28 minute read
TWICE AS NICE
After coming up just short in last year’s Precision Rifle Series Pro Series Finale, Austin Orgain led the pack this November with a score of 171.000. The competition was held at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico.
2020 PRS Open Division points winner Austin Orgain takes 2021 crown – and Finale that eluded him last year.
PHOTOS BY AUSTIN ORGAIN
In early November, the country’s top Precision Rifle Series shooters took part in the PRS Pro Series Finale, held at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. Of the 200-plus competitors who participated in this year’s finale, several of them have been featured in previous issues of American Shooting Journal (including Morgun King, Allison Zane and Doug Koenig) – and all of them are elite, highly skilled shooters.
This extremely competitive sphere means that winning any given match, let alone the finale, is a difficult task. Just ask Austin Orgain.
In 2020, Orgain won the Open Division PRS points race, but came up just short in the finale match, earning a hard-fought second place. This year, however, not only did Orgain win the overall points race again, he dominated the finale to take home the gold.
The finale was a “field match,” says Orgain, which in PRS-speak means longer ranges and multiple shooting directions. “It consisted of 20 different stages and had a good balance of prone and positional shooting,” he adds. Though the match was arduous, Orgain attributes his victory “to being very consistent throughout the entire match, to my wind-reading abilities, and to all my gear running flawlessly.”
The finale win was a long time coming for Orgain, who started shooting competitively as a kid, first in local BB gun matches, and then moving on to pellet rifle and pistol competitions in 4H. During junior high and high school, he also began to shoot trap in 4H.
“Once I got to college, I didn’t shoot very much, as I was on the collegiate rodeo team for Southwestern Oklahoma State University,” he explains. “After I graduated college and began a career, I wasn’t able to rodeo much and needed something to fill the competitive gap. This is when I picked up precision rifle shooting.”
Orgain shot his first PRS match in 2016 and just a year later won the 2017 NRL Series Championship. In just six years of PRS competitions, Orgain has won 16 national-level matches, and of
A competitive shooter from a young age, in six years on the PRS trail, Orgain has won 16 nationallevel matches, including the 2020 and 2021 Pro Series championships. course the aforementioned 2020 and 2021 PRS Pro Series championships. He also won the 2020 AG Cup championship, which brought about one of his most memorable moments in competition.
“I had a 4-point lead on the field going into the last stage, which was a 400-yard KYL,” he recalls. (Editor’s note: A Know Your Limits, or KYL, target is a series of small circles that get progressively smaller as you go. The shooter earns points for each target hit and can stop at any time to retain those points. If they miss, they lose all their points.)
Orgain continues, “I started the stage knowing I needed to hit at least six targets to win $35,000 and, needless to say, the nerves were a little high. After the first pass through the targets and I had hit all
Orgain attributes his PRS field match finale victory “to being very consistent throughout the entire match, to my windreading abilities, and to all my gear running flawlessly.”
Starting from the base of any rifle, Austin Orgain runs: • Foundation Centurion stock • Impact 737 action • Proof Research barrels chambered in 6mm Dasher (Competition contour, 7.5 twist cut to 26 inches) • Hawkins Precision bottom metal and heavy tactical one-piece scope mount • Tangent Theta 5-25x50 scope with
JTAC reticle • ACE Precision muzzle brake • Bix’n Andy Tac Sport Pro trigger with gator grip trigger shoe • Anarchy heavy Arca rail • Harris bipod with a Really Right Stuff
SOAR Arca adapter, Really Right
Stuff SOAR tripod and ballhead • Reloading components: Alpha
Munitions 6mm Dasher brass and
Hornady 6mm 110-grain A-tip bullets
five (including the fifth target, which was a 1.5-inch circle), I knew I had it in the bag.”
“But really,” Orgain says, “the best memories come from the camaraderie between friends and fellow competitors and traveling the country with my friends and teammates. We have a lot of fun and we talk a lot of crap, which is the best part.”
Look for Orgain to continue competing next year in the Precision Rifle Series, the AG Cup series, and the National Rifle League. Editor’s note: For more on the Precision Rifle Series, visit precisionrifleseries.com.
