Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Received my July Rifle magazine......

Notable features/points/news:

It has 58 pages
The Burris E1 2-7x35 with "tactical clicks & visual hash marks", range dots, and windage slashes is "near ideal" for any lever action rifle" particularly the Marlin 336 Black Tactical Ninja Hop Sing Commerative 30-30 with silencer.
Stan Trozonic bought another Remington Custom Shop 700.
Ruger after a couple decades has still managed to hide the Model 77 swing safety.
Terry Wieland does not understand a large wooden forearm can be made smaller.

Research continues. Updates as available.

I thought the issue was a disappointment.....!

I have a 40+ year stack in my shop, Rifle and Handloader both...later years to present, I started as a subscriber in the mid 70's. I'm not sure where they are headed business wise. Content is constantly diminishing, maybe it's a reflection of the market demographic. Today's gun buyers, buy modern mass produced guns of plastic and stainless...what more can be written about them?
There is a ridiculous profusion of "new" cartridges, that will probably be difficult if not impossible to find factory ammo for, in just a few more years. Not much can be said about them that hasn't already been said by buyers that didn't show much interest to begin with. A profusion of new powders to fill niches that most of us didn't know we needed until marketing people told us we needed them.
It's a tough racket catering to a shrinking industry.

You are too kind.

Almost forgot, not a single article on the 6.5 Charles Manson. And I was just about to pull the trigger (ha ha) How am I to learn? Also nothing on the .577/450 X 4 1/4 black powder 1886 Conversion. But 58 pages? One must make executive decisions.

58 pages?
Ah, the ever shrinking magazine. As it shrinks my desire to buy continues to shrink. That's too bad as Rifle and Handloader have always been the best of the gun mags with some of the best writers in the industry (Lee J. Hoots excepted).
If it wasn't for John Barsness, Brian Pierce, and Mike Venturino (who writes about things I have little interest in, but enjoy reading anyway) these magazines would be a waste time and money. Those three writers are the only thing those rags have going for them

I cancelled after they screwed with the digital subscriptions. Now I peruse each issue at the grocery store and buy if worthy. There hasn't been much worthy. Let's just say a subscription wouldn't be saving me money at this point. It sucks. I used to really look forward to rifle and handloader.

Could rant if I started buying most gun rags available. G&A 2020 Annual for example. Saw it at Wally World on my daily pass thru nose thumbing the lock down. Had the previously mentioned Marlin 336 Black Tactical Hop Sing Commerative 30-30 with silencer on the cover. The Hook. Got it home an thumbing thru I first came to that article by some guy named Bedmstrand(?). Got partiall thru the article only to find ammo manufacturers are loading too much of the wrong kind of powder in factory 30-30 ammo. You see, unburned powder was exiting the 16 1/4" barrel of the test model 30-30 BTHSC black rifle.

Observing this the writer educated the masses on the suitability of the threaded barrel. All that unburned powder would just load up a suppressor. Not sure of the resulting problem. Could have been something as simple as blowing the threaded portion of the barrel off. Or the gunpowder laden suppressor could have become a live rifle grenade, and that's illegal.

Anyway, sez he, the obvious better options would be a flash hider or muzzle brake to occupy the threads with muzzle brake being preferred. Sure, anyone to the side may suffer hearing detriment but hey, a guy has a right to protect himself from the muzzle blast of this early 7.62 Howitzer. You can't make these things up. I took my loss and tossed it in the circular file. Guess I ranted after all.

I thought the July issue was very Handloader-ish.

Now that you mention it...

Like pabucktail, I cancelled my subscription after the digital imbroglio. They said it was for security, people were passing the magazine around, but one could say the same if you were to buy the CD's with all issues - what is to stop those people from passing it around. Just a question.

No doubt that the quality of the articles has been on a steady decline over the years. IMO the biggest waste of pages are the Light Gunsmithing articles, they are just informative enough to get a beginner in trouble by "bubba-ing" a rifle.

I really enjoy the Weiland articles though, his writing is similar to Seyfried - he can get me interested in rifles and calibers that I would not normally have an interest in.

drover

I used to love Rifle and Handloader too. They are not what they used to be. I hope the publisher sees this thread and pays the writers to write an article that is longer and more in depth. They should re-invent themselves. People have the attention span to read something which takes more than 5 minutes. Look at the popularity of podcasts.

I like the light gunsmithing articles. I find them interesting and we get to learn some stuff. Likely the best thing would be to hog tie that hoots guy and give Shoemaker, Barsness, and Pearce the run of the place for awhile with no limits, articles as long as the boys want to write. Let Wieland in as well. Haviland's stuff used to be more informative but seems much less so now. It is apparently illegal for Trzonic to ever show a full length picture of a rifle.

JMO - I would imagine that they suffer from the same
misfortune that most all other American industry suffers
from, which is having most all their upper management
comprised of people that don't know the first thing about
what their company is all about, but they have that business degree hanging on the wall, so there they are. Used to be that our industry leaders had started at the bottom, and worked their way up and knew their business inside out, but that hasn't been the case in some time. Things might be ok if the business school types would stay in their offices and scan their reports and do their thing and peruse their real estate portfolio,and let troops keep the fires stoked, but they won't do that and after the gates are padlocked and weeds are growing in the parking lot, those micromanagement types move to another place to run it in the ground

Why don't you guys that are unhappy with the direction in which Handloader and Rifle are headed post some ideas as to what you want to read about. You don't like the black rifle articles, 6.5 Creedmore has you burned out, someone does an article on the .30-06 and you turn your nose up. Then go ahead and suggest some articles you feel would be note worthy. I too enjoy Terry Wieland's writing. I have always enjoyed history and some of the firearms he writes about are very interesting. Who made them,(and a little bit about the man behind it) when, where and how many. All interesting stuff. I learn from all the writers on these magazine pages. Venturino's stuff is good. I like old lever action guns and the military stuff is also good. Venturino is a good example, look at the broad range of articles and firearms and reloading this man has covered during his writing career. Surely there is something in there you would enjoy checking out. And some of you are probably right, the people who run the magazine may not be gun people at all. I don't know. I agree, it would be nice to turn the writers loose and let them write about anything they want and as long as they want. I read one time that the late Bill Jordan was forced to write about handguns, but in reality he was a rifle guy. I also bet that Brian Pearce could tell you some very wild stories that he has experienced living out there in the boon- docks that has nothing to do with guns and it would be some mighty fine reading. Just my two cents. See ya, BCM

In thirty-five years of reading Stan's stuff, I have seen a full length picture once or perhaps twice.

"It is apparently illegal for Trzonic to ever show a full length picture of a rifle."

It's against his religion.
Paul B.

I hated the July issue. I hated it so much, I won't read it!

Maybe in the digital version Stan could have a "Click to Show Content" bar like in the basement T&A thread, which when clicked would reveal a full length picture of a rifle.