The Dolphin Gun Company, based in the United Kingdom, has developed a very stable, yet lightweight wide-base bipod, ideal for F-TR shooters. We expect Dolphin’s new Trakker bipod will also be popular with varmint hunters and some tactical shooters.
Trakker bipods are available in two confirgurations, “Standard” and “Long”. Perhaps they would be better named “Wide” and “Extra-Wide” — the “Long” version has extended legs which can provide a wider base and/or extra elevation. Both versions provide a very stable platform for prone shooting, and both versions are available with either Sling-swivel or rail attachments (see photos below).
Here’s the great news — these Trakker bipods are very light, yet sturdy. The standard version weighs just 21.2 ounces (600 grams), while the long version tips the scales at 24.7 ounces (700 grams). This will help shooters “make weight” in F-TR class even if they have a very long barrel, or jumbo-sized scope. Trakker bipods are offered with multiple color choices: natural (silver) alloy, matte black powder coat, or other powder coat color of the customers’ choice (extra charge may apply for custom colors).
Dolphin’s Trakker bipods have been extensively tested by top F-TR shooters in Europe and we have heard that these bipods work extremely well. They are stable yet easy to adjust, and they are quite a bit lighter than most wide-base bipods on the market. Retail price in the UK is £165.00, which translates to $267.00 US Dollars, but this does not include overseas shipping or possible customs charges. Americans can order direct from Dolphin at this time and Dolphin will ship to the states. (Dolphin is currently in discussions with a US-based company that would produce the Trakker bipod for the North American market, under license). For more information, visit DolphinGunCompany.co.uk or email mik [at] mikdolphin.demon.co.uk. NOTE: The Dolphin Gun Company website is pretty slow. You may have to try multiple times to load the pages.
About Dolphin Gun Company
Dolphin Gun Company was formed several years ago by Mik Maksimovic and Pete Hobson, two active, competitive F-Class shooters. Both Mik and Peter come from engineering backgrounds. They first set up Dolphin Gun Company to build their own competitive shooting gear. From hobby gunsmithing and preparing their own rifles and equipment, Mik and Pete quickly progressed to building rifles for other shooters and creating top-of-the-line shooting accessories such as the Trakker bipod.
Product Tip from Boyd Allen. We welcome reader submissions.
Nancy Tompkins will be bringing out a new Second Edition of her popular book: Prone and Long-Range Rifle Shooting. Nancy hopes to have Second Edition books available by mid-June, 2012. The enhanced Second Edition will feature updates to the current chapters, more photos, plus an entirely new chapter on F-Class Shooting. The Second Edition will be issued as a hardback only, for increased durability. Price isn’t set yet, but Nancy hopes to keep the price “under $40.00″. The book will be available from Sinclair Int’l and direct from Nancy who plans to have a new website for the book running by the end of May.
While visiting the new Lapua Rimfire Test Center in Mesa, Arizona, we had a chance to chat with Nancy, and learn about the Second Edition of Prone and Long-Range Rifle Shooting. Watch the video to hear Nancy talk about her plans for the updated version of her book.
Tompkins Book a Must-Read for Long-Range Shooters
Nancy’s updated treatise is a must-read for serious Palma, F-Class, and High Power shooters. The sections covering Mental & Physical training and Reading Wind & Mirage will benefit all precision shooters, regardless of discipline. Other topics include Shooting Fundamentals, International Competition, and Loading for Long Range. Nancy Tompkins has won the National Long Range Championships four times, and is the first woman ever to win the National High Power Championship. (The second was Nancy’s daughter SGT Sherri Gallagher.) Nancy has also won the prestigious Wimbledon Cup, and is a 5-time Leech Cup winner. Nancy has been on six Palma Teams (as both a shooter and a coach). (Note: photo shows First Edition of book.)
