Kel-Tec RDB: The best bullpup in Canada?

I am not a bullpup guy. Two reason for that: First off, I've spent a pretty reasonable amount of time shooting guns where reloading involved inserting a magazine into a hole in front of the trigger, and secondly, I'm left handed. And in case you blessedly unaware righties haven't noticed, most bullpups involve a bolt whizzing back and forth past the meat of your cheek. If there happens to be an ejection port there... well, it's not a ton of fun. I'm looking at you, Norinco Type 97.

But there have been some exceptions to the rule. Obviously the Tavor springs to mind, with its ability to switch from right- to left-handed operation with the correct parts, but a left-handed Tavor will set you back somewhere north of $2,500... if you can lay hands on the relatively rare left-handed bolts. And then of course there's the Kel-Tec RFB. Like the now defunct FN FS2000, the RFB throws its spent cases forward out of a small chute, meaning the receiver is enclosed on both sides. But the RFB shoots .308 Winchester at a dollar per bang, and the FS2000 is perhaps the ugliest gun ever conceived by mankind. And again, the RFB is no cheaper than a Tavor, and the FS2000 is still, for some ungodly reason that should defy anyone with a working pair of eyes, even more expensive.

But now there's this: The Kel-Tec RDB. A non-restricted, fully ambidextrous, downward-ejecting bullpup chambered in 5.56 that's set to hit the market for around $1,500.

What the Kel-Tec RDB is

In Kel-Tec's own (seemingly Canadian Forces inspired) nomenclature, the RDB is a "Rifle, Downward-Ejecting, Bullpup." Sort of like how CF socks are "Socks, Wool, Grey, Itchy" and underwear is "Underwear, Green, Always Too Hot." Or something like that.

Anyway, it is literally that simple; it's a bullpup rifle that dispenses its spent casings through an ejection port behind the magazine well, on the bottom of the gun.

Obviously doing this involves a bolt that travels a bit farther than the average rifle's, as the bolt needs to traverse the entire distance of the magazine well, and then at least a case-length's span beyond that in order to eject the spent casing through the ejection port. To do this, the Kel-Tec RDB relies on an adjustable short-stroke gas-piston system that utilizes a combined gas piston/bolt carrier/op-rod/op-rod guide that houses a sort-of-AR-15ish rotating bolt, albeit with the rounded lugs that are becoming so en vogue and dual plunger-style ejectors.

Those ejectors are mounted at the 12 o'clock position, directly opposite a very healthy extractor that works to keep the spent casing on the bolt face until it reaches the rear of its travel, where the dual ejectors throw the spent casing down the ejection port. And in case you were wondering, the rifle doesn't rely on gravity whatsoever; the ejectors are forceful enough to eject rounds upwards with the rifle held upside-down.

Why the Kel-Tec RDB awesome

This means the RDB is fully ambidextrous, and that's a claim shared only by those aforementioned forward-ejecting exotics. Now before you Tavor owners/enthusiasts/fanatics out there take to your keyboards to tell us to stop making such spurious comments about the Hebrew Hammer, let me explain: Fitting a Tavor with a left-handed conversion kit does not make it ambidextrous. It makes it left-handed. A right-handed person cannot shoot a left-handed Tavor with any more ease or grace than a left-handed person can shoot a right-handed Tavor.

The Kel-Tec RDB is different. Since it ejects downward, the rifle can be shot by both lefties and righties alike. The magazine release is central, so it too doesn't discriminate, and both the 45-degree safety and simple bolt release are present on both sides of the rifle. The only thing that needs to be adapted is the charging handle, which is simply pulled out of the rifle and inserted on the other side.

And all those things work extremely well. The safety is precisely where your thumb goes, the magazine release operates easily, and the non-reciprocating charging handle is easy to use and sprung to fold flat when not in use. It even features a retention notch, so if you don't want to operate the bolt hold-open (which can be difficult given the gun's format and layout) you can just pull the handle rearward and lift up. Given how hard it can be to insert a fully loaded mag on a closed bolt, we found ourselves using that notch a lot when first loading the gun, and then charging it with a satisfying H&K MP5-style slap to the charging handle. Of course during firing strings, the bolt locks open on the empty mag so reloads are done using the bolt release, which falls directly under the thumb when inserting a fresh mag. Very handy.

And magazine release, always a point of contention on bullpup rifles, is like the Tavor's in that you can either bump it with your trigger hand or grab it as you strip a mag out of the rifle. And yes, like damned near everything that shoots from a STANAG mag, the magazines do drop free. Using a 30/5 round USGI magazine provides quite a nice quasi-monopod effect when shooting from the prone position, too, as the bottom of the magazine is basically directly opposite your cheek weld.

Rounding out the RDB's exterior features are a myriad of sling attachment points; two MASH hook points on each side, two molded in loops on the front of the handguard, and one molded loop on the back.

The Kel-Tec RDB's Construction

As with all bullpups, the small explosion that propels the bullet downrange happens right under your face, so it's somewhat more important that such a gun be built from quality materials to assuage any concerns that an untoward kaboom moment might turn you into Two Face of Batman fame. In the case of the Kel-Tec RDB, that comfort comes from a 1.5 millimetre thick (just shy of 1/16th inches) piece of sheetmetal bent into a u-shape, which forms the upper receiver. Inside this u-shape piece, two reinforcing strips are installed on either side, and serve as guide rails for the abbreviated bolt carrier (while also providing purchase for the screws holding the cheekrest onto the receiver's exterior). The rear of the receiver is given additional rigidity via a small piece that's welded along the bottom the receiver to form a box. Inside the box, a small stud is installed to locate the end of the operating rod, and a nylon buffer is fitted.

The lower, tasked with nothing more than holding the magazine, ejection port, and trigger assembly, is more familiar Kel-Tec technology; being made of two clamshell polymer moldings screwed together. Inside, the areas surrounding the magazine well, ejection port, and hammer are all reinforced with a web of stamped steel the same gauge as the upper receiver. This is primarily to support the trigger operation... but more on that later. The lower also houses the two or three take-down pins that must be removed to strip the gun. We say two or three because removing all three will break the gun down to its component parts completely, while removing the front two will allow the upper and lower to hinge apart, allowing the bolt to be extracted. The pin through the handguard only serves to retain the handguard.

Finally, we come to the last components: The bolt and barrel. On the model pictured, which is the commercial US model imported and sent to the RCMP for examination, the barrel is 17.4 inches long. On Canadian non-restricted models, the barrel will be 20 inches long, and will feature a 1 in 7 twist rate (this early production sample is 1:9). For the truly geeky, the barrels are AISI 4140 steel, have six grooves in the rifling that twist to the right, and have a corrosion-preventing salt bath nitride treatment internally.