Lunch With Custom Handgun Maker & Lion, Cape Buffalo Hunter Gary Reeder
Talkin' the 'whole enchilada' with Reeder about how he went from being a DJ to a gunsmith with 70 different custom lines and nearly as many wildcat cartridges – with a few death-defying moments along the way.
STORY BY FRANK JARDIM • PHOTOS BY GARY REEDER
Gary Reeder started customizing guns when Jimmy Carter was president. He went his own way then and never stopped going. Forty years later, his catalog includes 70 different lines of custom guns and 68 wildcat cartridges for them.
While same ol’, same ol’ product lines have made a lot of firearms companies very successful, there will always be customers who want more. These imaginative, adventurous dreamers are the folks who keep custom gunsmiths in business. Say you want to go to Africa and hunt elephant with a pistol. That shootin’ iron is no problem for Reeder Custom Guns. If you can imagine it, they can make it.
But you’ll have to get in line. As of this writing, there is a two-year waiting list. Reeder has always been a busy guy, but the current Covid supply chain bottlenecks have made once simple things, like getting small parts and screws, absurdly time-consuming and jammed up his shop in the same way they’ve delayed anyone who makes anything, anywhere in the world. As busy as he is, he’s still got to eat; so, he agreed to visit with me by phone while he ate a sandwich at his workbench.
American Shooting Journal You’re in your mid-70s now. Have you always been a gunmaker? Gary Reeder I actually never planned to be a custom gunmaker. I was a DJ in rock radio for almost 25 years. The last eight or nine years I was in radio, I also had a small garage shop where I built custom Contender barrels and XP100 pistols. Those were the premier platforms for long-range handgun hunters at the time. The Thompson/ Center Arms Contender was a breakopen, single-shot that you could adapt to several calibers by changing the barrel. Thompson still makes them, along with their newer Encore model, which can handle much more powerful cartridges. We do a lot of them in the shop. Since Remington stopped making their XP-100 bolt-action pistol in 1998, we don’t do many of them anymore, but they were beautiful guns.
When I retired from radio in 1985 in Sarasota, Florida, I got into custom gun building mostly full time. I say mostly because I had a full-line gun shop and had a small machine shop in the back where I worked on and built the guns. My son Kase was working with me in the shop starting when he was 12 years old building custom 1911s. I got so busy making guns, my wife Colleen had to take over the retail gun shop and she still runs it to
Gary Reeder Custom Guns’ Howdah pistols are inspired by the close-range thumpers used by tiger hunters in days of old to deter the disgruntled beasts from jumping up on top of the elephant back with them. They come in two forms: the original single-shot pistols built on the Thompson/Center G-2 and Encore frame, and as revolvers.
Reeder’s Longslide Hog Hunter is full custom from the ground up. With the longer slide and barrel you get a bit more power out of either the 10mm or .45 ACP, which makes it great for wild boar or just feral hogs. Features include custom frame, slide, barrel, extended safety, extended slide release, trigger, beavertail, special sights, grips and more.
Reeder traces his gunmaking back to the late 1970s, when he had a small shop and built custom Contender barrels and XP-100 pistols. After retiring from a career in radio in 1985, it became a “mostly full time” occupation next to the family gun shop.
Colleen Reeder, Gary’s better half, is a prolific African hunter and manages the family’s retail gun shop, the Pistol Parlor, in Flagstaff, Arizona. this day. Colleen and Kase are serious hunters too. Both have been to Africa several times.
ASJ What would you say you are most known for? GR Top-quality workmanship and customer service at a reasonable price. I have five of the most skilled gunsmiths in the business working in my shop and we take the time to do the job right the first time. In my shop, the customer is paying for the work, not the name on the building. This is not, and never has been, an assembly line production shop. That’s the custom firearms business. You can’t build the gun until the customer tells you what they want. I’m sure I have at least $20,000 in barrel blanks sitting on the rack ready to make into whatever we need. Most of our work starts with the customer’s stock firearm, but each one is a unique creation. I also keep on hand a supply of the special long and extra-long single-action revolver frames, as well as the 1911 frames and slides we use for guns we build from the ground up. These are the foundation parts we build out from to meet the customer’s needs.