They have been on the market for nearly a year, but you may not know that Redding sells a line of Micrometer Seater assemblies, which can be used to upgrade Redding’s standard ½-20 thread seater dies. These replacements allow you to enjoy the ease-of-use and precision of a micrometer seater, without buying a whole new die. Redding states that “the new Bullet Seating Micrometers are a direct [retro-fit] replacement for the original seating plugs and can easily be changed from one die to another.” Unfortunately, these add-on micrometer stems haven’t started shipping yet, and Redding has not provided a firm delivery date (or price). We are hoping the products will start arriving by mid-summer.
NOTE: the seater assemblies are a component of the bullet seating die. These are not the dies themselves. It is the top portion of the die that contains the plunger, which pushes the bullet into the case. And here is something important: these new Bullet Seating Micrometers are available for both traditional tangent ogive bullet shapes as well as for VLD (secant ogive) bullets.
That’s right, Redding now offers micrometer seater assemblies made specifically for Berger VLD bullets. These Seating Micrometers allow you to convert a standard seater to a Micrometer seater optimized for VLDs. That’s great news for VLD fans. Eric Stecker of Berger Bullets tells us: “We have confirmed with Redding that each of the new micrometer plugs in the VLD group were designed based on Berger VLD bullets. We provided all of our VLD bullets to Redding, from which they took deliberate measurements and made these new plugs.”
New VLD-specific Seater Stems Improve Bullet Seating Depth Consistency
Stecker explains how the new VLD-specific seater assemblies produce better, more accurate ammo: “Many shooters have problems getting the VLD bullets to shoot because of the bullet seater die they are using. VLD bullet noses are so long and sharp that, in many dies, the bullet tip bottoms out in the bullet seater stem instead of touching on the side of the ogive like it should. Seating depth inconsistencies up to .025″ can occur if the seater stem bottoms out on the bullet tip. The worst part is that many shooters have no idea that this is the root cause of their poor performance. This new product can help turn a frustrating shooting experience into an enjoyable one.”
Story tip from Edlongrange. We welcome submissions from our readers.
The new 33rd Edition of the Blue Book of Gun Values has just been released, and is available now for $30.75. The Blue Book of Gun Values, by S. P. Fjestad, is the top-selling book in our AccurateShooter Bookstore which operates through Amazon.com. The 33rd Edition of the Blue Book has been expanded to 2,432 pages, all gun values have been thoroughly updated for both modern and antique firearms, including the recent paramilitary style guns, and it also includes new domestic and imported 2012 makes and models. Other features include an exclusive interview with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, an 80-page color Photo Percentage Grading System to help accurately determine the condition of firearms, and serialization and proofmark sections to help in identifying firearms. The Blue Book of Gun Values is the firearm industry’s most trusted reference book with over 1.4 million copies in print.
New Nine-Part Video Guide for Blue Blue Users
To assist Blue Book readers, Blue Book Publications has created a nine-part instructional video series on YouTube. Part 1, the Introduction, provides an overview (video below). Each of the other eight (8) short videos explains a key feature of the Blue Book of Gun Values and how to best utilize it. Watch one or more videos, according to your interests.
At the NRA Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Colt Firearms introduced a new bolt-action “Competition Rifle”, the M2012-CLR. Assembled by Cooper Firearms for Colt, the M2012 features a Colt metal chassis with tubular forearm, and a Cooper Arms repeater action. The M2012 rifles on display were chambered in .308 Winchester with fluted 1:10″ twist stainless barrels fitted with Surefire muzzle brakes. The bolt is a three-lug design with a Sako-style extractor. Trigger is a Timney set at 3 pounds — pretty high for a “competition” rifle. Though the barrel is only 22″, the M2012 is fairly heavy. Weight without optics is 13.2 pounds. Given the weight and short barrel, we think Colt is marketing this more for tactical shooters, rather than actual High Power or F-TR competitors.
According to the GDI Engineering website, Colt’s M2012 “appear[s] to have been built on Cooper’s Model 54 action, which features a two-position safety to the right of the bolt. [Features] include an integral 25-MOA Picatinny base and the Colt-specific chassis and stock. The single-stack detachable magazines are from Accuracy International.”
