Colonel Townsend Whelen is a legend among marksmen and outdoorsmen alike. His exploits spanned the Spanish American war to the Canadian wilderness, to even running the Frankford Arsenal.

It’s really a shame that more people don’t know of him. So let’s fix that.

Fellow blogger Sunshine Shooter competed in Desert Brutality 2019, a match that emphasizes physical toughness of you and your equipment.

In this post, you’ll get a sense of what Desert Brutality is all about as an event, and some tips for competing in future iterations.

During our series on load carriage, we’ve gone over all of the most common methods available. Now it’s time to talk about where to put all that extra stuff: the assault pack.

The Vedder Light Tuck holster has been my go-to CCW holster for over a year. I thought it was time to do a write up about this great American-made holster.

In Q2, I wanted to start competing in local matches. As a point of commitment, I registered for a match about an hour away. My equipment probably isn’t up to snuff, and my skills are certainly rusty, but that’s ok.

Let’s talk about my match and what you might have coming up.

I collect manuals and books dealing with the Cold War era. Today, I want to take a closer look at one of those books. I find this particular one relevant to the topics of community defense and working with a team to provide security.

With this post, we turn our attention to the chest rig. The main focus of my article is on the standalone versions of the chest rig, but the information applies just as readily to plate carriers and other ways of moving the load higher on the torso.

We last left off from this tale in 1955, where Gerald Gustafson and William Davis had their funding cut off for any further research into small-caliber high-velocity (SCHV) cartridges. The Army Ordnance Board, responsible for developing new small arms, was well down the path to adopting the 7.62 NATO and M-14 rifle. The AR-15 seemed dead, and it might have been if not for the Army Infantry Board.

This post continues our look at load carriage by focusing on more traditional load bearing equipment. Before we get into my personal setups, I want to talk a little bit about how load carrying gear evolved over time.

For whatever reason, I don’t think the Trijicon battery-powered LED ACOGs have gained as much traction as they deserve. The classic combat optic paired with an efficient LED emitter is a great combination, and I want to take a deeper look at it. In particular, I’m going to review my TA-110 ACOG with the horseshoe-dot reticle and green LED illumination.