This time of year all the excitement of the Shot Show
has finally passed and things have slowed down to almost a stall. It is too
early to get excited about fall hunting and too early for those of us who have
to put in for the drawing for fall hunting to get worked up. Companies that
released new products at the SHOT SHOW are working hard to get them out to
those that have ordered them. So there is simply no time to come up with
anything new and exciting this time of year. In other words things are dead
and dull in the firearms market.
A few new items to mention. IMR powder was recently bought out by Hodgdon
Powder. They are dropping H-4227 but are keeping IMR-4227 in the line up.
Accurate Arms powder has been bought out and moved out of McEwen Tennessee and
moved out west.
Marlin has released a new stainless steel 41 magnum model 1894. It has an 18
1/2 inch barrel and a laminated stock. This one should be an instant seller.
Apparently there have been a lot of problems with the
Lee factory crimp in certain calibers. I talked to Kelly Brost of Cast
Performance Bullets and he mentioned that they had people crimp their LBT
bullet way too much and caused severe accuracy problems. If you are using one
of the Lee sets of dies, be very careful when crimping with their factory
crimp.
For those of you that have ordered one of our Keith #5s or our Western
Classic, we are running a slight bit behind. I changed the internal workings
of both guns to add a bit more safety to each of them and this set us back a
bit. We are running 4 to 5 weeks behind schedule. My apologies.
Thanks to Gary Paul Johnston for his great article on
the new Keith #5 in the newest issue of Guns of the Old West. That has kept me
on the phone for the last couple of days.
A lot of good comments on Kase's new Ultimate 10, his new long slide 10mm that
he just finished. He also has a new Commander version coming out soon, and a
double action 1911 in 10mm. Double Tap Ammo, who make some super hot 10mm ammo
is throwing in a box of new ammo with every 1911 Kase builds. You can check
out their stuff at www.doubletapammo.com
.
For those of you that are going to Africa with us next April, I talked to John
Abraham of Madubula Safaris a couple of days ago and he has a couple of
hunters coming in next week to hunt the same area that we will be hunting in.
John spent a few days there looking the area over and had some very good
reports on it. The game is very abundant, they had a warm wet summer and
everything is fat and healthy and trophy size animals are everywhere. The area
is a quarter million acres of government land and the terrain ranges from long
flat areas to mountains to heavy grassy plains . He said there is no reason
why we shouldn't place a lot of animals in the record book that week. We have
10 hunters with deposits paid and 2 openings left if you are interested.
Those of you that shoot the 378 GNR are probably aware that we now have a 378
GNR Magnum load which uses the 260 grain Nosler Accubond bullet. Testing this
bullet out in Africa a couple of months ago I took 5 animals with 5 shots,
including one at extreme long range. The bullet works. Also now available from
LJ is a new 378 GNR deer load. This one uses the Speer 235 grain soft point
bullet. LJ has got this one up to hyper velocity and it should be a helluva
cartridge for long range. You can keep up with the progress on this new 378
GNR at www.cartridgeperformance.com
.
Also another new one coming out is our 338 GNR that now has proper headstamped
brass from Raven Ammunition along with loaded ammo. You can get in touch with
Brian at www.ravenammunition.com
. And as with CPE just above, there is a link to this site on our links page.
While on the subject of new cartridges, we received the dies for our 476 GNR
recently from Hornady and I am just getting started in the testing process.
Hopefully I will have a good working load by this coming hunting season. Once
I get a decent load, LJ will do the pressure testing on the cartridge to be
sure we are working within safe limits. I plan to try the 50 Alaskan brass and
the original 348 brass to see which is best for the conversion.
Gary