Hefty Price for Colt’s M2012-CLR
MSRP for the new M2012-CLR is $3799.00. Colt’s asking price is approximately $1300.00 more than the price of an Eliseo RTS Tubegun Chassis ($1020.00) with a Rem-clone custom action ($900.00) and a Krieger barrel ($550.00 chambered). The RTS features a 5-way adjustable buttstock, easily removed without tools. The Colt M2012 offers adjustable Length of Pull (LOP) and adjustable cheekpiece height. The M2012’s skeleton buttstock is bolted to the main chassis, requiring an Allen wrench to remove.
Forum member Jerry Brandon isn’t just an excellent craftsman of Ballistic Edge annealing machines. He’s also a skilled writer who has authored six fiction novels. Writing as “JK Brandon”, Jerry has penned a series of books that should appeal to anyone who likes a good thriller with plenty of gun-related action.
We recently had the pleasure of reading Jerry Brandon’s book The Kennedy Rifle from start to finish. It’s an entertaining page-turner, with a fast-paced plot, well-drawn characters, sharply-written dialog, and some fascinating insights into the Kennedy assassination, drawn from years of research by the author. Brandon hooks the reader with this intro: “What would happen if you suddenly gain possession of the very rifle that killed President John F. Kennedy? And it’s not a 6.5 Mannlicher Carcano…and it wasn’t the only gun used in the assassination…”
The book’s protagonist is Michael Cole, a firearms and ballistics expert based in Arizona. Brandon says the Cole character is a “cross between Massad Ayoob and Clint Smith”. Those who’ve read much contemporary fiction will also notice that Michael Cole shares some qualities of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher — and that’s a good thing. This Editor has read most of the Travis McGee series of books by MacDonald, as well as many popular Elmore Leonard titles. I can tell you that Brandon writes very convincing dialog that fans of MacDonald and Leonard will appreciate.
In many “best-selling” crime novels and techno-thrillers, the actions of the central character are all-too-often implausible — and sometimes completely “over the top”. That ruins a story for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a current novel and the protagonist does something so completely stupid, irrational, or implausible, that the book loses its appeal. You won’t encounter that problem with Brandon’s Michael Cole. The Michael Cole character is not a gun-slinging cartoon. Cole makes plausible decisions that draw on a sophisticated understanding of how real guns work. You won’t find Cole “releasing the safety on his revolver” or shooting down an airplane with a flare gun. The Cole character has another quality missing from most of the current techno-thriller heros — humor. Cole has a clever, dry wit that gives the book another dimension (Rockford Files fans will enjoy the humor.)
AUTHOR TALKS about BOOK
CLICK “PLAY” to hear Jerry Brandon TALK about his new thriller, The Kennedy Rifle.
[haiku url=”http://accurateshooter.net/Video/jkbrandonkr.mp3″ title=”JK Brandon Re Kennedy Rifle”]
If you like the Bob Lee Swagger books by Stephen Hunter or the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child, you’ll enjoy The Kennedy Rifle by Jerry Brandon. And certainly if you have a serious interest in the Kennedy assassination, this book is a must read. Brandon’s book uncovers many of the puzzling facts left out of the Warren Report. Though The Kennedy Rifle is a work of fiction, it makes a convincing argument that important aspects of the Kennedy assassination were never revealed to the American public.
Overall, I can recommend the book highly. My only criticism is that I wish the book were longer. By the third chapter I was “hooked” and proceeded to race through the novel in a couple of late-night sessions. When I got to the finish I wished Brandon had added some more twists and turns, and perhaps a few more sections dedicated to ballistics. In paperback version, the book runs 206 pages, including an excerpt from The Steel Violin, another Michael Cole novel by Brandon. You can order both paperback and eBook versions of The Kennedy Rifle and The Steel Violin from Amazon.com. Visit JKBrandon.com to learn more about the author and his Michael Cole novels.
