After some thought, you have made the decision to purchase your first handgun. You have visited with friends and read several articles on various guns. While you may believe you are ready to head to the register, I would suggest we make sure you are buying what you really want and need.
There are several things that people rarely consider when they head out to buy their first blaster. So grab a seat and let me share a few things to consider.
1: Small guns are not always the best guns.
The number of micro pistols on the market has grown exponentially and is showing no sign of slowing. These guns can be very well made and easy to carry, but they are also, in most cases difficult with which to train. Their super small size reduces mass which in turn puts more felt recoil into the hands of the shooter.
The word “snappy” is used quite often when discussing these small guns. If you absolutely must have a small gun for concealed carry, then this may still work for you. Just make sure you try before you buy.
2: “I carry a .45 because they don’t make a .46.”
The “which caliber is best” argument is still raging, but modern ballistic testing has proven that the 9mm round performs on par with its chubbier .45ACP counterpart. The upside is higher magazine capacity with the 9mm. The .45ACP is still a formidable round, but I would lean towards having additional ammunition in the magazine.
3: Just because your new handgun has a place for a weapon light, laser, bayonet and blender doesn’t mean you should put it all on there.
While some full -size handguns are designed to accommodate accessories, these items add weight and bulk. If this is going to be an everyday carry gun, I encourage you to dress it up with everything and see if you can carry it concealed. Chances are the gun will be back to bare bones in short order.
4: The price of a handgun generally correlates with the overall reliability and function of said gun.
The purchase of a handgun should be considered an investment. This is especially true if it is a personal defense weapon. If you come across a handgun at bargain basement pricing, you should ask yourself if you are willing to trust it to defend your life. The adage of “buy once, cry once” really applies here.
5: Feel matters.
What this means is that no matter how many people are telling you to buy gun X or gun Y, it needs to be a personal decision. How the gun feels in your hand is very important and honestly one of the biggest things you should weigh. As long as you stay with a respected manufacturer you cannot go wrong by using “feel” as your final decision point. If the gun feels good, you will perform better with it and in turn enjoy your new purchase even more.
After some thought, you have made the decision to purchase your first handgun. You have visited with friends and read several articles on various guns. While you may believe you are ready to head to the register, I would suggest we make sure you are buying what you really want and need. There are several things that people rarely consider when they head out to buy their first blaster. So grab a seat and let me share a few things to consider.
1: Small guns are not always the best guns.
The number of micro pistols on the market has grown exponentially and is showing no sign of slowing. These guns can be very well made and easy to carry, but they are also, in most cases difficult with which to train. Their super small size reduces mass which in turn puts more felt recoil into the hands of the shooter. The word “snappy” is used quite often when discussing these small guns. If you absolutely must have a small gun for concealed carry, then this may still work for you. Just make sure you try before you buy.
2: “I carry a .45 because they don’t make a .46.”
The “which caliber is best” argument is still raging, but modern ballistic testing has proven that the 9mm round performs on par with its chubbier .45ACP counterpart. The upside is higher magazine capacity with the 9mm. The .45ACP is still a formidable round, but I would lean towards having additional ammunition in the magazine.
3: Just because your new handgun has a place for a weapon light, laser, bayonet and blender doesn’t mean you should put it all on there.
While some full -size handguns are designed to accommodate accessories, these items add weight and bulk. If this is going to be an everyday carry gun, I encourage you to dress it up with everything and see if you can carry it concealed. Chances are the gun will be back to bare bones in short order.
4: The price of a handgun generally correlates with the overall reliability and function of said gun.
The purchase of a handgun should be considered an investment. This is especially true if it is a personal defense weapon. If you come across a handgun at bargain basement pricing, you should ask yourself if you are willing to trust it to defend your life. The adage of “buy once, cry once” really applies here.
5: Feel matters.
What this means is that no matter how many people are telling you to buy gun X or gun Y, it needs to be a personal decision. How the gun feels in your hand is very important and honestly one of the biggest things you should weigh. As long as you stay with a respected manufacturer you cannot go wrong by using “feel” as your final decision point. If the gun feels good, you will perform better with it and in turn enjoy your new purchase even more.
The origin of the .35 Whelen has long been debated despite the fact that in two of his books, Colonel Whelen named James V. Howe as its developer.
Remington forever legitimized the .35 Whelen when it began loading it in 1988. Eventually, Big Green would offer it in the Model 700 as well as its slide-action and semiautomatic rifles.
Prior to that, however, the .35 was one of our most popular wildcats. For about as long as it has been around, its origin has been debated. Some are convinced it was James V. Howe who created it, and others argue with equal fervor that it was Col. Townsend Whelen.