More interesting is the way the barrels are assembled. They use an AR-15 style barrel extension that's threaded onto the breech, and then locked in place by a lock nut, allowing headspace to be set in much the same way as it is set on a Savage bolt action rifle. This allows for manufacturing tolerances to be compensated for while still obtaining appropriate headspacing. Conversely, AR-15s are more like Remington 700s, where precisely made barrel extensions are threaded onto precisely machined barrel tenons and tightened up against a shoulder machined onto the barrel profile. Also, due to the inability to thread the full length of an AR-15 barrel tenon right up the shoulder, a rebated area between the threaded portion and the shoulder creates a weak point in all AR-15 barrels where the chamber wall is both thinner and unsupported by the barrel extension. This isn't so on the Kel-Tec RDB barrel, as it is threaded beyond the extension and lock nut, meaning there is no rebated, thinner portion and the lock nut and barrel extension can completely support almost the entire chamber. In short, this is very strong gun.

Even more interesting still is that throwing a micrometer on what threaded portion of the breech tenon we can (most of its threaded length being inside the barrel extension and locknut) would seem to indicate that it's 13/16" in diameter, making it the same diameter as an AR-15 barrel tenon, meaning it is likely the same thread pitch as well. However, due to the locknut method of retention, the threaded portion of the barrel is substantially longer than an AR-15 tenon, at roughly one inch long (an AR-15's tenon is precisely 0.62" inches long before reaching the shoulder that the extension is tightened against). This, combined with what appears to be a gas port drilled (near as we can tell without removing the gas block) the same distance from the breech as you'd find on a rifle-length AR-15 barrel, would seem to indicate that the Kel-Tec RDB barrel is little more than a rifle-length AR-15 barrel with a fancy profile to support the gas block and sight rail/pin attachment points.

The bolt was clearly made with similar logic. Borrowing from the AR-15's bolt head obviously saves engineering time, but Kel-Tec has rounded the lugs; a feature many high-end AR-15 manufacturers are adopting to increase reliability. It operates on a cam pin that forces the bolt to rotate inside the carrier as the carrier is pushed fore and aft, and the cam pin is retained by the firing pin. If any of that sounds familiar, it should: It's basically the exact same principle as the AR-15's bolt operation. The only substantive differences are that there's a small spring between the bolt body and firing pin (serving to keep the firing pin to the rear during operation), and that the carrier is just an inch and a half long and suspended from an operating rod. Due to the bolt needing to traverse such a distance to eject a spent round, the shorter the bolt assembly, the shorter the receiver can be. The operating rod, by the way, also forms the gas piston and cycles fore and aft on a captive guide rod that lives inside it. The recoil spring driving the gun's operation is also captive, inside the operating rod.

Shooting Impressions

With most bullpups, the problem with them is twofold: The manual of arms is weird and the triggers are varying degrees of "remind me again why this is a better platform than a conventional gun." Generally, it seems like the farther a trigger is from the thing it's triggering, the worse it feels.

Not so with the Kel-Tec RDB. Truth be told, were we to close our eyes, the RDB trigger would be nearly indistinguishable from the well broken-in GI trigger in our Colt Canada rifles. Nearly. The break is uber-crisp, right around 4.5 pounds, and very consistent. There's no weird flexy-feeling hitchiness in it, nor any grit to be found; you pull back and after enough pressure is exerted, it just breaks. But, there's more overtravel than an AR-15's (not that it's excessive, just different), and the reset is both farther away and a lot less pronounced. There's none of the AR's nice tactile reset that you feel in the trigger, and even the faint audible snap the sear makes is noticeably far away, literally. It's like five inches from your ear and you'll never hear it with ear protection on. But, with that one caveat, it's fantastic.

And that's because Kel-Tec put a lot of thought into it. The trigger's important bits, the ones that contribute to feel, are packed right into the space above the trigger in a steel cage that completely encloses all the relevant components. When squeezed, the trigger releases the sear, which in turn releases a massive action bar that is pulled forward by dual parallel hammer springs housed above the pistol grip. This action bar splits ahead of the magazine well, runs down either side of the receiver, and intersects the hammer. As these action bars are pulled forward, they pull the massive (and weird) hammer forward, which pivots from somewhere near the bottom of the receiver and traverses damn near two and a half inches before it meets the firing pin at the back of the bolt carrier. It's very strange, but everything is contained within a steel substructure, and is obviously kept very rigid. It works and it works well.

In terms of operation, we did have some trouble with the Kel-Tec RDB that we initially and incorrectly thought was the result of certain magazines not feeding correctly. As it turns out, the issue lie with the gun's almost infinitely variable gas regulator. As delivered from the RCMP evaluation lab, the gas pressures were turned up as high as possible, leading to an issue with double feeds or rounds simply being driven into the breech face rather than the trigger. It reminded us of the issue we initially had with the Type 97, which was also caused by the regulator being turned up too high, so we simply adjusted the RDB's gas system until it worked. But, we should note that owners would be well served to find a magazine they like and stick to that one type, as doing so will really let you dial the gas system in. Gen 3 Pmags were the most widely reliably (they worked across the most gas settings), but Lancer mags let us turn the gas down the lowest for the softest recoil.

And boy, was it soft. Even with Pmags or USGI mags and the gas system turned up slightly, the RDB is a pussycat. Is it softer than an AR? Well, that's really difficult to say. We would lean towards "probably," if only because it did feel a bit softer and logically, all that extra bolt travel is just giving the gun a better chance to bleed off energy that'd otherwise be introduced to your shoulder. Fitted with some sort of compensator or brake, this thing would be absolutely hilarious in CQB matches; already comes back on target quickly and points like we wish our dog would and that's with an A2 birdcage on the end.

In terms of accuracy, this one is what we'd call rack grade with most of the bulk ammo we shoot most of the time, but we'd like to see what it could do with some 77-grain pills... especially with the commercial 1:7 twist barrels that consumer models will come with. However, due to the way the barrel is pinned to both the sight rail and chassis, it's quite the opposite of free floated so that may prove the limiting factor on the Kel-Tec RDB's accuracy. But if it'll shoot into two inches with generic 55- or 62-grain ammo? Well, that's what we expect from most service rifles (including those aforementioned far more expensive bullpups, so this doesn't disappoint.

Conclusion

And that brings us to the big question: The price. After all, a $3,000 rifle that shoots into two inches with bulk M855 ammo isn't as impressive as, say, one that accomplishes that same feat for $1,400. Which is precisely what the Kel-Tec RDB is. With pre-sale prices hovering right around that mark, the RDB is roughly twice as expensive as the cheapest centerfire bullpup rifle on the market (the Norinco Type 97), and roughly half the price of probably its closest competitor, the Tavor X95. And in terms of shooting performance, quality, intelligence of design, and overall "goodness," the Kel-Tec RDB punches well above its price point. It's definitely far closer to the Tavor end of the spectrum than the Type 97 end of the spectrum, and even if you ignore the bullpup format completely, at $1,400 the RDB represents a pretty damned good deal for a non-restricted, STANAG-fed black rifle of any shape.

