Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Gun Claw.. gimmick or pure genius?

I have one and have used it extensively. It is perfect for those of us who carry a tripod when we hunt anyway. This summer, I was glassing a water hole from the next mountain over with my 15s on my carbon fiber tripod. I glassed up a lion. Since I already had my rifle out and a the Claw adjusted, I just snapped off the Binoculars and snapped on the rifle. I went from seeing the lion to shooting the lion in under 5 seconds at 400ish yards.

I took it prairie dog shooting this summer as well. While not a concrete BR, I was far more mobile and my son and I were about to shoot PDs out to 450 with it. This was in sagebrush so dogs were scattered and hard to find. The mobility of the claw made it a lot easier to get on them- sit in a lawn chair and shoot away.

For those of you who don't carry a tripod with you when you hunt, it's probably a very foreign concept to carry a rest like this too.

The Claw I have is machined from billet 6061 aluminum and is quite well engineered. They originally sold for $180 so $125 doesn't seem so bad.

It really shines when you mate it with a Bogen 701HDV tripod head as opposed to anything else I have seen. The long plate is more secure and allows for better balancing.

To me, it is no more of a gimmick than say, a climbng treestand, a pop-up blind, an adjustable shooting stick, a scent lok suit or what have you. I can remember when laser range finders were thought to be gimmicks.

My 16-year-old son shot his elk off my Claw this past fall at between 500-550 yds with his 308. Nailed it on his first shot. None of the other boys could hit theirs. They finally connected on some close ones but shot up a bunch of meat (75 yds) If it gives a kid a good experience, then use it!

Until you have tried one, don't count it out! The ultimate rest is the 701 plate mated directly to the bottom of the rifle stock- this eliminates the Claw and is steadier yet. You still have to carry the tripod though. I carry a Velbon El Carmagne 640. It has 4 leg sections and folds down quickly.

Fits nicely in my Badlands 2200 spotting scope pocket.

Here is one of my scouts shooting a 6" steel plate at 250 yds with a 223AI, he had never fired a rifle before. He never missed the plate!



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3-shot group off a tripod and Claw @ 500 yds with a Remington Mtn rifle. Just hand the plate on a barbed-wire fence and whang away. Makes checking rifle zeros very easy. Had the same POI as off my portable BR, which is only portable if you drive a pickup to the shooting spot!