The argument rages on despite the fact that Whelen long ago settled it in two of his books. In the .35 Whelen section of “Why Not Load Your Own?” (1957), he writes, “This cartridge was developed by James V. Howe in 1922 and named for the writer.”
Page 271 of “The Hunting Rifle,” which was published during the early 1940s, reads in part, “In 1922, Mr. James V. Howe and the writer developed the .400 Whelen cartridge. This cartridge was constructed by taking the .30-’06 case before it had been necked at all and necking it down to .40 caliber.
About the time we completed development of this cartridge, I went on a long hunting trip in the Northwest, and when I returned, Mr. Howe showed me another cartridge that he had developed. The .30-’06 case was necked to .35 caliber to use existing .35-caliber bullets. Mr. Howe asked my permission to call this cartridge the .35 Whelen, but he alone deserves credit for its development
After leaving Frankford in 1923, he got together with Seymour Griffin and formed Griffin & Howe, a shop that became widely known for building fine custom rifles. The partnership did not work out, and after about six months, Howe moved on to Hoffman Arms Company in Cleveland, Ohio, where he stayed for a long time.
Even though Col. Whelen staked no claim to the .35 Whelen, we still owe him partial credit for its existence. During the 1920s, American Leslie Simpson was considered to be an authority on hunting the African continent. Among other things, he, along with novelist Steward Edward White and a couple of others, was said to have taken more than 50 lions during a control shoot lasting three weeks.
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For the past 25 years, this custom rifle on a Whitworth Model 98 Mauser square-bridge action has been the author’s favorite in .35 Whelen. Its 22-inch Apex barrel was made by the late Sam May, and its 1:12-inch twist handles bullets as long as the 310-grain Woodleigh. Butch Searcy did the barreled action, and it was stocked by E.C. Bishop & Son of Warsaw, Missouri.
Simpson and Whelen became friends, and during one of their conversations, Simpson mentioned using the .35 Winchester and finding it lacking. What was needed for taking thin-skinned African game, including lions, was a cartridge of the same caliber but capable of pushing along a 250-grain bullet at 2,500 to 2,600 feet-per-second. Whelen passed the idea on to James Howe, who came up with two cartridges, one of which was the .35 Whelen while he was at Frankford Arsenal.
After moving on to Griffin & Howe, Howe followed up with the .350 G&H Magnum, and it was loaded by Western Cartridge Company.
Whelen had several favorites, but reading his books, I find very little evidence of the .35-caliber cartridge bearing his name being one of them. In fact, I’m not sure he ever actually hunted with it.
The book “Mister Rifleman,” published by Petersen Publishing Company after Whelen’s death in 1961, has a chapter titled “A Rifleman’s Battery.” It’s filled with two-page-spread photos of about 30 rifles owned by Whelen along with comments on each written by him. The only rifle in the group in .35 Whelen was built on a 1903 Springfield action by James Howe in 1922 and originally had a Niedner barrel in .400 Whelen.
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Of the various factory- loaded cartridges of .35 caliber introduced through the years, the .35 Whelen and .35 Remington went on to become the most popular. Left to right: .35 Whelen, .35 Remington, .358 Winchester, .350 Rem. Mag., .35 Winchester, .35 Newton, .350 G&H Mag., .358 Norma Mag.
Due to very little shoulder on its case for headspacing, the .400 was a troublesome cartridge to reload and shoot, yet Whelen did not get around to having the rifle rebarreled to .35 Whelen until around 1950, long after he did most of his hunting. His reloading manual came out seven years later, and he may have needed a rifle in .35 Whelen for developing the loads published in it.
Col. Whelen was a practical man, and my guess is that he had very little use for the .35 simply because the game he successfully hunted was easily taken with cartridges of smaller calibers and less recoil. His 40-year Army career began not long after the .30-40 Krag was adopted, and both became favorites in the hunting fields.
He later became equally fond of the .30-’06, 7x57mm Mauser and .257 Roberts, but the .270 Winchester that accounted for his best moose seemed to be his favorite. There were others in his life, both factory and wildcats, with the .243 Winchester and .308 Winchester among the last he wrote up while on the technical staff of Guns & Ammo.
Someone who did hunt a great deal with the .35 Whelen was Elmer Keith. Before using it, he used a custom Springfield in .400 Whelen given to him by James Howe in 1925. Like Whelen, he eventually had his rifle rebarreled to .35 Whelen and used it to take what he described as a record-book brown bear during his first hunt in Alaska in 1937.
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Col. Whelen, dean of American riflemen, shooting his 7mm rifle on assignment for accuracy and trajectory.
