Outdoor Life Newswire

After watching a soldier carrying his gun, street musician Cesar Lopez of Bogota, Columbia, decided to fashion a guitar out of a rifle and use it to protest violence. So, one wonders, was he being ironic, then, when he picked a vintage Winchester rifle as the base for his instrument? After all, Winchester did build rifles that “won the West” as well as the vaunted “peacemaker” six-shooter.

Lopez calls the contraption an escopetarra (that’s guntar to us gringos). Escopeta is Spanish for rifle and guitarra for guitar.  No matter how nicely the guntar sounds, though, we doubt its music will match the sweet sounds made by the Winchester before it was mangled.

The Miami Herald has the complete story including a photo gallery.

We’ve gotten a tremendous response from our gun reviews at the SHOT Show. Here, our gear editor, John Snow, talks about the pros and cons of two big-game calibers, the .45-70 and the .450 Marlin in response to one commenter's question. Look for an exclusive gear blog to launch soon with plenty of gun reviews.

"I'm planing to buy a 45-70 or a .450 Marlin, but I can't decide. I was wondering, can you shoot the new LeverEvolution ammo in a regular 45-70 and can you shoot regular 45-70 ammo in the new Marlin XLR?"

Lever Action Ammo

The .45-70 and .450 Marlin are both hard-thumping big game killers. It would be difficult to definitively recommend one over the other. The two calibers are kissing cousins, in regards to ballistics. They use the same bullets, though the .450 Marlin does have about a 100-200 fps edge in velocity for any given factory load. I doubt any animal would be able to tell the difference. Truth is, you won't go wrong with either.

You can put your mind at ease about using the new ammo in older lever actions or older ammo in the new XLRs - all those combinations will work together just fine. In theory you should see a slight advantage in the accuracy of the XLRs when shooting the LeverEvolution ammunition. At least that's what Marlin's engineers had in mind when they gave the XLR rifle barrels a slightly faster rate of twist. But as with any rifle you buy you should make a point of shooting as many different types of ammo through it as you can. The different levels of accuracy you'll see may surprise you.

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Marlin XLR .45-70 & Hornady LeverEvolution ammunition

by John Snow

Another of the interesting guns we’ve seen at the SHOT Show is the new Marlin XLR series of lever-action guns. Working in conjunction with Hornady, Marlin is upgrading four of their models to take advantage of Hornady’s brand new Lever Evolution ammunition. For those that haven’t heard about this ammo, the concept behind it is quite innovative. In essence, Hornady’s engineers have produced a line of pointed bullets that are safe for use in the tube magazines found on lever guns. The advantage of this is that lever-gun fans now have the option of running bullets that are much more ballistically efficient than traditional flat- or round-nosed designs through their rifles. How it works is that the plastic material used to give the bullets their spitzer shape is soft enough so that even under heavy recoil there is no chance that one bullet will accidentally ignite the primer of the cartridge in front of it in the magazine. The material used to form the tips of the bullets deforms under pressure and then snaps immediately back to its original shape. According to Hornady, the gains in performance are significant. Cartridges like the .45-70, ,450 Marlin, .444 Marlin, .30-30 and .35 Rem. that suffer from rainbow-like trajectories after 100 or so yards can now reach out much longer distances.

Prior to the opening of the SHOT Show, manufacturers give us the chance to test some of the new firearms, optics and ammo that are being introduced this coming year. As you can imagine, it’s hard not to have fun with a bunch of new firearms and nearly endless supply of ammo at your disposal for a day. A rough job, but someone needs to do it, no? First up, John Snow (OL’s gear editor) reviews Remington’s new shotgun, the 105 CTi. There’s a lot of buzz at the show about this gun.

Remington 105 CTi

by John Snow

Remington’s new shotgun, the 105 CTi, is a sleek, very handy new autoloader that doesn’t weigh much and has, especially for it’s light weight, very little felt recoil. We’re slated to give the 105 CTi a thorough review during our annual gun test—which will take place near Shooting Editor Jim Carmichel’s Tennessee home in a few weeks—so I won’t go into great length here, but I have no doubt that avid shotgunners will be interested to learn about this new gun.