An open letter to non-gun people that want to fix gun violence

Gun violence is oftentimes couched in medical terms; we hear of the epidemic of gun violence, or a rash of shootings. But here’s the reality: gun violence is not the disease. Gun violence is a symptom.

No gun has ever inspired one to commit violent acts. No one has ever merely held a gun, or gazed upon one, and spontaneously decided to go on an unbidden murderous rampage. In fact, oftentimes the opposite is true; the fact that even well-armed humans are naturally predisposed to avoid murdering one another was well documented during the First World War, as it was discovered many troops would shoot into the ground ahead of an enemy to dissuade their advance, rather than shoot the enemy. Most humans are simply hardwired for nonviolence.

So if guns don’t inspire violence why do we keep blaming the gun?

Simple: it’s the easiest reaction. To refer back to our medical analogy, it’s often far easier to identify the symptoms, putting the issue into the realm of the layman’s understanding. Just ask Nyquil, “The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so you can rest medicine.” What actual disease does it address? Who knows, and arguably who cares because when you feel those things, Nyquil will help. Except sometimes Nyquil doesn’t help. Because the symptoms belie a more serious issue.

Gun control is the Nyquil of the mass shooting. We don’t know what the cause is, but in the emotional turmoil of any such tragedy, the notion of simply deleting firearms from society feels like a swell panacea. In reality, it’s simply a band-aid over the proverbial bullet wound, successful only at currying political favour and pumping the desired voting blocks. For example, even with our existing gun control regime having been in place for decades, MP Bill Blair, former chief of the Toronto Police was quoted as saying, “I am familiar with the way in which people intent on criminal and violent criminal activities can at times obtain handguns both legally and illegally, and overwhelmingly they do it in an illegal fashion.”

In other words, to use Bill Blair’s language, when criminals obtain their firearms they overwhelmingly do so in an illegal fashion. In other words, the passage of any additional laws to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms will simply be adding to the compendium of laws they are already circumventing on a daily basis. Arguing that criminals obtaining guns illegally can be solved by banning more guns is analogous to saying the solution to the fentanyl crisis is simple as banning opioids… and we all know how well that’s worked (2,117 people died from fentanyl overdoses last year, roughly ten times the number of people murdered with a firearm).

A complex picture

It is one thing to state that guns are a symptom. It’s another to identify the root cause. As in most things in life, there’s no conclusive, black-and-white answer, and in many situations the root cause may be entirely different. But while each individual scenario is unique unto itself, there are recognizable trends, and it is within these recognizable trends that solutions to the majority of Canada’s gun crime can begin to be discussed.

According to the RCMP, 66% of all gun violence can be directly tied to organized crime. And yet, the RCMP Criminal Intelligence budget is roughly half that of the RCMP-run Canadian Firearms Program. The latter is charged with the oversight of a licensed population utterly devoid of violent criminals by definition, the former is charged with the interdiction of organized crime. Perhaps that’s a good place to start.

Bergara B-14 HMR: 1/2 MOA for $1500 or Less

Let's not beat around the bush: There is no such thing as that perfect, do-it-all, "one gun." Shooting, as with everything in life, requires compromise. Many of the features that make for a great hunting gun are precisely what make a terrible range gun; the light weight rifles many hunters praise for their ease of use afield equate to increased recoil on the range. Likewise, the heavy profile barrels preferred by target shooters are needlessly heavy for hunters that aren't concerned about the effects of a hot barrel, and the multi-way adjustable skeleton stocks that have become de rigueur among precision shooters are snag machines in the bush.

But, at the same time, as technology marches forward we have found ourselves beset by ever-better jacks of all trades. The cell phone in your pocket evolved from a touch-tone monstrosity barely better than the handheld radios it replaced into a device that can send and receive email, take better photos than most cameras did a few years ago, and has more computing power than the Apollo spacecraft that put man on the moon... with no compromise to your cell phone's ability to serve as a telephone (even if you never use it as one any more). Which brings us to the Bergara B-14 Hunting and Match Rifle, or HMR.

The formula is, if we're honest, achingly familiar: Take a precision rifle, reduce the barrel length to reduce weight, retain the detachable box magazine feeding system, and fit a stock that provides field-friendly simplicity with a modicum of adjustability. This is not a new idea. But due to two (or three, depending on how you look at it) reasons, where past efforts have fallen short of the mark, the Bergara B-14 HMR doesn't.

The B-14 Barreled Action

At the heart of every Bergara B-14 is, in short, an action inspired by the Remington 700. At a time when most manufacturers were pursuing barrel nuts and floating bolt heads in an effort to drive production costs down, Bergara set about figuring out how to improve what is arguably the world's most popular rifle action, and they've (somehow) managed to do so in a relatively cost-effective manner.

First, they took the conventional Remington 700 bolt and replaced the spring-steel, collar-style extractor with a huge Sako-style sliding extractor, the likes of which is actually even larger than the extractor you'd find in most custom Sako guns. The extractor on our 6.5 Creedmoor HMR measured right around 0.185 inches wide. Most popular custom extractors for fitting to a similarly chambered rifle come in around 0.177 inches. That translates into a better grip on the chambered round, and more reliable extraction.

Likewise, the feeding of the rifle has been improved by taking a cue from another venerable American rifle: the Winchester Model 70. That well-loved rifle best known as perhaps the ultimate version of the Mauser action included a relatively unique design feature now referred to as a conical bolt; a reference to the slightly rearward taper cut into the front of the bolt lugs. By so tapering the front of the bolt lugs, the breech face can be tapered to match, making the breech form something of a funnel into the chamber. This obviously greatly improves the reliability of feeding (especially on an uncontrolled feed rifle such as this) and makes the bolt closure smoother as the bolt's forward movement into battery is bearing on tapered forward surfaces.

But otherwise, the action is actually pretty basic, and very Remington 700-esque. In fact, Bergara is quite proud of the fact that their action will fit in, on and with nearly all Remington 700 stocks, triggers and accessories. As we wrote a few months ago in our review of the B-14 Timber (which features the exact same action), while the key improvements certainly are welcome, the biggest actual impact is in the general attention-to-detail that's evident in the B-14 action. Simply put, a stock B-14 action feels a lot like a worked-over Remington 700 action; it's that smooth and free of play.

Which brings us to the first of the key components that lets the HMR succeed where others have failed: The barrel.