ASJ Is there a particular firearm type you are known for? GR I hate to get pigeon-holed, but I build a lot of hunting handguns, and I’ve been wildcatting hunting handgun cartridges since the late 1970s … I wrote two books on hunting handguns and cartridges, and I love hunting with handguns. We book several hunts every year all over the world and usually take 10 or 12 handgun hunters with us.
We also build custom cowboy action shooting guns, carry guns and, of course, hunting handguns and rifles. We are not the fix-yourbroken-gun gunsmiths, but we do the things the best old-school gunsmiths
do: action jobs, engraving, polishing, bluing, color-case hardening, drilling, tapping and dovetailing for sight installations, rebarreling, rechambering, recrowning, porting, modifying grip frames, making and fitting custom grips – the whole enchilada. Single-action or doubleaction revolvers, automatics, lever actions, single-shots … we work on just about anything but polymer. If you can wait, we’re happy to do it.
ASJ Tell me more about your hunting handguns. GR That’s really a two-part discussion because you can’t talk hunting handguns without talking hunting handgun cartridges. Handguns weren’t invented for hunting, and many of the standard cartridges wouldn’t be a first choice for hunting deer-sized game. A hundred years ago, plenty of small game was taken with .32 rimfire and deer with .44 rimfire, but that’s because they didn’t have anything better. Today, 10mm, .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .45 Long Colt and .44 Magnum can do the job on deer- and black bear-sized game, but none of them are designed for long range. That’s why I started experimenting with wildcats. I wanted to tailor the pistol cartridge to the needs of the hunter and that meant some cartridges for way out there.
For example, the first wildcat I worked up back in 1979 I called the .41 GNR. It is a .44 Magnum case necked down to .41 caliber. Going to a smaller, lighter bullet you can pick up a lot of speed. Of course, it’s accuracy that kills, but velocity extends the range that the bullet can maintain the energy a hunter wants for a clean kill. Through an 8-inch-barrel Contender, I drove a 170-grain Sierra JHP to 2,100 feet per second. I’ve taken everything from elk to caribou with the .41 GNR and recently I killed a 1,900-pound bison with one shot from an 8-inch-barreled Thompson/Center G-2 pistol, and more recently made a one-shot kill on a 2,000-pound water buffalo with the same gun.
That’s just one example, but I’ve developed 48 specialty cartridges for hunting with revolvers and the Thompson Contender/G2/Encore single-shot pistols. My son Kase has created a few large-caliber wildcats of his own too that would be perfect in the fields of Africa.
Now, we’ll make your gun in any caliber you want, but if you want to go with one of my wildcats, or any wildcat really, you need to expect to handload them. In the case of my wildcats, you can buy finished ammunition from Colorado Custom Cartridge Co. (coloradocustomcartridges.com) if you don’t want to handload, but most of our customers like to roll their own. We support handloaders with loading data and dies and our new third edition loading manual of all the GNR cartridges. Everything I’ve learned experimenting I share freely on our website. The whole reason for making a wildcat is to get something extra special you can’t get from standard loads. Every wildcat I offer is tested by me or one of my guys in the shop in real-world hunting. Nobody wants any surprises when they are hunting – especially if it’s dangerous game.
ASJ You’re alive to tell the tale, so I guess your wildcats lived up to expectations. GR Well, they aren’t all for dangerous game, and there have been a few that didn’t do what I’d hoped so I didn’t pursue them any further. There’s really no substitute for experimentation and real-world testing. You know, the first hunting test of my .510 GNR was one of the few times I was in a situation where I could have been killed.
ASJ This, I have to hear. GR I was bear hunting in Alaska and hadn’t seen squat all morning. I get up from my fold-up camp chair to take a leak and this smallish black bear comes running by me like his ass is on fire. That’s not normal. I look over to where he’d come from and I realize why that little black bear is in such a hurry. Here comes a 600-pound bear crashing through the woods after him, intent on a lunch of baby black bear.
The main bear we hunt in Alaska is the grizzly. The grizzly isn’t the biggest bear in North America, but short of a polar bear, there is none more aggressive. This bear might not have even seen me there relieving myself, but his body brushed up against my empty
camp chair, which snapped around and wacked him on the head and got his attention. Seeing me, I guess he rethought his menu, but by this time I had my .510 GNR in my hand.