Keith took the bruin with a 275-grain bullet made by Western Tool & Copper Co., his favorite for all-around use. He loaded 57 grains of IMR 4064, but that powder in his day was a bit slower in burn rate than today’s version, since 52 grains is now considered maximum with a bullet of that weight. Elmer speculated that the 300-grain roundnose made by Fred Barnes might be a better choice when hunting elk in heavy timber, but I don’t believe he actually got around to trying it.
In notes written about his .35-caliber Griffin & Howe Springfield, Whelen recommended two loads for it with IMR 4350. One was 61 grains behind a 275-grain roundnose bullet made at the time by Joyce Hornady. Velocity was 2,375 fps. The other was 60 grains with the Barnes 300-grain bullet for 2,350 fps.
He must have been using special brass because I am unable to get that much IMR 4350 into factory .35 Whelen cases or those formed from various brands of .30-’06 brass and still have enough space left to seat bullets at the overall cartridge lengths required by the magazines of various bolt-action rifles. The heaviest charges I can squeeze behind 275- and 300-grain bullets are 59 and 53 grains, respectively, for velocities of 2,219 and 2,059 fps.
Reloder 15 has become the powder for .35 Whelen handloads, not only for me but for several other hunters I know who use the cartridge. Clean-burning, it delivers top velocities with all bullet weights, accuracy is usually very good, and it meters through powder measures with minimum charge-to-charge variation.
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Col. Whelen at Winchester’s Nilo Farms. This photo, taken February 1961, is thought to be his last. He passed away 10 months later, on December 23, 1961, at age 84.
Maximum charges with all bullets weighing from 180 to 210 grains are either 100 percent density or close enough to it. If I were to pick a second favorite, it would be Vihtavuori N-140. Others with similar burn rates include Accurate 2520, Varget, W748 and IMR 4064. Various reloading manuals have data for all of them.
Today’s bullets are much better than in Elmer Keith’s time, and lighter weights than those used by him are capable of taking any game most would want to hunt with the .35 Whelen.
For those who wish to turn back the calendar to the good old days, a few heavyweights are available. Loading the heavier bullets also puts the .35 Whelen on a more equal footing with the 9.3x62mm Mauser. Woodleigh offers a 275-grain Weldcore, and from Swift we have a 280-grain A-Frame. Both are a bit long for the 1:16-inch twist of Remington rifles and usually require 1:14 or quicker.
The Woodleigh 310-grain roundnose is available in both expanding and solid styles; both require a 1:12 twist. I have not tried the 275-grain Lion Load bullet from A-Square, but since it is of roundnose form, it should work in a 1:16 twist. I believe Savage rifles have a 1:12 twist, but I’m not sure about Brownings, Rugers, Winchesters and others.
Unprimed cases are available from Nosler, Hornady, Remington and Norma USA, but necking up .30-’06 cases as in the old days remains an option. A tapered expander button in most .35 Whelen full-length resizing dies makes doing so easy. Applying a light coat of wax-type resizing lube (available from Hornady and Redding) to the mouth of each case makes the job go smoothly. Case loss should be zero if new brass is used.
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Remington Express Core-Lokt .35 Whelen, 200 gr.
Remington continues to offer two .35 Whelen loads: 200-grain Core-Lokt and 250-grain softnose, the latter a Hornady bullet. Federal Premium loaded with the 225-grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw is a good choice when sticking with one load for everything from mice to moose. Nosler ammunition loaded with 225- and 250-grain Partition bullets has a following, and Winchester loads the cartridge as well. Hornady Superformance with a 200-grain softpoint is the fastest factory load available. I wondered whether the 2,920-fps velocity printed on its box was a misprint, but skepticism turned to amazement when my Oehler Model 33 indicated an average of 2,962 fps from the 22-inch barrel of my Mauser. That’s more than 100 fps faster than maximum handloads with 180-grain bullets in that rifle. It should be devastating on deer. A second load with the 225-grain GMX at 2,800 fps or so would be equally effective on elk and other large game.
I have also owned a couple of Model 700s in this caliber, but my favorite is a custom rifle built about 25 years ago by Butch Searcy, who is now better known for building fine double rifles. He began the project by installing one of Sam May’s Apex barrels on a Whitworth ’98 Mauser square-bridge action.
The barrel is 22 inches long, and since the Barnes 275- and 300-grain bullets were available back then, I specified a rifling twist rate of 1:12 inches. Butch also machined a quarter rib for the barrel, installed a banded ramp sight up front and modified the bolt shroud for a Model 70-style safety.
