{"id":8636,"date":"2024-12-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=8636"},"modified":"2024-12-18T09:57:42","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T14:57:42","slug":"gun-digest-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/gun-digest-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"GUN DIGEST 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ah, Gun Digest. When I was a boy I couldn\u2019t afford to buy it out of my allowance \u2013 it was the price of a book, since after all, it was<\/em> a book<\/em> \u2013 but thankfully, the library in the city where I lived since age nine bought it every year. I had to read it there in the library, because they kept it in the reference section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2025 edition<\/a>, edited by Phil Massaro, is spectacularly good. There\u2019s a trend in firearms journalism today for articles to be short on words and long on pretty \u201cgun porn\u201d pictures. While the 2025 GD has no shortage of the latter for visual pleasure, Massaro appears to have blessedly gone back to the old editors\u2019 maxim, \u201cLet the writers use as many words as they need to tell the story.\u201d This year\u2019s Digest has long, meaty articles. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jens Ulrik Hogh\u2019s article \u201cSako: Finnish Soul in Steel and Wood\u201d is the sort of deep dive into details of engineering and history that we gun nerds savor. Craig Boddington\u2019s piece on the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the .270 Winchester rifle cartridge, Nick Hahn\u2019s piece on the classic Browning Sweet Sixteen semi-auto shotgun, and Wayne van Zwoll\u2019s history of the .300 Holland and Holland Magnum are examples of that. So is Massaro\u2019s own profile of the late Tom Turpin, who for many years entranced Gun Digest readers with pictures of beautifully engraved shotguns. You finish the article wishing you could have known Turpin and <\/em>handled the fine firearms he wrote about so eloquently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master hunter and guide Phil Shoemaker is famous among handgunners for having killed a charging grizzly bear with a 9mm Smith & Wesson, admittedly loaded with special deep-penetrating  bullets from Buffalo Bore. In the hunting world, though, he\u2019s famous for his guiding expertise in bear country. When you read his recommendations on what to use against big bears (spoiler alert) he\u2019s going to recommend something a helluva lot bigger than a 9mm pistol, and you\u2019ll know that advice is spoken in the voice of experience. There\u2019s even a reprint of the legendary Elmer Keith\u2019s 1950\u2019s article on his experience from a year of shooting the .44 Magnum revolver he helped bring into existence, and carried as a personal handgun for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Campbell\u2019s overview of 1911 pistols is thorough and educational. And those are just a few of the uniformly excellent pieces you\u2019ll find in the more than 600 pages of this newest Gun Digest<\/a>. The catalog pages with specs and ballistics tables are of course valuable too. It\u2019s worth its $39.99 (31.20 on Amazon<\/a>) cover price\u2026or you can ask your local library to get you a copy so lots of people can read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, Gun Digest. When I was a boy I couldn\u2019t afford to buy it out of my allowance \u2013 it was the price of a book, since after all, it was a book \u2013 but thankfully, the library in the city where I lived since age nine bought it every year. I had to read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8641,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8636\/revisions\/8641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}