As you may know, Norma is working hard to make its products more readily available in the USA. Norma has put a new distribution system in place, and quality Norma ammunition and cartridge brass is now carried by many major vendors. Leading the way is Midsouth Shooters’ Supply, which now stocks a full selection of Norma brass and a large inventory of Norma loaded ammunition. Most of the Norma cartridge brass types now come in 25-unit boxes. This allows you to try out the Norma brass without breaking the bank. For example, 25 pieces of Norma 6mm PPC brass (item 013-10260105) costs just $20.25. You can “buy it and try it” without a big up-front investment.
SAVE 5% on Norma Brass and Ammo Orders! Midsouth Shooters Supply has announced a special discount just for Accurateshooter.com readers. Just enter PROMO CODE 6mmNORMA during check-out to get 5% off select Norma merchandise. Listen to the Audio clip below to learn more about this special discount!
HOW TO GET 5% OFF CLICK “PLAY” to hear Midsouth’s Michael Ryan explain how to use the 6mmNORMA Promo Code. Save 5% on your order!
Target shooters will be pleased to find Norma cartridge brass in these accurate calibers: .222 Rem, .223 Rem, 6mm PPC, 6mmBR, 6XC, .260 Rem, 6.5×284, .308 Win, .300 RSAUM, and .300 WSM. Varmint Hunters should consider these other offerings: .204 Ruger, .220 Swift, 22-250, and .243 Winchester. Big game hunters will find a huge selection of cartridge types — everything from .25-06 to .375 H&H. Of course Norma offers nearly all the popular deer-hunting cartridges, such as 6.5×55, .270 Win, .270 WSM, 7mm-08, 7mm Rem Mag, .280 Rem, .30-06, and .300 Win Mag.
Creedmoor Sports now sells authentic Springfield 1903 A3 and A4 rifles that have been re-stocked, re-barreled, and refinished by by Curt Wolfe at Rockridge Machine Works. If you have been interested in acquiring one of these rifles for use in Vintage Military Rifle matches, here’s some good news. As of April 2, 2012, the Rock Ridge Springfield 1903-A3 and A4 are now both recognized as Curios and Relics. This means that anyone possessing a valid 03 FFL (Curio and Relics Federal Firearms License) are now eligible to have these particular rifles shipped directly to them. (However, please check with local laws to see if other restrictions may apply — such as waiting periods and storage restrictions). The A3 variants start at $875.00 while the 1903 A4 “Sniper” model sells for $1135. The Rock Ridge A3s and A4s both feature turned-down GI Bolts, and NEW 1:10″ twist .30-06 original contour barrels.
The C&R status of the Rock Ridge 1903 A3/A4 has been confirmed by an April 2, 2012 letter issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). CLICK HERE to read ATF Letter.
Dennis DeMille, G.M. of Creedmoor Sports, reports: “These rifles are NICE! Issue condition nice. Much nicer than the one I set a National Record with.” The A4s feature original Remington actions with turned-down GI bolt, fitted to new 4 groove, 1:10″ twist barrels chambered in .30-06. All fire-control parts are original GI. The A4s come with walnut-stained reproduction “C” stock, Malcolm reproduction of original Weaver 330C (M73B1) scope, original GI buttplate, and repro GI military leather sling. The A3s have original Smith Corona M1903 actions, and click-adjustable iron sights. NOTE: Both the A3s and A4s use intact receivers, NOT re-welded decommissioned versions.
Sierra Bullets has introduced two new hunting bullets with the proven bullet design of Sierra’s popular .30-cal 165gr GameKing. Sierra’s Carroll Pilant tells us: “Customers have been asking us for years to make a 6.5mm and 7mm version of our very popular .30-caliber 165 grain HPBT GameKing and we are happy to say we have fulfilled that request. Just like their .30-caliber cousin, these bullets will be ideal for mid-sized game with standard and magnum calibers. The thicker jacket promotes deep penetration while the skives (pre-cut longitudinal lines) at the meplat provide reliable expansion.”
