Hunting Experience Just 4 You

Introduction:

Similar to a shotgun, a rifle was designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a helical groove or pattern of grooves, also callled rifling, cut  within the barrel. The raised areas in the rifling are called lands which make contact with the projectile used, and imparts spin around an axis corresponding to the orientation of the rifle. Thanks to the conservation of angular momentum, the accuracy and range are much improved once the bullet leaves the barrel. Originally a rifle was called a "rifled gun" referring the rifle to the pattern of grooves.

Brief History:

Although the origin of rifling are difficult to trace, it has been said that it was initially invented in Austria, Germanu and even Australia in the 15th century. Nevertheless, World War I  and World War II had a very important impact in contribution to the design and growth of rifles. By contrast, civilian rifle design has not advanced as much since the early 20th century. Modern rifles use more advanced recoil pads, and have fiberglass and carbon fiber stocks, but with that in mind, they are fundementaly the same as ones used since 1910.

Choices:

Rifle options can infact be overwhelming. Whether the caliber and/or type, Is there hunting rifle that serve the hunter best? And the answer to this question is quite simple, probably not! Each and every prospective hunter will have to seek the features they need, and above all, know what they will want to use it for, for example where one will hunt and what will they hunt.

There are bolt-action, semi-automatic, lever-action, and more, and to add to the overwhelming choice, they all come with wide-ranging caliber selection.

Semi Automatic Rifles: a rifle that fires a single bullet each time the trigger is pulled, automatically ejects the spent cartridge, reloads a fresh one from the magazine, and is ready to fire again. The difference between a semi auto and fully automatic rifle is that for every shot the trigger has to be pulled for semi. Although the abundand selection of semi-automatics on the market lets look at the 4 most most popular semi-automatic rifle manufacturers.

Bolt Action Rifles: a rifle which uses manual bolt action to load and unload cartridges from the breech, which usually is located on the right side of the rifle. As the handle is operated, the bolt is unlocked, causing the breech to be open and discarding the spent shell casing, once complete, a new shell is placed in the breech and bolt closed. Since the selection of bolt action rifles is so immense with countless great manufacturers, we will only look at a few, such as the Savage, Browning, Winchester, Remington, Ruger, Sako, Tikka, and finally Weatherby.

Lever Action Rifles: a rifle that uses a lever located around the trigger guard area, and quite often including the trigger guard itself, to load fresh cartridges into the chamber while the level is worked. When it comes to deer hunting, a lever-action rifle represents "tradition", specifically the rifles chambered for 30-30 Win. such as the flat sided Winchester and also the Marlin rifles. Other great manufacturers of this type are Browning, and Ruger.

Some Technical Data:

Bullet RPM:

Bullets can spin up to and over 300,000 rpm leaving the barrel, depending on the muzzle velocity of the bullet and the pitch of the rifling.

To calculate the rotational speed of a bullet:            Bullet RPM = MV  x  (12/twist rate in inches) x 60    ; where MV is muzzle velocity of bullet

for example: a bullet with a muzle velocity (MV) of 2000 ft/s, and the barrel is a 1/8 twist

Bullet RPM = 2000 x (12/8) x 60 = 180,000 RPM

Caliber Sizes:

The caliber is the approximate diameter of the bullet used. In a rifled barrel, the distance is measured either between the groves or the lands (grove measurements are common in USA) When the diameter of the barrel is given in inches, the abbreviation "cal" is used rather than inch. For example a small bore rifle with diameter of 0.22 inch, is known as a "twnty two caliber". The same scenario follows for metric sizes.

With the growing number of cartridges, the cartridges started to be named based on bullet diameter and some other identifier. The .30-03 and.30-06 were named for the dates of introduction, 1903 and 1906. Or the .45 ACP which stands for .45 Automatic Colt Pistol which described the intended use and developer. Another factor is the following : a .221 Fireball, .223 Remington and .222 Remington are all same bullet diameter, but different cartridge lenghts.

The metric calibres are usually expressed with an "x" between the width and length, for example : 7.62 x52 NATO which indicates that the bullet diameter is 7.62 mm, that is loaded in a 52mm cartridge.

The means of measuring a rifled bore varies quite a bit, and in fact can refer to the diameter of the groves or lands of the rifling… and for that reason, as an example a .308 Winchester while dimensionally similar to the 7.62×51 NATO cartridge, it is measured across the groves and uses a .308" diameter (7.62mm) bullet, while the British .303 which is measured across the lands, actually uses a .311 inch bullet.

So once you are ready to choose your hunting rifle, make sure you are familiar with the bullets you will require. Below is a table with some commonly used calibers with their metric and inch equivalents.

ENJOY!!