The barreled action was stocked by E.C. Bishop & Son custom shop in Warsaw, Missouri. The only scope it has ever worn is a Redfield 1-4X variable from the 1960s. It is held in place by quick-detach rings available at the time from Kimber of Oregon. Weight with scope is 8½ pounds. It is the most consistently accurate rifle in .35 Whelen I have ever owned and quite comfortable to shoot.
Down through the decades, a number of .35-caliber cartridges have been introduced, but not a single one has managed to win the hearts of America’s hunters. They range from oldies such as the .35 Remington, .35 Winchester, .35 Whelen, .35 Newton and .350 Griffin & Howe Magnum to newer numbers such as the .358 Winchester, .356 Winchester, .350 Remington Magnum and .358 Norma Magnum.
The .35 Remington was once quite popular among hunters in the east. It is the chambering I chose for my very first store-bought deer rifle and was used to take my first black bear. Sad to say, very few Marlin 336s in that caliber are sold these days.
The .35 Whelen has yet to win a popularity contest among hunters and probably never will, but the fact that it has been in use for more than 90 years is proof of its ability to shrug off the challenges of more modern cartridges. It may eventually be the only cartridge of its caliber we have left.
John McAdams with a doe his father shot during his first deer season at age 3.
When I was 3 years old, my family purchased 160 acres of land in East Texas. We spent a great deal of time camping there that spring and summer, and I had the time of my young life out in the woods with my father and grandfather. During that time, they had several discussions with me explaining that they were going deer hunting there during the fall and winter and that I wouldn’t be able to come with them.
However, when my grandfather came by the house early in the morning during opening weekend to pick up my father, I met them at the top of the stairs. I asked them “Are you going to the property?”
When they answered in the affirmative, I responded, “I’ll be right back.” Since neither of them had the heart to tell me that I couldn’t go, I got to go deer hunting with them then and every year thereafter.
I can’t remember many details of that deer season, only that it was a lot of fun and the start of many hunting trips for me. The downside of this is that my grandfather has not gotten a deer since I started accompanying them on hunts.
However, the joy of being with my father and grandfather out in the woods and the excitement of seeing deer made me a lifelong hunter. Even though he hasn’t shot a deer personally in the past few decades, my grandfather has shared in all of my hunting successes (and failures) since I joined their ranks, and I’m sure he considers that a fair trade.
Though it is a cliche, kids really are the future, and this is especially true with hunting. My grandfather was quite the sportsman in his day, but he is getting on in years and rarely hunts anymore. The fire inside him that burned with love for the outdoors would die with him if he did not pass that torch on for my father and me to carry.
John McAdams, his brother and grandfather pose with a little buck John shot while in eighth grade.
In addition to his love of the outdoors and his many great stories, my grandfather possesses a wealth of knowledge gained from hard-earned experience that would also go to waste without someone to share it with. Fortunately, he has been able to share most of these things with my father and me to continue the tradition.
Along with the sentimental reasons listed above, there are also practical reasons to introduce a kid to hunting. If you turn them on to the sport, not only will you have a potential hunting buddy for years, but they also will be among those who fund conservation efforts through their purchases of hunting gear and licenses as adults.
They are also more likely to vote for public officials and policies that support the continued access to hunting in the future. In short, continuing to expand the ranks of hunters is vital to allow future generations of Americans to enjoy the outdoors.
Yes, it is often times inconvenient to take a kid hunting. They generally have a shorter attention span than adults, and it is much more difficult for them to keep quiet and sit still for an extended period of time. For these reasons and others, having a kid with you makes it much more difficult to seriously hunt for a trophy deer.
However, it might be useful to take a different view of the situation. A kid generally does not get upset about shooting a doe or a young buck instead of a trophy deer. They enjoy hunting because of the pure, unbridled joy of spending time with “the boys” and enjoying the beauty of the outdoors.
They do not get caught up in whether they shot the biggest deer or if they are properly practicing quality deer management. A kid would probably be just as happy, or maybe even happier, after shooting a doe or a four-point buck as many adults would be after shooting a nice 10-pointer.
We would do well to follow their lead and stop getting caught up in all of the other distractions that often accompany the sport and start remembering why we started hunting in the first place: because it’s fun.
I am the hunter I am today because of the experiences I had as a kid while hunting with my father and grandfather. One day, I look forward to introducing my son or daughter to the outdoors and to hunting. Hopefully, they will gain the same appreciation for nature and wildlife that I have, and this may well be one of the biggest lasting contributions that I make as a sportsman.
Keep this in mind the next time you have an opportunity to take a kid hunting, and consider making an investment of your time now for the future of the sport.
John McAdams, his brother and grandfather pose with a little buck John shot while in eighth grade.