He was 3 feet away still looking toward that little black bear when I got my first shot off. It went in his shoulder, crossed his body, and came out the opposite side. He twisted a bit from the shock but kept on coming at me. I put my second shot into his other shoulder when he was a foot away from my revolver muzzle and that one came out the opposite flank. That took the fight right out of him. With two big holes criss-crossing his body, he turned and ran into the brush. He didn’t get too far. I found him 20 yards away on the ground and finished him off with a third shot.
At that point, I knew the .510 GNR would be going to Africa with me. Obviously, this was no long-range marksmanship target gun, but it was perfect for the real-world nightmare ASJ Before we drift too far, let’s get back to your custom handguns. GR Hunting handguns are almost always single-shot break-action types like those made famous by Thompson/Center, or they are revolvers. Revolvers offer fast followup shots, which makes them the best choice, in my opinion, for dangerous game. The single-shot break-actions offer more powerful cartridge options and better longrange potential because you can go as long as you need to with the barrel to optimize performance, up to 15 inches or so. The stronger break-actions we have to work with now, the Encore in particular, can handle loads that would damage a Contender.
Most of the revolvers we customize are based on the customer’s Ruger single-action. That’s because they are one of the strongest out there. Second only to the fine Freedom Arms revolvers. But, as strong as they are, they are designed for commercial calibers. The cylinder size is a limiting factor when it comes to the physical size of the cartridge you can shoot in them. I’ve really pushed the envelope with my big wildcats, and to get the strength I need to contain the pressures they generate and accommodate cases and bullets larger than the guns were originally engineered for at the factory, it was necessary to switch from a six-round cylinder to a five-round cylinder. That gave me the room and metal I needed to make it work safely. But as normal, that didn’t satisfy me for long. It was clear to me that I needed longer, stronger frames to increase the hunting revolvers’ performance capabilities in the ways I imagined. Practically speaking, you can only make a cylinder so fat. A longer cylinder was needed to accommodate longer cartridge cases with more powder capacity.
It takes a lot to take the fight out of an adult male lion. After three shots from a combination of Reeder’s .387 GNR and .510 GNR, this one finally had enough and beat a retreat.
Reeder poses with the same lion, finished off with his .510 GNR revolver. This adult male weighed 400 pounds.
The first new frame I worked up was just a bit longer and beefier than the standard Ruger Super Blackhawk frame, but much stronger. Then came the stretch-frame that was even bigger and stronger. With its extra-large cylinder window and brute strength, this was the frame that let me push the revolver to the limit of its power potential. On that frame, I could build a handgun for any game we would normally hunt. Three customers have taken elephants with our stretchframe revolvers. This is the frame the Professional Hunter and Howdah series revolvers are built around. I introduced the stretch-frame in 1994, almost 20 years before S&W came out with their X-Frame Model 500 revolver in .500 S&W Magnum.
Frame size and strength are critically important to safety and durability in my big bore handguns, but there’s also the ergonomics factor to consider. You can’t shoot a handgun well if you can’t hang onto it during recoil. Muzzle brakes and porting help everyone control recoil, but grip frame and grip shape are really shooter-specific. That’s why we have so many different shapes to choose from. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I should feel pretty flattered. Ruger is using a couple of our grip frames on their factory revolvers.
ASJ You mentioned you planned to take your .510 GNR revolver to Africa. How did it do? GR I got a lion with it a few months ago. Normally a lion hunt is going to cost you $85,000 to $100,000 if you’re successful. In Africa, you only pay for what you actually kill on the safari, but no matter how you look at it, this type of hunting is big, big money. I’ve been lucky to go on 16 safaris in my life. But don’t get the idea I’m one of the high-dollar hunters because of this lion hunt. I’m a jeans, T-shirt and ball cap guy and the circumstances of this lion hunt were unique. I learned from professional hunter and good friend John Abraham of Madubula Safaris in Africa that the population of big male lions in the North West province of South Africa had gotten out of hand and they needed to cull five or six of them right away. The cost would be only $12,000 per lion. Within 48 hours, four friends and I were booked on our first lion hunt.