Now, we could spend every available inch of page space discussing the specifics of Bergara's barrel production, but we won't. Instead we'll simply say this: When they first started making centerfire barrels, it was with none other than Ed Shilen showing them how. They purchase their raw stock from a steel manufacturer by the name of Olarra that's regarded as one of the best steel firms in Europe... and who is coincidentally located in the Basque region of Spain, alongside Bergara. The barrel blanks are straightened, and then drilled, before being treated to a three-step vertical honing/polishing process. This process brings the bore within 2 microns of being perfectly straight (a human hair is 60 microns) and gives it a mirror finish. Then the barrel is button-rifled, using a proprietary cutting lubricant, and heat-treated. Finally, they're cut, crowned, and finished. The result is a barrel that comes with a sub-MOA guarantee and that, in our experience, is capable of shooting into half that.

In the case of the HMR, that barrel is installed to a finished length of either 20 or 22 inches, depending on the calibre (6.5 Creedmoor uses the longer of the two), and a beefy #5 taper. This means the barrel tapers from 1.24" at the receiver to 0.75" at the muzzle, as opposed to the 0.65" the standard B-14 hunting rifles taper to. That 0.1" difference equates to a lot more mass in the barrel, which in turn helps the barrel resist heat buildup and the warping that heat brings with it. Finally, Bergara finishes the barrel off with a threaded muzzle for either brakes or suppressors (in countries with better laws than our own), and a recessed (but flat) crown. So if you do reside in a country with better laws than our own, you could indeed attach a Ljuddämpare to increase the stealth of your hunting trips!

6.5mm Creedmoor

Now, while the B-14 HMR in 308 is an undoubtedly effective rifle (no one needs to be reminded of the flexibility of the 308 Winchester round), it's the 6.5mm Creedmoor chambering that really elevates this rifle's capability. 6.5mm projectiles boast some of the best sectional densities and coefficients of drag out there. In fact, many 6.5mm Creedmoor loads actually manage to replicate the trajectory of the venerable 300 Winchester Magnum load, albeit without the punishing recoil that round often delivers. Furthermore, due to the sectional density imbued by the 6.5mm's long bullets, it's proving as effective at taking much of North America's game as it is at banging gongs at 1,000 yards. So, for a rifle that's billing itself as both a hunting and match rifle, this really is the round to shoot.

Bringing the Bergara HMR together

Finally, Bergara has fitted the HMR with probably it's most noticeable feature: The stock. Finished in a sort of speckled finish that's probably best associated with McMillan's various wares, the HMR stock features a simple adjustable cheek riser, length-of-pull that's adjusted via spacers between the stock and recoil pad, three conventional sling swivels (for the fitment of both a conventional field sling and bipod), four flush-mount QD sling mount cups, and a healthy grip section that's very "tactical" in nature... that is to say, it has a very vertical grip and is significantly cut-away over the thumb area.

Otherwise, the stock features a heavily inletted barrel channel that leaves no doubt about the barrel's free-floated nature, as well as an internal aluminum "mini-chassis" that's built into the stock. This provides consistent bedding, as the chassis features machined cradles to hold the action, which essentially replicates both stock pillars and conventional epoxy bedding. Furthermore, since the mini-chassis also features an integral recoil lug pocket, the recoil forces are spread throughout the stock, keeping everything in the same place.

Now, there's one thing we don't like about the stock that we need to get out in the open: It's plastic. Yes indeed, this is a molded plastic stock. However, it's not nearly as bad as the cheapo stocks found on entry-level rifles, obviously, but at the same time, its textured panels lack the bite of a fiberglass stock. However, we also recognize that the rifle's cross-purposes are best served by a stock that offers precision-rifle stock options at a field-rifle weight, and so the decision to go with injection molding is certainly an understandable compromise. It probably saves a few bucks, too.

Shooting the B-14 HMR

As with the Bergara B-14 Timber we tested last year, settling in behind the B-14 HMR was an experience dominated by one thing and one thing only: Accuracy. To be totally blunt, shooting the HMR feels very "conventional," largely due to the familiar feel of the Bergara action. With the ever-increasing number of three-lugged actions on the market, bolted into feature-festooned chassis systems, the simplicity of the B-14 HMR's action and design makes for a very transparent shooting experience in which the rifle plays a lot less of a role in dictating "how it shoots" than the performance it puts up. In other words, you're not always aware of 14 different stock adjustments you could make, nor are you reminded of how cutting-edge the action is every time you open it.

Instead, it simply reinforces what we've come to know about Bergara rifles: They shoot. Sighted in, our best group was just over half MOA, measuring 0.58 inches across. That same group, measured using the mean radius method, came in at 0.2 inches. That means every round in that five-shot group averaged just 0.2 inches from the point of aim. And that was hardly an outlier of a result; four of the seven varieties of ammunition were all averaging shots within 0.5 inches from our point of aim. Also, it's worth mentioning that all these groups were shot in windless, but very cold conditions with an ambient temperature that varied throughout testing from approximately -2 degrees centigrade to -12. This, combined with the relatively quick test strings we shot, would conspire to create some pressure variations and so we would expect the gun to perform even better in more humane conditions.

Off the bench, and in the field, the HMR handles well but is a bit heavy. Bare, our rifle came in a hair over nine pounds, so with the average hunting optic and scope mounts installed you're looking at a 10.5 to 11 pound rifle. That's a bit hefty, compared to a similarly outfitted dedicated hunting rifle such as the B-14 Timber, which comes in closer to 9 pounds once fitted with glass. However, the stock carried well, and it didn't have too many protuberances to snag either the brush or our clothing. We would, however, trade the 5-round AICS-style Magpul Pmag for a 3-round flush-fitting magazine for hunting season, just to trim the lines up a bit.

Conclusion

Well, we bought one, so there's your conclusion. At roughly $1,450, the value proposition of a gun that shoots factory loads into a half-MOA on a bad day and comes with a lifetime warranty is just too hard to turn down. It's what our better half probably wishes we were more of: Handsome, handy, and just plain useful. Oh, and relatively frugal, too. Still need to learn that lesson, I guess.

Korth PRS: America’s Gun, Germanified

Korth. For some gun aficionados, nothing more needs to be said. Builders in the tradition of ultimate European luxury brands, Korth are perhaps best known for revolvers with price tags that most people would find easier to associate with German cars than German guns. But that out-of-this-world pricing reputation which is the stuff of gun counter lore world wide is derived from their full custom stuff; the entry point is far more accessible. The starting point for a Korth revolver is around the starting point for a Rolex: five thousand dollars will put some of that European goodness in your hands, and it will sure be memorable. Korth revolvers are legendary.

But when Korth debuted the PRS a few years ago, they weren’t just bringing out another revolver which, no matter how incredibly well-constructed, was a fundamentally conventional, proven design. No, the PRS was something entirely new. It looked like a 1911 (or at least a 1911 as imagined by an android with a preference for angles over curves). It was chambered in .45 acp, and fed from 7 round, single stack 1911 magazines. So what’s the big deal? Another piece of high dollar 1911 art; isn’t that done to death at this point?

But this is not a 1911 at all. There is no Browning tilt-barrel short recoil system here; the very operating system named for the 1911’s designer has been replaced, and that most American of designs has been replaced with the most German possible alternative: roller-delayed blowback. Are you ready to step through the teutonic looking glass?

