The M40. A revered name with few variations throughout history - the M40, M40A1, M40A3, M40A5. In the fifty years since its inception, the Marines’ update to the Remington 700 system has stood the test of time with its durability, simplicity, and hard-hitting rounds. The goal, as with most long-range platforms, is a consistent first-round hit. That’s not to say that every shot will be taken at extreme range... but it’s useful to have a rifle capable of delivering that level of accuracy.

At the time of the Vietnam war, the only suitable rifles for such a purpose were old holdovers from World War II and Korea. Commonly, this meant a 1903 with 8X Unertl (Model 1941) or scope-mounted M1C and M1D Garands. The Army went on to develop the M14 further, yielding the XM21. The Marine Corps decided to take a different approach.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by our website.

Getting ready for a match? Trying to get over a bad shot at the last one? Open an ear and listen to advice from shooters at the National Matches, held each summer at Camp Perry.   While everyone has their own spin on it, everyone agreed on something:  The next shot is the one that matters. The last one already happened and can't be changed, so don't beat yourself up about it. The one in the chamber is the one that counts. Don't add to the stress and emotion by overthinking it.   

The interviews are from the 2019, 2021, and 2022 National Matches. Interviews were conducted on-site at the 2022 matches - sorry about some of the gunfire in the background.   

00:00 Introduction 

Let's get a look at all the people in the video.  Shoutout to  @Konrad   @Marines   @The U.S. Army   @National Guard   @U.S. Army Reserve   @Civilian Marksmanship Program   @The Marine Corps League   @Creedmoor Sports   And to everyone else that I wasn't able to tag here!   

00:30 Getting Ready 

How do you get into the right mindset to shoot a match?   This is pretty darn close to meditation. Stare at the target, don't think about it, don't get excited. The sort of problems that come about due to nerves are only going to make your nerves worse. Each shot is its own shot. Focus on the basics, remember your practice.   

05:42 Return to Calm 

What happens if you drop a shot and get flustered?   The idea is largely the same - focus on the next shot. The last shot has already happened, and there's no time travel alibi in matches. The next shot in the chamber is the only thing you can control. Put all your focus on that, and leave emotion behind the ready line.   

08:54 Pep Talk 

John Schwent from Camp Valor Outdoors has a solid message about the shooting mindset. These are points covered by nearly everyone we spoke to... except here they're condensed into a few minutes of pure knowledge and experience.  Remember - it's not a 50-shot match, it's 50 1-shot matches.

The 1903 is a rifle. Chambered in .30-06 (‘thirty ought six’), it’s made of wood, metal, and a firm butt plate and weighs a bit over 8 ½ lbs. It’s a bolt action rifle that has been around since (you guessed it) 1903. Originally named the “United States Rifle, Caliber .30-06, Model 1903”, it’s now colloquially (and officially) named the “Springfield M1903.” 1903 for short.

In this episode, I'll be walking through the many stages of development that the Springfield M1903 has gone through, from its initial roots in the early years of the 20th century, on through life as the 1903A1, 1903A2 (very briefly), 1903A3, M1941 (with a Unertl 8X or Winchester A5), and 1903A4 (with the M73, M81, or M82). This rifle has seen many years of service and innumerable alterations, from ammo (.30-06, M1, M2), to the stock (straight, scant, type C), to the barrel (4 groove, 6 groove, war emergency 2-groove). 

If you've got a love for old wood guns, this is something you'll likely already be familiar with. I hope you find something interesting in here. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by our website. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube or Rumble. 

For most of the shots you take with a rifle, you, the ‘squishy human component,’ are responsible for much of the lost accuracy. The rifle and ammunition have their own inherent precision, and their own chance of sending a shot wide. Normally, though, your positioning, trigger pull, timing, and a whole host of other factors are responsible for sending a shot to the wrong place.

Now imagine that we’ve removed the human from the equation. The rifle’s going to be held by something else, so your shoulder and hands don’t need a stable platform. Remove the foreguard and most of the buttstock. The point of this rifle is repeatable precision testing. You don’t need to aim for this, as long as the rifle stays pointed at the same spot for each shot. Remove the sights too.

This is the idea behind a Mann Accuracy Device. It was named after ammunition tester Dr. F. W. Mann.

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. If you’d like to read the blog, you can find it on our site. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube or Rumble.

Believe it or not, there was a time when two competitors would do their best to shoot each other as quickly as possible to win a medal. Let’s find out more.

I’d like you to travel back in time to 1908. The Olympics are being held in London, and the demonstration of a potential new sport is taking place. Off on the field meant for a later display of fencing, Walter Winans and a smattering of professional pistol duelists were meeting to shoot each other for sport - with an audience. Winan’s demonstration, held conveniently close to the Olympics in both time and space, was actually part of the Franco-British Exhibition celebrating the Entente Cordiale signed between Britain and France. To celebrate this historic accord between the two countries, competitors from America, Belgium, and France were planning on shooting at each other.

In Winan's own words - “Some people tell me that shooting at a stationary target improves their snap shooting. I am glad to hear it and only wish that I could say the same thing about myself. They cannot, however, blame me for stating that, from my own experience, I have come to a different conclusion.”

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by our website. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube.

This story starts with a question, as some stories do. Today’s question is simple: If you saw a photo of someone using a reflex sight in the year 1900, would you think they were a time traveler? Before looking into the history of red dots, I certainly would have.

