John Barsness
John Barsness

A Text Book for Rifle Loonies

Back before Wal-Mart and big box sporting good stores ran the little guy out of business, you could walk into a real gun shop and become educated. Often there was no one behind the counter; you’d find several gents huddled around the wood stove pontificating on things like growing green beans and politics, but mostly on guns. If not there, they’d be sitt’n …

A Better 264

When I was 14 I took every ammunition catalog I could find, devised a complex formula, and crunched all the numbers. My goal as to determine the best all-round rifle cartridge suitable for everything from groundhogs to elk. The numbers – as they say – don’t like, and the answer was the 264 Winchester Magnum. I’d been saving up my paper route …