Korth PRS Operating Systems

A brief explanation of each recoil system is perhaps warranted here. The Browning design in the 1911 uses the rearward impulse of the gun's discharge to drive both barrel and slide back together, but the barrel very quickly engages the link and rotates downwards, tilting away from the slide and disengaging the barrel lugs from the slide lugs, allowing the slide to continue its rearward travel far enough to open the ejection port fully, toss out the spent brass, and pick up a new bullet from the magazine. The slide drives the cartridge forward, and close to the end of the forward travel the slide contacts the barrel and drives it forward, re-engaging the lugs as the barrel tilts back to horizontal.

The upsides to a Browning-style tilting barrel are fairly clear: one way or another, the barrel has to separate from the slide, so tilting the barrel clears it easily. There aren’t a lot of moving parts, and the leap that the cartridge has to make from the top spot in the magazine to the chamber is reduced, as the barrel tilts into a closer position.

The downsides are also fairly notable. Most importantly, perhaps, is that while there aren’t a lot of moving parts, the parts that are moving are really important ones, like the barrel. Imagine if your favourite rifle had a barrel that had to flop around loosely, independent of the receiver, between each shot. How do you feel about the impact that’s going to have on accuracy?

Fortunately, for every mechanical problem, there is an engineer out there somewhere working on a solution, and this solution was first attempted in the Sturmgewehr 45M. Now, we’ve taken some flak for our random mockery of communists, so this seems as good a time as any to take a poke at some of the worst socialists in history: the National Socialists. Yes, the Nazis were so utterly morally bankrupt that not even some of the most fascinating arms design in history could help save their depraved empire, which is now celebrated only by tiny groups of disturbed individuals who, apparently, don’t enjoy being on the side that actually won. But enough about the grotesque, murderous, all-powerful state that lost to (among others) people armed with two-dollar Liberator pistols; let’s get back to the engineering.

The roller delayed blowback which Mauser had prototyped in the Stg. 45M made it into production in the form of the German-designed, Spanish-built CETME Model 58, more commonly known simply as the CETME, the SIG SG 510, and, two years later and perhaps most famously, the Heckler und Koch G3 and later MP5. Yes, it’s very German.

The goal of the roller delay system is to allow a simple blowback operation to the gun, without having to make the bolt heavy to keep the chamber closed during firing through pure inertia. Instead, the bolt is a complex piece of machinery that consists, in part, of the breech face section which houses two rollers being driven outward into recesses machined into the slide, and a rear carrier which includes a wedge-shaped extension which is keeping those rollers held into their recesses when the slide is fully forward.

When the gun is fired, the carrier moves back immediately with the slide, withdrawing the wedge slightly. The rollers on the breech face section, which is pinned to the carrier through a slotted cutout to allow a couple of millimetres of travel, are now free to retract and ride inwards on the sloped lands of their recesses. When the breechface section runs out of travel and begins to move back with the carrier and slide, the rollers are no longer delaying the action from opening and the entire assembly moves backwards, extracting and ejecting the old brass, and picking up a new round on the way forward.

Advantages and disadvantages of the roller delayed blowback are, essentially, the reverse of the Browning tilt-barrel. The complexity of the system is fairly apparent: the two-part bolt and the rollers and everything in there means a lot of parts and pins and machining. But in the entire description of moving parts, what is conspicuously absent? The barrel. In a blowback gun, the barrel is often fixed. Remember the rifle with the moving barrel? A blowback gun can simply be a rifle. Accuracy with a barrel that stays in place is much, much easier to achieve.

Shooting the Korth PRS

Well, the theory is well established. The roller delayed blowback ought to be extremely accurate, and certainly the 1911 has taken its share of knocks from people who complain about its reliability. Is this linkless, stationary barrel the answer?

We set up with a dozen magazines from three different manufacturers, and factory ammo from Remington, Federal, and Winchester, and began to shoot.

Well, one thing we can tell you: the accuracy, even by 1911 standards, is superb. The recoil is very gentle; the trigger gives up nothing to any custom manufacturer and breaks cleanly at around two and a half pounds. The trigger, disconnector, hammer and sear are all straight-up 1911 parts so there’s no mistaking the feel of either the break or the reset and the mechanics of achieving excellence on both are well understood. It shows. Rested, we could shoot groups just over an inch at 25 yards.

But one thing we can tell you is that the Korth PRS is clearly designed to run in narrow operating envelopes. It is supplied with three different recoil springs, and if you want to maximize your performance you will need to spend some time learning what ammunition and magazine work the best with what spring. We found, for example, that with the “strong” recoil spring in place, Wilson 47D magazines with fresh springs worked quite well with American Eagle 230 grain FMJ, but Remington UMC would occasionally hang in the feed path, despite being nearly identical.

Similarly, older 47D magazines, Chip McCormicks, and Checkmates would all give failures to feed on the strongest recoil spring. The “medium” recoil spring is much more forgiving, slowing down the slide’s return to battery enough that the gun becomes more tolerant of varying ammunition, although we still had occasional glitches from Checkmate magazines, in particular with Winchester white box 230 grain FMJ.

Running the American Eagle from the legendary 47Ds turned the Korth PRS from a tack driver that would periodically, and unpredictably, refuse to feed, into a soft-shooting laser beam of power. Whether that combination would always be the answer, we’re not entirely sure; the PRS we were playing with is brand new, and it’s difficult to predict whether the recoil or main spring would settle down a bit and change the gun’s preferences, thus reducing the need for the fairly freshly-sprung magazines. That’s fairly probable, but it’s difficult to know for sure. At present, it appears that the the slide returns to battery so quickly that the bullets are stripped pretty aggressively out of the magazine, so cheap mags with vague feed path angles are not going to be your best option here.

On the other hand, if you buy a Korth PRS and expect to use cheap magazines full of bulk surplus ammo, we don’t really understand why you chose the gun in the first place. It’s not there to be a cheap plinker; this is a four-and-three-quarter thousand dollar statement piece for collectors who want to revel in luxury. Please do not take your Maybach to Walmart for new tires; please do not buy a Korth and then complain that it cost you five boxes of ammo to figure out its ideal combination. This is thin-end-of-the-wedge gun collector exotica and if you’d rather just have a Glock, do yourself a favour and buy one.

If the statement the Korth PRS makes is something that interests you, however, it can hang with the best pistols we've ever seen, accuracy-wise. This is one of the first pistols we’ve ever seen that made us start thinking about precision handloading for a handgun; it may be the first “service” pistol to warrant benchrest ammo. So there is definitely an exotic form of fun available to be had by shooting it.

But we wouldn’t dismiss the fun had simply by showing it to others, either. We showed it off plenty, and it never stopped being fun. Collectors take note: this is hands down one of the strangest, most interesting firearms to ever cross our desks, and shooting it is a rare privilege indeed.