The story starts with Howard Grubb, a son born into an already-prominent telescope family. Under the name of the Grubb Telescope Company, Howard went on to build refractor telescopes for a number of observatories across Europe, powered by his family’s electrically driven clock drives. In 1900, Howard premiered his latest invention - a reflective sight for small arms.

Before too long - and not long before World War II - French forces began adopting the reflex sights for their bombers and fighters. In the 1930s, this technology became a little more widespread, and other airforces began adopting the same.

The Nydar Shotgun Sight gained fame in 1945 for its use on… well, shotguns. This was a remarkably simple contraption, converting Howard’s closed design into a more modern open reflex configuration.

1947 saw the creation of the Giese electric gunsight. The Giese sight had a battery-powered illuminated reticle.

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by the website. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube.

When I do research for episodes and articles, I like to dig into the original source material. Newspapers, journals, photographs, anything from the time period I happen to be looking into. Every so often, I’ll come across an old article that seems far too interesting to just leave behind. I’ve gathered up a few segments here that never made it into a podcast episode, though they may at some point in the future.

I hope you enjoy this rather unusual collection of stories, mostly from the 1800s.

The articles today:

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When you hear the word chronograph, what do you picture? Do you see a watch, hung on a chain in someone’s pocket? I do too. But for the purposes of this story, we’d both be wrong.

I’m here to talk about the kind of chronograph used to judge bullet velocity.

Still, for the purposes of this story, time, distance, and velocity are all important… so we’re also going to talk about telling time too. But not with watches.

For a great deal of time, firearms were shot with little knowledge of just how fast the bullet was going. In 1742, Benjamin Robins set out to find that knowledge with a pendulum and a dream. Before too long, Grobert’s pair of wheels took over as the go-to method for judging velocity. Then Reverend Francis Bashforth devised a long series of strings that could tell artillery operators how projectiles were flying down range.

Long before the optical, magnetic, or radar chronographs, these early mechanical designs achieved surprising accuracy using complex math and simple physics.

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Once upon a time, a peculiar gun worked its way westward on a journey of exploration and discovery. It didn’t kill a single person, but still proved its worth in safeguarding and hunting for its owners.

But enough euphemism and allusion - The owners were Lewis and Clark, and the rifle was a Girandoni Air Rifle.

Yes, you heard that right. The Lewis and Clark Expedition, fielded in 1804 at the request of president Thomas Jefferson, was armed with an air rifle originally designed in the late 1500s.

The entire 22-ball magazine could be emptied in under a minute. Just - tilt, squeeze, cock, aim, fire, and repeat. By many accounts, the rifle was accurate out to 100 yards. Compared to the muskets of the time, this sort of smokeless, long-range rapid fire must have been pretty astounding. The Austrian military made use of the Girandoni air rifles for a few decades, and for a while past that in the hands of their sharpshooters. The soldiers enjoyed being able to reload by simply tilting the rifle up from a prone position, rather than having to stand up themselves.

Twenty-three years later, Meriweather Lewis would pick one up in Pittsburgh. The rifles were supposedly kept in storage by the Austrian military until 1806, but at least one made its way across the Atlantic in time for a purchase on American soil. As far as survival rifles of the time could go, a field-ready kit that contained everything down to the bullet mold seemed like a reasonable choice.

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The 20X Malcolm scope is here. I have been waiting for this - and I finally get to put one on my rifle and take it out to the range. It comes equipped with the competition mounts featured on our 8X Gen ii, along with a completely redesigned scope tube. We’re talking more length, a bigger objective, and a parallax adjustment reminiscent of the old Unertl 20X’s.

Now what the heck should I mount it on?

I’d also like to congratulate the Dow Arms Room for the impressive efforts of their shooting team. At a recent match, they had too much fun showing off what their garands could do. I’d like to see their collection of medals some time.

And in other news, I’ve finally been catching up on Brandon Herrera’s 50-cal AK videos. All I can really say is - don’t try it at home, but certainly watch it at home. They’re exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.

And for our main story:

When I first started looking into the history of Metal Butt Plates, I didn’t quite know what I might find. Pretty quickly, my research turned toward the development of rubber recoil pads. Everything I was reading was highlighting the simple fact that shooters of ‘ye olden times’ had precisely the same concerns - and inventiveness - as the shooters of today. In the case of metal and rubber butt plates, the concern was one I’m sure many of you are familiar with: high recoiling long arms hurt less when there’s a cushion for your shoulder.

Our story picks up in 1874 with the Silvers Company of England, and ends around 1930 with a name I’m sure many of you are familiar with: Pachmayr. A bit of a spoiler alert: These bruised-shoulder shooters solved the serious concerns of considerable kick, even way back then.

Through ingenuity and a desire to shoot without flinching, they went through every variation of recoil pad you can imagine. From the first solid rubber pads bolted onto the backs of shotguns, they worked the shape and structure to increase its effectiveness. They tried springs, they tried air. They had buttplates with adjustable height and carvable shape, set atop spacers to perfectly fit the stock to the shooter. In essence, the shooters of old did exactly what shooters today are still doing - find a way to make recoil manageable.

I hope you enjoy this walk through the turn of the century, as the advent of shotgun cartridges enabled people to shoot high-recoil long arms more often than ever before.

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the world of firearms. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it’s available in other convenient locations. To read the blog, stop by our website. For the video version, take a peek on our YouTube.