Lothar Walther has some new “pre-fit” barrel offerings that should interest Garand and AR shooters. Garand Match competitors and vintage military rifle shooters will be pleased that LW is now offering “finished” Garand barrels, pre-chambered in your choice of six (6) different chamberings: .270 Win, 7×64, .308 Win,.30-06, 8x57IS and 9.3×62. These are all four-groove barrels with 24″ length. Twist rates along with land/groove diameters are listed on the Lothar Walther website. NOTE: Though these barrels come pre-chambered, you’ll still need a competent gunsmith for final fitting and headspacing.
Finished M1 Garand Barrel
AR15 Barrels — Multiple Contour Options
For AR15 shooters, Lothar Walther now offers a wide variety of pre-chambered AR15 barrels, set up for either .222 Rem and .223 Rem. With the .223 Rem barrels you have a choice of either standard .223 Rem OR .223 Wylde chambers. You can select either stainless steel or what LW calls “special rifle steel”. For most of these contours, other calibers/chamberings (.204 Ruger, .17 Rem., .30/.221 Fireball, 6.5 CSS, 6.8 SPC) are available on request. Extra charges may apply. Gunsmith required for attachment of barrel extension, drilling of gas port, and attachment of gas block, and (optional) front sight.
Contour 6000:16
Contour 6100:20
Contour 6100:24
Contour 6200:24
Contour 6200:26
Contour 6300-1675-MU
North American customers can order these “finished” Garand and AR15 barrels by contacting:
The Dolphin Gun Company, based in the United Kingdom, has developed a very stable, yet lightweight wide-base bipod, ideal for F-TR shooters. We expect Dolphin’s new Trakker bipod will also be popular with varmint hunters and some tactical shooters.
Nancy Tompkins will be bringing out a new Second Edition of her popular book: Prone and Long-Range Rifle Shooting. Nancy hopes to have Second Edition books available by mid-June, 2012. The enhanced Second Edition will feature updates to the current chapters, more photos, plus an entirely new chapter on F-Class Shooting. The Second Edition will be issued as a hardback only, for increased durability. Price isn’t set yet, but Nancy hopes to keep the price “under $40.00″. The book will be available from 
Tompkins Book a Must-Read for Long-Range Shooters
They have been on the market for nearly a year, but you may not know that Redding sells a line of 
That’s right, Redding now offers micrometer seater assemblies made specifically for Berger VLD bullets. These Seating Micrometers allow you to convert a standard seater to a Micrometer seater optimized for VLDs. That’s great news for VLD fans. Eric Stecker of Berger Bullets tells us: “We have confirmed with Redding that each of the new micrometer plugs in the VLD group were designed based on Berger VLD bullets. We provided all of our VLD bullets to Redding, from which they took deliberate measurements and made these new plugs.”
Forum member Jerry Brandon isn’t just an excellent craftsman of 
If you like the Bob Lee Swagger books by Stephen Hunter or the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child, you’ll enjoy The Kennedy Rifle by Jerry Brandon. And certainly if you have a serious interest in the Kennedy assassination, this book is a must read. Brandon’s book uncovers many of the puzzling facts left out of the Warren Report. Though The Kennedy Rifle is a work of fiction, it makes a convincing argument that important aspects of the Kennedy assassination were never revealed to the American public.
HOW TO GET 5% OFF
Lothar Walther has some new “pre-fit” barrel offerings that should interest Garand and AR shooters. Garand Match competitors and vintage military rifle shooters will be pleased that LW is now offering “finished” Garand barrels, pre-chambered in your choice of six (6) different chamberings: .270 Win, 7×64, .308 Win,.30-06, 8x57IS and 9.3×62. These are all four-groove barrels with 24″ length. Twist rates along with land/groove diameters are listed on the 