Grey Ghost Minimalist Plate Carrier

If there's a trend sweeping the tactical gear world these days, it's minimalism. Gone are the days of immense chest rigs carrying thirty magazines, a full three days of rations, and a compact 4x4. No, the gear like the tactical chest rigs we wear these days has been cut down to bare bones for a few reasons: for one, light is fast. For another, if you get shot in the torso outside the borders of a rifle plate, chances are you're either dead from having your spinal column redistributed over a wide area, or you're going to live as long as you get medical attention, and a bunch of extra nylon stitched around the outside of the plate wont make a difference either way.

Now, you may be asking why a Canadian gun owner wants to have armour designed to stop rifle fire, and you're certainly within your rights to ask. However, we'll respond with a couple of comments: most obviously, we at Calibre spend an inordinate amount of time at the range, and while we see safe behaviours being adhered to almost universally, accidents do happen, and when we're forward of the firing line (as happens in some environments) we like to have the option of strapping on lifesaving equipment, and we think you should have the chance too. It's also worth noting that we have readers who work in armour, both in Canada and overseas, and we're more than happy to review products that might save a life.

The Grey Ghost Minimalist Plate Carrier is a stripped-down rig intended to carry two, ten-by-twelve inch hard armour plates, with just enough load carriage space and padding to be practical. We sent our intrepid reviewer to a three day medical, pistol and carbine class (itself to be reviewed in an upcoming issue) in it, and we can tell you it's very comfortable, very well built, and about as lightweight and high-speed as we've seen in a PALS/MOLLE carrier.

The only complaint we can come up with is this: the Minimalist won't work for smaller shooters. The shoulder straps simply run out of adjustment on little guys before the plates can be raised high enough to cover everything they need to cover. If your plates don't come up to the top of your sternum, they're too low.

If you're of the large to extra large persuasion, however, Grey Ghost plate carriers definitely meet our standards of durability and quality, and at a price tag that we think is extremely competitive. They're now offering the Minimalist in Hypalon fabric as well, for those of you who want light to mean ultralight.

Front and back are nearly identical, with six rows of webbing (or three magazines wide, if that's how you measure things) and loop material centre front for ID or morale patches. With no cummerbund section you do lose some space for pistol mags...but we can also tell you that during a battlefield medicine exercise, the Grey Ghost carrier was faster to pull off an unresponsive teammate than any other model we saw.

If you're big enough that the straps work for you, this carrier is tough to beat.

Styrka Optics

There’s no denying that the optics market has become almost absurdly crowded in recent years. In fact, Styrka says the same thing, essentially inviting visitors to their website to ask why they’d even launch a new brand of scope.

But Styrka is not exactly new. They don’t make the association public, but the century of experience with optics they reference is that of parent company Celestron, who launched the Styrka brand in 2014. It’s tough to argue with Celestron’s depth and breadth of optics knowledge, so why they’re quiet about the lineage we couldn’t really say. But the scopes, particularly for value-conscious shoppers, are pretty impressive.

We put some rounds downrange under two of them, the S3 3-9x40, which can be seen for under $300, and the S7 2.5-15x50, which reaches up a lot closer to four figures. It’s a little hard to plunk down money we’d usually expect to allot to a proven name, but then we’ve seen some upstart companies go from unknown to unbeateable in just a few short years, and Styrka is betting heavily on a proven business model: unflinching warranty support, no questions asked, on anything other than loss, theft, or intentional damage. But Styrka goes beyond just fixing problems. They’ll also do the maintenance. If you send in your optics (no word on exactly how this will work in Canada yet) they’ll clean and tune them for you, as often as once a year.

But how do the optics perform? Pretty well, it turns out. The glass is bright and crisp, the movements are positive and the zoom is very smooth. The bullet drop reticle is interesting: rather than working from a single ammunition, Styrka offers a smartphone app which includes a staggering array of ammunition selections, allowing the user to input data which the app uses to provide specific references for a particular bullet. For shooters interested in playing around with the app, it’s a really great idea. We’re not sure what percentage of buyers will want to spend that much time goofing around with their phones to figure everything out, but it’s such an interesting concept that we want to see it succeed. Apparently the early rendition of the app was buggy, but ours is working fine, so we’d ignore the low ratings for the time being.

The scopes are all clearly intended for hunting use, with capped turrets and low-profile, rubberized zoom rings, and we think they’ll handle field conditions quite well. In fact, we’d like to see some options for target turrets, because the side focus on the S7, combined with the bright glass and the 6x magnification range, made us think about keeping it for our budget .308 precision build.

The only thing we found a little strange was in fact listed by Styrka as a feature: the S7 has “blackened” glass at the edges for clarity. It’s certainly extremely clear glass, but at its lowest magnification, fast movement generates a bit of a bug-eyed feel as the image rolls off the darkened outer reaches of the field of view. It’s not overly distracting, but it took us a while to figure out what was causing the sensation.

The bottom line is that Styrka is a new wing of an optics powerhouse, building optics that are fairly well-priced and well above average in terms of optical quality. They are new to building optics for shooters, however, so while we trust the mechanics, we think it’s worth making sure the reticle options serve your needs before you commit, simply because they haven’t got decades of shooter feedback to inform their design. On the other hand, new kids always have something to prove, so service should be outstanding as they work to build their name.

For the money, you could sure do a lot worse.

BLK LBL Bipods Reviewed

Is the greatest tactical bipod in the world…Canadian?

Sometimes companies send us gear and our first reaction is skepticism. But fairly often they win us over, and in the end, we decide the product is pretty decent. That’s not what happened here, though. With the BLK LBL bipod, we started off skeptical, and ended up thinking that this might actually be the best bipod anywhere, period.

BLK LBL is all about efficiency. In addition to deleting all the vowels from their name, they’ve also eliminated the need for the awkward adapters that bipods always seem to require. A fully integrated rail/bipod solution, the BLK LBL is the lowest profile system we’ve ever seen, and unlike some of the factory integrated bipod solutions, a la Swiss Arms, the BLK LBL has a unique ball-socket interface between the rail and the legs of the bipod, allowing it to pan up to about fifteen degrees and tilt to forty, smoothly, in any direction or combination of directions.

The legs are individually, incrementally, adjustable from six and a half inches up to nine and a half, and seat firmly into their positions with a simple pushbutton lock. The feet are grippy and the bipod will hold a very solid position as you lean into the gun to pin it down, with no indication that anything will give way under load. The locking mechanism that keeps the legs in their open position is similarly robust and we were unable to jar the legs closed either during normal firing or during what we’ll call our “abusive handling test.” The entire system is simple and durable, with few moving parts and quality manufacturing throughout.

