tuned standard bolt action with decent handloads was a better option and in the end, so did the general public.

John

That's a good last point there, AG.
By the time you've shot through several boxes of factory gold trying to make it shoot, you've paid for a press, dies, and components.
I've never understood the trend toward packaged marketorials, especially when we're dealing with the psychology of paper publications.
I buy paper so I can curl up with some caffeine and radiant heat and lose myself in the material, study it, soak it up. Light reading just kills time and brain cells.
Furthermore, I'm in the Whelen camp, as in "only accurate rifles are interesting" or accurate anything. My favorites are "I bought a dog, and now it's a death beam" genre, where I might learn some voodoo that I can apply to my own experiences.
But advertisers want to sell, sell, sell, and they support not just the printing press and home office, but the writers.