{"id":1652,"date":"2015-06-27T17:55:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T00:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregg57.sg-host.com\/hunting\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2015-06-27T18:08:50","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T01:08:50","slug":"thoughts-on-bullpups-and-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/2015\/06\/thoughts-on-bullpups-and-actions\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Bullpups and Actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Bullpups<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was down in my basement range this morning shooting a\u00a0few of\u00a0the bullpups I either own or have on loan. Now there are guys that love the look and feel of a bullpup…… there are those that maybe don\u2019t love the looks or “feel”, but appreciate the compactness (this is me)…… and there are those that just don\u2019t like anything about them. I have said before that I think bullpups are study\u00a0in form following function, these guns are meant to be deployed quickly, in crowded conditions or tight spaces, to carry while letting the shooter have freedom of movement.<\/p>\n

I like to be in the field with a traditional\u00a0rifle, but more importantly,\u00a0I\u2019m the hunter that wants the best tool for the job. And there are times such as shooting in the tight confines of a truck, in buildings, or hiking through very heavy underbrush when\u00a0a more compact a gun is more practical.\u00a0Recently I used the Benjamin Bulldog on a hog hunt in Texas where I had to crawl through acres of thicket, and when I got an opportunity to shoot a big, mean, and way too close hog,\u00a0barely had space to shoulder the gun it was so tight. The bulldog worked well, I don’t think a full size gun would have, at least I don’t believe I could have crawled through the under growth with a long barreled rifle to even have gotten the opportunity!<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This bullpup had most of it going on; accurate, moderately powerful, quiet, compact, lightweight …. but then didn’t quite make it because its a single shot and a bolt action. It got very close, hopefully the Wildcat can bring it home!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are different attributes that I look at and give weight to\u00a0when evaluating a bullpup; I want the overall length greatly reduced over the standard rifle version of the gun, with no loss in power or accuracy. And since the same length barrel is generally used on a bullpup as on a full sized rifle, there is no reason this should not be achieved.\u00a0I want the controls and ergonomics to be optimized for the package; good trigger, easy to reach\/deploy safety, and importantly I want it to be light weight. Reducing the LOA is important, but if the weight isn\u2019t concurrently reduced I feel like something is being missed.<\/p>\n

Having shot almost every bullpuped airgun on the market, including a bunch of custom guns,\u00a0I am still searching for my version of the perfect example. Out of all these guns ranging from .177 to .357 caliber in single shot, bolt, sidelever, semi and full auto actions, none have achieved my ideal. Most retain the performance which is great, some have come up with good triggers (not easy in this design), accessible and easy to deploy safety, and some have delivered actions that match this style of guns. Some have developed ergonomic stock designs, though several still feel \u201cchunky\u201d and I\u2019m not always impressed with the comb \u2026. or at least the place where the cheek welds to the stock. The other\u00a0area where most of the bullpups I use fall short, is getting the weight down. For some reason, many of these bullpups I’ve\u00a0used are quite heavy. I will add that because of the compactness of these rifles, the weight seems distributed along the shooters center of gravity, and is therefore not an issue when shooting. As a matter of fact I do find that I do some of my best offhand shooting with the heavier pups. However,\u00a0extra weight\u00a0is noticeable as you slosh through through a muddy bottom land while hunting squirrels or\u00a0crawl along an arroyo while out on a desert prairie dog shoot!<\/p>\n

The reason I\u2019ve pulled out the \u201cpups\u201d and have been shooting them so much, is that I just got word that the FX Wildcat I ordered is on the way, and I want to benchmark it against my current best in class. I cannot wait to get my hands on it \u00a0having been told by\u00a0a couple of friends who have been shooting the\u00a0Wildcat\u00a0that they think it is the closest thing to what I\u2019ve described as my ideal. Great performance, outstanding trigger, a perfectly positioned sidelever action (talk more about this later), ergonomic, but the real attraction not often achieved\u00a0is that this design is\u00a0compact, narrow across the beam, and lightweight.<\/p>\n

Over the coming weeks I\u2019ll start sharing my experience with the gun, and give some side by side comparisons with several other bullpup models. After a couple weeks on the range it will go with me to South Dakota on a prairie dog shoot, where it will get a thorough workout on the huge population of these burrowing rodents! If you subscribe to Predator Xtreme take a look at this month\u2019s Airguns Advantage column, my topic is bullpups.<\/p>\n

My Favorite Action<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start out by saying that I like several PCP rifles that don\u2019t use my favorite action. But they have\u00a0so many\u00a0other things going for them that I can overlook this. Mitigating features are:\u00a0outstanding performance, great triggers, ergonomics, craftsmanship, design, high volume\u00a0air capacity, high shot magazine capacity, ruggedness\/reliability \u2026\u2026 but if looking only at the action my favorite is hands down the sidelever. I find it the most intuitive, reliable, smoothest, quietest, and fastest to cycle.<\/p>\n

I think the bolt action is the best looking, and several are fairly easy to cycle, especially on the premium\u00a0range guns. For instance,\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t change the bolt on my Huntsman Classic for a sidelever, because well, the gun looks perfect as is. But I am sure that if it was a sidelever I could cycle it more quickly for a follow up shot. I find it easier on most sidelever actions to cycle the gun without\u00a0dismounting from\u00a0my shoulder, which can be a big plus when hunting and needing a quick follow up.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A bolt functions well and looks good. Many rifles I rate very highly, perhaps most, use a bolt action.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"In<\/a>

In the Quackenbush big bore design the bolt is decoupled from the cocking action and used only for accessing and closing the loading port. A second cocking bolt compresses the hammer spring.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last month I was in Puerto Rico on an iguana cull, and switched from a harder hitting .30 caliber gun to a .22, because the .30 used a bolt and the .22 the sidelever action. Not only could I work faster with the sidelever, the other guys continued using bolt action guns and all of them had bruised up their hands after a couple days of shooting!<\/p>\n

\"Shooting<\/a>

Shooting the FX Boss, the sidelever is very fast, smooth, and ergonomic. It’s not necessary to come of sight when cocking the rifle.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Bullpups I was down in my basement range this morning shooting a\u00a0few of\u00a0the bullpups I either own or have on loan. Now there are guys that love the look and feel of a bullpup…… there are those that maybe don\u2019t love the looks or “feel”, but appreciate the compactness (this is me)…… and … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,103,91,122,102,79,33,86,67,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjustable-buttstock","category-airguns-of-arizona","category-bullpup","category-compact-guns","category-daystate","category-offhand-shooting","category-prairie-dogs","category-rifle-stocks","category-stocks","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1661,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/1661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airgunsofarizona.com\/hunting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}