When the legs are folded in, they’re basically imperceptible, sitting flush within the rail system itself. So not only are there no mounts to break or adapters to adjust, there’s also no legs to snag on anything. For a pure target rifle, this might not seem like a big deal but for a field rifle? It’s a huge improvement. Besides which, the placement of the ball and socket joint around the barrel instead of below it makes for an extremely stable platform. It’s just a very well-thought out design.

Rails are available in AR15 and AR10 patterns, which covers virtually all of the tactical segment these days, but bolt gun-specific models are rumoured to be on the way, so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the meantime, we went to town on a pair of rifles: the ATRS Modern Hunter and the Tikka T3X TAC A1, both of which were fitted out with BLK LBL bipods and if there’s one thing we’re sure of, it’s that this system works. The specs are all there: everything structural is 7075; everything that can be lightened with 6061 has been. Steel parts are nitrided 416 stainless steel. By the time we started shooting we were hooked.

Granted, there are a couple of downsides: if your goal is unlimited modularity, well, this isn’t as modular as a universal rail with a conventional bipod bolted on. Of course, it’s also not as heavy as a bolted together setup. You can’t just remove the bipod, so your rail will always have a lower surface that’s a little more flexible than just a straight up rail, if that matters to you. It’s also not cheap, at $745 a throw for either model, but then if you add up the combined prices of a standard rail and bipod, you can reach that same figure pretty quickly.

You’re currently limited to a 14” or 16” rail length in either AR10 or AR15 platforms, at a weight of 735 grams, or 26 ounces. which is not exactly light, but on the other hand, puts the BLK LBL at a near-identical price and weight to a similarly sized quad rail and conventional bipod. The increasingly popular slick forends are a little lighter, of course, but in general the weight penalty of this system looks to be no more than about 6 ounces, or 175 grams.

The only other caveat is that when the bipod is extended, you’re exposing the underside of the barrel, so don’t go doing mag dumps and then grabbing the damn thing. We realize this is the equivalent of saying “don’t drive with your eyes closed” or “battery acid is not intended for human consumption” but if we don’t say something, we’ll get angry letters from somebody. This ain’t our first rodeo.

The bottom line here is that we don’t think there’s a better way to do bipods than this, and if you want a bipod built for the field, this is your huckleberry.

Calibre's Calibre - .221 Fireball

In the early 60s, Remington was working on building a highly accurate experimental pistol based on their Model 600 rifle. Called the XP-100, the actual gun was relatively easy to develop, but Remington wasn’t happy with the performance of the cartridges the XP-100 fired. Initially chambered in .222 Remington, the 10-3/4” barrel fitted to the XP-100 did not allow for a complete burn of power, leading to massive muzzle flashes… not a desirable trait when trying to build a long-range hunting and target pistol.

So, Remington shortened their .222 Remington case and reduced the total powder charge appropriately, and named this new round the .221 Fireball. Like the .223 that came later, .221 still (confusingly) used the same .224” bullet as the .222, but burned a smaller volume of faster burning powder. The result was 40-55 grain bullet travelling at speeds that hovered right around 2,700 feet per second from the XP-100’s short barrel, and a SAAMI approved maximum chamber pressure of a whopping 52,000 copper units of pressure. That’s more than the slower-burning .222 was rated for (46,000) and equal to the maximum CUP pressure for .223 Remington. It also made the .221 Fireball the fastest pistol round ever created; a record that still remains today.

But while the .221 Fireball has seen some use in the XP-100 as well as a handful of rifles, including the Remington 700 and CZ 527 carbine, its effect has stretched far beyond its use. A favourite among wildcatters, the .221 Fireball has been necked down to create .17 Remington Fireball, and necked all the way up to .30-calibre, where it’s lent its case to the far more popular .300 Whisper and .300 Blackout rounds. It’s even been turned back into a quasi-pistol round in the form of the 6x35mm PDW calibre created by Knights Armament for use in their PDW submachine gun.

As a round that remains popular among a very small but devoted subset of shooters, the .221 Fireball’s success has been moderate. Like the XP-100, it’s still out there, bagging varmints and banging targets alike, but history will remember it more for the contributions it has made as a parent case more than its actual commercial viability.

Retay Masai Mara: Budget Benelli

When I first got into shooting in a big way, it was with a shotgun in my hands… not because I was initially attracted to shotguns in any remarkable way, but rather out of simple convenience: as a young(er) guy living in a suburb of Vancouver, the nearest rifle range was at least an hour away, while the local trap club was literally just down the road. So, while I initially loved shooting rifles first and foremost, I found myself spending more and more time behind a smoothbore because it was easier trigger time to get. Got an hour free on Sunday morning? Sounds like a great time to shoot some clay. An unexpected Wednesday afternoon off? Yeah, I could shoot for an hour or two. Of course, like so many other clayshooters, those hour or two sessions turned into dawn-to-dusk days. Thousands of Winchester AA hulls were processed across my reloading bench every week as I strove to claim a perfect score on the sporting clays course. And eventually, I ended up getting hooked on Olympic Trap; the same form of trap that is (not shockingly) shot in Olympic competition.

The only downside to shooting Olympic Trap is the cost. If you peruse the shotgun rack at any serious Olympic Trap tournament, you’ll see more shotguns with five-figure price tags than without. If you aren’t shooting a Perazzi or a Beretta DT, someone will ask you why you’re not; they’re that common. Which leads to some serious gun snobbery.

But a young journalist’s budget is far more comfortable with a used Remington 3200 than it is custom Perazzi. And so, while I was never really able to embrace the glorious levels of snobbery I witnessed, I did learn a lot about the justification for buying such guns (and there are very real reasons). The flip side is that it gave me a lot of insight into what makes a cheap shotgun, well, cheap.

And at the time, many of the cheapest shotguns in Canada were coming from Turkey. One thing you learn very fast when you’re shooting 700 or a thousand rounds in a given week is what is, and is not, reliable. And pretty much everything Turkey made back then was definitely not. Some still aren’t.

Since then, it’s become apparent that many Turkish shotgun manufacturers have learned, evolved, and in some cases even innovated and the products that result are quite good. The Retay Masai Mara is one such gun.

The sincerest form of flattery…

So let’s get something out of the way immediately: this is basically a Benelli. In fact, if you squint, it even kind of looks like the inertia-driven Italian guns it emulates. A relatively unique operating system largely pioneered and championed by Benelli, inertia-driven guns use springs, mass, and momentum to operate, and are highly regarded by many shooters due to both their light-shooting nature and cleanliness.

In an inertia-driven gun, a multi-lug rotating bolt is pinned to the carrier and operates on a cam in the bolt carrier, and rotates into locking lugs on the barrel as the bolt is closed to bring the action into battery. Behind the bolt, between the bolt and its carrier, is what’s known as an inertia spring.