The area the lions were in was extremely thick thorn patches and high, heavy brush up to our heads. The only way to get to the lions was to drive into the brush with a Land Cruiser and force them out into what little open space there was for a shot. I was carrying as my main handgun a fullcustom five-shot single-action revolver in my .510 GNR. That’s actually my largest bore handgun cartridge, as .50 caliber is the largest you can chamber in a handgun. The .510 GNR can be loaded down to .50 Special, or up to .500 Linebaugh ballistics. As sort of a backup or for longer shots, I had a custom Thompson/Center G-2 in my .378 GNR, a cartridge I had used extensively in at least half of my 15 previous safaris. This time I wanted to use my .510 GNR, as I was sure it would be close range and more than
one shot would be needed.
The brush was extremely heavy and mostly thorns that took most of the lion’s thick mane off. The big black-maned lions aren’t found in that type of terrain. After driving for a while, one of the trackers waved for the driver to stop the truck. The cat had hidden himself so well in the heavy brush and thorns that our Land Cruiser was only 6 feet from him when our Zulu tracker spotted his eyes watching us approach. I hadn’t seen the animal at all!
John Abraham stopped the truck and had the driver back up 6 or 8 feet to put some space between us and the big cat. John and I stood in front of the high rear seats of the Land Cruiser, outside in the open. Had we passed the cat that close, John told me the cat probably would have come up in the truck with us because it’s in their nature to pursue fleeing prey. John told me if I got a shot at the lion, he would jump up and do a big flip in the air, and when he hit the ground, I had better put another bullet in him. “Never let him get his feet back fully on the ground,” he warned me, “or he’ll come right up in the truck with us.”
The tracker pointed out a thorn bush just ahead of us and said the cat was in that brush pile, and John said for me to put a bullet in one end of it. I still couldn’t see the animal completely, but could see an image that I knew was the cat. Switching guns, I went with my .378 GNR in the G-2, as it has a 4X scope on it and I could place the shot more accurately with it. Aiming for that dark spot, I shot where he told me to and a big male lion jumped up 5 feet in the air and did a big flip, just as John said he would. As the lion hit the ground, I quickly reloaded the .378 and put another bullet in him.
Now that I could see the cat, I grabbed the .510 GNR and hit him two more times before the cat staggered off toward a lone tree. I put one more shot into him as he ran off, which we found later was only a hip shot. I got out of the Land Cruiser and followed him. As he got to the tree, I hit him again with the .510 GNR from about 10 feet and that did it. My three previous shots were solid hits, but the last round broke his spine and finished him off. I had one bullet left in the gun. He was a big old male lion, close to 400 pounds, and in the prime of his life. The preliminary scoring of the skull the next day showed him to be possibly number one in the SCI record book, or at least in the top two.
ASJ Again you cheat death. GR Maybe not death, but had he come up in the truck with us, someone would have been hurt. But that’s part
The 1,800-pound bull Cape buffalo Reeder shot in his house shoes with a borrowed revolver. The guns he’d brought for the safari, as well as his clothes, were stolen during a layover on the way to South Africa.
of the adventure. Seriously though, the professional hunters and trackers are looking out for you all the time. It was thrilling, but the pucker-factor was not the same as it was with the Alaskan bear when I had nobody backing me up. Confidence in your equipment and confidence in your marksmanship helps to steady the nerves. There was one time when I was hunting Cape buffalo where I was really concerned if I had enough gun for the job.
ASJ Not bringing enough gun doesn’t sound like the kind of mistake Gary Reeder would make. GR Oh, I brought enough gun. It just got stolen, along with all my luggage. During 15 safaris to Africa, most have gone well with only a few hiccups here and there. But that was an odd one. With the Covid scares, Delta wasn’t flying to Africa so we had to find an alternate way to get there. That ended up being Qatar Airlines. On our flight over, we had to go through Qatar, and during the two-hour layover, someone stole my guns, all my clothes and everything except what I had on me. When we finally arrived in South Africa, we waited a day or so for my gear to get there, figuring it was just misplaced. It never showed. After two days I decided to make do and continue my hunt.
