Gun Tests Tuesday!

So I raced back into town yesterday and...went to the range! There were several guns I needed to put some rounds through, and it's taken me awhile to get a new private range dialed in since the scumbags in the Forest Service shut down shooting in the Front Range.

First up was the Taurus THUNDERBOLT. Essentially, the Thunderbolt, made in Brazil, is externally a copy of the ill-fated Colt Lightning rifle (here's Kim du Toit's short take on 'em), a pump-action rifle in pistol cartridges aimed at the Cowboy Action Shooting market. The gun was announced a year or so ago, but it has taken a bit of time to get it to the arket. In fact, the blue-steel .45 Colt Gaucho I have is the ONLY one presently in the country and was overnighted to me by Taurus head honcho Bob Morrison.

The Lightning was originally made in the mid-1880s to compete with those pesky lever-action Winchesters, which were in the process of Winning the West. There were two main problems with the original Lightning — it featured a Rube Goldberg pump linkage that was virtually guaranteed to fail under use, and, more importantly, it seriously pissed off Winchester. The (possibly apochraphal) story's told in Hartford CT of how Winchester execs showed up at Colt's doorstep with three really nice single-action revolvers that Winchester was "considering" producing. The Colt Lightning quickly vanished.

Flash forward to CAS, where speed is everything. On paper, a pump rifle could indeed run with the short-stroked Winchester 1873s, with the added benefit of the shooter only having to contend with two, rather than three, types of firearms (pump shotgun and pum rifle rather than lever rifle and pump shotgun). There have been a couple of Lightning revivals, most notably the beautiful U.S. Firearms version, but they all suffered from being copies of a flawed original.

Enter Taurus, primarily a handgun manufacturer who just started dabbling in long guns. Taurus' first long gun, interestingly enough, was a copy of the venerable Winchester M62 "gallery gun" .22 LR pump. The 62 was one of the first guns I ever shot (along with several generations of kids), and I spent a fortune in quarters on various carnival midways winning teddy bears with gallery guns. The opening sequence of SHOOTING GALLERY, by the way, features a Taurus gallery gun...

With a single action revolver in the works, Taurus already had the SASS market in their sights. Rather than enter the already crowded lever action sweepstakes, Taurus took an innovative path. First, remember that SASS is primarily interested in how guns look as opposed to how guns work. To wit, the Ruger New Vaquero is a modern design made with modern tooling to current standards, but it looks like an old Colt. And, realistically, all modern guns must be made to modern safety standards if you plan to keep your company longer than the length of the first lawsuit!

So Taurus created a gun that is a letter-perfect duplicate of the Lightning, but, internally is a beefed up M62, probably the most tested and perfected pump gun in existance. My test gun is, as I said, a blue .45 Colt with a 26-inch barrel and a 14-round capacity. Finish and fit is uniformally excellent — the blue is a deep blue/black, much like the original Colt blue on the Lightning. The hardwood stock (looks like walnut to me) and forend are excellent, with good pressed checkering on the stubby little forend. The wood-to-metal fit on the stock is EXCELLENT, and the curved metal buttplate is a really nice touch. The gun features Taurus' signature locking system on the back of the hammer, but it's unobtrusive. Sights are a Marble-styled buckhorn and a neat dovetailed-in half-moon front with a "bump" on top...gives an excellent sight picture. I'd like a gold bead, but I'm pissy about stuff like that.

The Thunderbolt has a side loading gate just like a lever gun — pull the pump all the way back. It opens the top-ejecting action and let's you feed the rounds in. The feed angle for the fat .45 Colts seemed a little steeper than on a lever gun, but in about 20-30 rounds you get the hang of it. I had to remind myself that I've been feeding rounds into a Winchester since I was, like 6 years-old...anything else seems abnormal!

Trigger is about 5 pounds (no, I didn't measure it). Let's put it like this...it's crisp, clean and light enough that I wouldn't bother sending this off to Steve Young! One thing I like about the Thunderbolt is, in keeping with its period flavor, the absence of external controls — work the pump; pull the trigger. What else do you need?

I took this sucker to the range with a bunch of Winchester Cowboy .45 Colt ammo. I don't shoot a lot of .45 Colt, but my experience with Winchester's Cowboy .44s has been that it's about as accurate as you can get...a boatload more accurate than my sloppy practice handloads!

First...THIS THING IS FAST FAST FAST! The pump stroke is about 2 inches, as opposed to four inches on my Remington 870 for example. You seem to barely have to move your arm to run the gun. My pal Mark Stringfellow, an IPSC A-level shooter, were loading 10 rounds in the tube, when WHIPPING through them.

The Thunderbolt will SLAM-FIRE, that is, hold the trigger down and work the pump, and it'll fire every time. This has some interesting implications for CAS shooting, especially on some of the larger, close-up rifle targets. I believe a master shooter could make this thing run like a Thompson on close-up steel — I'll find out this weekend, when I hand it over to Tequila, host of COWBOYS and 5-time World Champion, to wring out. Yes, of course we'll be filming it!

I shot it for accuracy at 12 yards, putting 10 shots into one ragged hole. Then we backed up to 20 yards and had no trouble holding similar-sized groups. The gun is a shooter! Part of that is because of its fit and balance...at the risk of sounding stoopid, the gun wants to stay snugged on your shoulder, and the short pump stroke allows you maintain your cheek weld easily. The little bump on the front sight does an admirable job of collecting light, which makes the front sight really stand out. That surprised me.

Mark and I ran a bunch of multi-target drills. We finally stoppped because we ran out of ammo. I had to pry the little Taurus out of Mark's hands.

Okay, here's the bottom line...this is the first gun in the country. It was superbly accurate right out of the box. We had ZERO malfunctions. It was disgustingly fun to shoot. It does not need to go to a gunsmith to be dinked. It's MSRP is less than $500. You do the math.

Taurus is getting scary.

I have a .357 version on order and plan to use it in competition.

If they decide to make this sucker in .44 Magnum carbine, you'll see deer hunters sitting up and barking like seals.

In other quickie gun test...I took out that Fitz Special I picked up a while back. Offhand, I'd say it's a 1917 S&W Canadian contract gun in .45 ACP that was professionally cut down into a Fitz. The barrel is 2.5 inches with a really slick ramped front sight; it has been re-rolled marked S&W DA .45 centered on the shorter barrel. The hammer's been bobbed and the action is shortened and slicked. The action is bank-vault tight (why I bought the gun in the first place). The butt has also been rounded and fitted with a really nice set of custom grips. The whole thing is finished in a flat black phosphated finish.

Using S&W full moon clips, I ran a couple of boxes of Winchester white box 230-grain ball through the gun. The grips did an excellent job of taking the edge off the ball. I shot forst for function, then into a variety of IDPA drills. The thing ran like a top, and the front sight was perfectly regulated for the ball (another sign that this gun was professionally redone).

Loved it!

Ordered an IWB holster for the Fitz from Hoffners today and I'll give it a try at an IDPA match.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, I got a SIG 226 9mm from my ACE EL PREEMO SPONSORS SIGARMS for use on the show.

I haven't had a 226 in about a decade — I lost my last one in "the settlement" with my ex, who was, unfortunately, a gun person so I couldn't convince her that the SIGs were el-junko. She took everything that could be turned for a quick buck.

Because I haven't had a 226 recently, I had forgotten JUST HOW DAMN GOOD THESE GUNS ARE! Wipe off the grease, back up 20 yards, and boringly crank off A-zone hits as fast as you can pull the trigger. I also did IDPA drills slick as goose grease.

Give me bagful of 20-round magazines, and I'd go to war with this SIG tomorrow!!!