When the gun is fired, the inertia spring actually allows the gun to essentially recoil around the bolt carrier, which is momentarily held in place by the momentum of its own mass (an object at rest staying at rest and whatnot). As this happens, the locked bolt moves rearward into the bolt carrier, compressing that inertia spring. Once the energy stored in that now-compressed spring surpasses the energy of the recoil, the spring pushes the bolt and bolt carrier apart, initiating rearward bolt carrier travel as the bolt is still locked to the breech. The carrier goes rearward, the bolt unlocks, extraction and ejection occur, and when the bolt reaches the limit of its rearward travel the whole process begins anew as the action spring presses the bolt home.

The benefit is, as mentioned, twofold: cleanliness and light recoil. The former is a result of the gun not using any of the combustion gases to operate. These guns stay extremely clean and are easier to clean due to their simplicity. Usually all you need to do is wipe off the bolt head and swab the barrel. The latter is a result of some of the recoil energy being absorbed by the inertia spring, and the sort of spring-assisted equilibrium that inertia-operated guns work off of.

… with a side of innovation

While the bolt assembly looks like it’s been lifted from a Super Black Eagle, the Retay Masai Mara does differentiate itself from its inspiration somewhat with one unique feature that I don’t recall having seen on a semi-auto shotgun: a removable trigger. With the gun cocked and the bolt forward, pressing a tiny button on the trigger mechanism releases a latch at the back, allowing the entire assembly to be pulled downward and out of the gun. This obviously makes cleaning the Masai Mara extremely easy, but as the Retay documentation reminds us, is also something of a safety feature. Simply remove the trigger, lock it up somewhere, and you have an inert gun. Honestly, it struck me as a bit of a silly feature before the gun arrived, but once I’d taken the trigger out it really started to make more sense. Legitimately, it will make cleaning and lubricating the trigger a lot easier, and that means it’s something you’re more likely to do regularly… and that, of course, aids reliability.

Quality Impressions

So, on to the issue I’d taken with most Turkish shotguns in the past: the quality. Honestly, it’s good. Is it as good as a Benelli? No, but Benellis are probably among the best finished semi-auto shotguns on the market, and the Retay is between $700 and $1200 cheaper than the Super Black Eagles it approximates. So no, you won’t find the same exquisite finishes, and superlative machining you’d find with one of those more expensive guns. But it’s well beyond what we’d call serviceable.

For example, the bolt carrier shows signs of having been fitted, with some apparent stoning of its rails. That’s nice, because it means care has been taken to ensure the gun fits together well, but the evidence of the fitting work is rougher than you’d find on other guns; the files obviously being coarser. The bolt itself bears signs of having been tumbled to remove machine marks prior to chrome plating, which again is a nice step to see to ensure a good chromed surface, but tumbling such items can lead to marks on protruding components and so we found one small imperfection on the back of a bolt lug where the corner of the lug obviously tumbled against another hardened thing. But again… for substantially less money, do you really care if there’s a pinhead-sized ding in the back of a bolt lug on your duck gun? We sure don’t, and if you do, we’d remind you that $1200 can buy a lot of Molson products with which to wipe those cares away.

Now the quality of the removable trigger assembly, on the other hand, is above reproach. The shell lifted is nicely shaped to avoid eating your thumb during loading, and the quality of the trigger components is excellent. Retay was smart and ensured everything is properly retained, so you can’t accidentally release a lever and watch a spring sail across the room, and all the various pins holding it all together are either staked in place or held in place with locks. And all the components are very well finished. Honestly, the quality of the stampings and machined parts exceeds that which we’ve come to expect from American shotguns, and it’s absolutely bereft of plastic parts. Even the trigger guard is aluminum, which is something that we wish wasn’t so noteworthy these days!

The barrel features a removable ejector, in case you ever beat the original one into submission, and has a single fiber optic front bead on a low vented rib. The gun comes with a full complement of five chokes. In fact, it’s actually worth mentioning that the Retay Masai Mara actually comes in one of the nicest packages we’ve ever seen, coming in a locking case (with very interesting internal metal hinges), with chokes, choke tool, sling swivels, a reasonably sized bottle of oil, stock adjustment inserts, a snap cap and plenty of excellent documentation. The owner’s manual is 128 pages long and includes both detailed take down instructions and exploded diagrams with parts labelled and numbered.

Once assembled, the gun fits together well, too. It’s one of those guns where everything is “just tight enough” to feel well put together but not forced. Try as we might, we couldn’t get any flex or wiggle from the fore end, and the stock is equally solid. At the back, a nice and thick recoil pad is fitted, and works well. And of course while Retay makes the Masai Mara in various finishes, the one pictured here is obviously their camouflage finish, which is a properly licensed Realtree Max 5. It appears to be your standard hydrographic finish, so its reasonable durable, but we did notice some chips in the finish on sharp edges like those on the rear of the barrel. Of course, being an obvious duck or goose gun, it probably wouldn’t take long before those were the least noticeable imperfections… at least with my luck.

Use

Given how well everything is assembled, the Retay Masai Mara did exactly what you’d expect afield; it approximated the performance of a Benelli in darn near every way. It weighs about the same, it handles about the same, and as far as I can tell it throws pretty much the same patterns. Honestly, if you were dumb enough to carry a gun with your eyes closed, you’d be totally capable of thinking your Retay was a Benelli. If anything, the one difference seemed to be that the Retay Masai Mara shot even softer than the last Benelli I shot… but that’s always a hard phenomenon to measure unless you’re doing it back to back. In any case, the Mara is a seriously soft shooter.

Now, the one downside to the Benelli inertia system is known as the “Benelli click.” This is the sound a Benelli makes when you pull the trigger on one when the bolt hasn’t gone back into battery. Because the only thing pushing the bolt back is the energy contained in the inertia spring, the strength of the action spring is limited; too strong and the inertia spring would not be able to cycle the action completely or hold the action completely closed if the gun is bumped.

Retay claims the Masai Mara is impervious to this. They’re wrong. In about -7, with a lot of wind, and shooting the gun nearly vertical, the combination of gravity and cold, thick gun oil did cause it to click a couple times. Switching oils prevented any additional issues, but it’s something owners should be aware of. Oh, and you’ll want to run these relatively wet; don’t give that bolt any reason to stick instead of slide.

Otherwise, we didn’t have any issues with the gun. The safety is a bit smaller than most modern guns, and with gloves it can be a bit finicky, but that feels like a thoroughly “first world problem.” It loads easily, shoots reliably, and will probably only get better with some wear and break-in.

Overall, with an MSRP of $1200, the Retay Masai Mara is a great way for someone on a budget to get into an inertia-driven gun. They’re quite a treat to shoot, and with the combination of the gun being such a practical package for the price, and the excellent way it’s presented with the locking case, chokes, accessories and documentation it seems like an excellent gun for someone that’s newer to the market. There’s a lot of value in all those various bits and pieces, and when it’s all put together it really does provide a turn-key, field-ready package for hundreds less than its nearest competitor.