I borrowed clothes and a custom .454 Casull single-action I’d customized for a good friend who was with us on this hunt. Instead of .454 Casull ammo, he had only five rounds of hot .45 Long Colt ammo left from his hunting several animals the previous two days. They were loaded with heavy 300-grain bullets with a muzzle velocity of 1,200 feet per second. Those loads would sure ruin a Colt Single Action Army, but I was a bit apprehensive about hunting a Cape buffalo with them.
Normally on a long overseas flight, I just wear some house shoes. Nobody in camp had an extra pair of boots to loan me, so I hunted a week in the edge of the Kalahari Desert in my house shoes. I had to stop every few feet to empty the red sand out of them. I had come to Africa to hunt a Cape buffalo and wasn’t going to let having no boots stop me.
John Abraham, my friend and my professional hunter and head honcho of Madubula Safaris, was hunting with me on this safari. He had heard from one of his tracker friends there was a huge Cape buffalo in an area on the edge of the Kalahari Desert about 50 miles from where we were. We decided to drive over to the area and glass the terrain, as that is always the best way to find the herd. The first day was a loss; nothing but a few small bulls.
The next morning we were on the road again at daylight. This time we drove for maybe an hour in the area the buffalo was known to be before spotting a small herd of what looked like all bulls. We eased up slowly on them until we got to about 80 yards of them. In the
The same bull, taken with just two rounds. Careful shot placement allowed Reeder to do the job with hot .45 Colt handloads driving a 300-grain jacketed soft-point bullet at 1,200 feet per second.
tall yellow grass, it was hard to see the entire herd, as many had their heads down grazing. But as we got closer the young bulls in the herd scattered and ran off in several directions. That left two big bulls. One had a set of ragged beat-up horns, so we didn’t consider him. The other was bigger in the body and when he finally lifted his head, we could see a massive set of horns. John said, “This is your bull.”
Most of the younger bulls had run off and stood a couple hundred yards away staring at us, but my big bull just stood there with his nose in the air, daring us to come closer. The grass was high, and I couldn’t make out a spot to put the bullet. We needed to do it with as few shots as possible, as we were on the ground 60 yards from him and I had a piddly little .45 Long Colt in my hand ... little when you consider what most folks use to hunt Cape buffalo with. John asked if I could see that perfect spot for the shot. I told him, “No, the grass is too high.” Then he said the thing I really didn’t want to hear: “Let’s walk up a bit closer.” I looked at him like he had lost his mind. “Sure, let’s do it,” I replied. I wasn’t sure if he could detect my wavering confidence. I had hunted Cape buffalo with John before, and in my mind I knew that he knew what to do and when.
We started walking straight at the buffalo, like a stroll in the park. The buffalo snorted and pawed the ground and grunted a few times, I imagine saying bad things about my mother. Finally, we got to about 25 yards from the big bull. John had his .475 Jeffery No. 2 double rifle on his shoulder and asked me again if I could see the spot from there. This time I could, and John said, “Put a bullet in that spot.”
One shot on the point of shoulder with a 300-grain jacketed soft point caused the bull to stagger off with the left front shoulder broken and out of commission. John said, “He is going to stop and look back. When he does, put another in him.” He did, and I shot again. This time the bull went a few more feet and went nose down in the tall grass. We waited a bit until we heard that final bellow, then eased up on him. The 1,800-pound buffalo was down with two shots of hot .45 Long Colt through a custom revolver. I would have bet against that happening, but I remembered what good friend and gun writer John Taffin always said: “Shot placement is the most important thing.” There were two holes on the left front shoulder, one on the point of shoulder and the other about 4 inches above, blowing up both lungs.
Thanks to John and a borrowed gun, I now had two Cape buffalo in the top four or five in the Safari Club handgun record book. And on that high note, I’ve got to get back to work. I got a lot of people waiting on their guns for adventures of their own. Editor’s note: Reeder Custom Guns is co-located with Gary Reeder's familyoperated retail store, The Pistol Parlor, at 2601 East 7th Avenue, Flagstaff, Arizona 86004. You can reach him at 928527-4100 or gary@reedercustomguns. com. Also visit reedercustomguns.com to get a look at the amazing variety of work they put out.
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