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Field Ethos
Guest
By Terry Houin
As 2025 races toward its final curtain call, I find myself sitting in my own house for a change—coffee in hand, scrolling through photos from this year’s “work” trips. Somewhere between the caffeine and the memories, I started taking stock of the gear I tested this year—some new, some long-time favorites that continue to earn their place.
In true Uncle Terry fashion, I figured I’d share a few standouts and my honest take on them. This won’t be a deep technical dive—more of a quick, down-and-dirty recap from the field. I’ll break it into my two areas of perceived expertise: hunting and shooting. This campfire chat will focus on the hunting gear.
I answer more questions or provide my opinion on the “Big 3” than probably any other topic from our readers and followers, so it seems natural to start here for the hunt edition.
We’ll start with the bangers, literally, and of course my favorite was the quietest of them all, my Fix SD by Q. This year I wanted to focus on the challenge of learning and hunting with subsonic ammo, and my 8-inch 8.6 Blackout made it not only fun but challenging as shit with ballistics.
Continuing the theme of challenging myself for no other reason than I want to was hunting birds with the .410. This Spring I knew shooting a gobbler in the face with the old 12 gauge was typically an easy task, so jumping down to the smallest gauge commercially available seemed par for the course this year. Chasing thunder chickens and some uplanders with the CZ Drake .410 did not disappoint. There’s something about shooting .410s and 22s that make you feel like a kid again.
I’ll round out the gun section with what I’d call a great lightweight, all-purpose rifle, which I took to Africa for the 3rd annual FE Outrider x Crusader hunt, the Browning X Bolt 2 Speed SPR chambered in 7mm PRC. This rifle is light, accurate, and easy to sling around the mountain or shove in the seat next to you while on Safari.
Glass is what separates most hunting rigs, and it’s something my old eyes can judge immediately—what’s good, what’s acceptable, and what’s absolute ass. I’ll cover more optics in the shooting section, but on the hunting side I leaned hard on two proven, trustworthy scopes this year.
For my subsonic work, it’s tough to beat the venerable Leupold Mk5 HD 2–10x with the illuminated FFP TMR reticle. Any animal inside 500 yards is in trouble with this optic. It’s compact, fast to acquire targets, and the low-light performance is exactly what you want when the clock is running out at dawn or dusk.
For my “normal” hunting setup—African plains game, western elk, and everything in between—I run the Nightforce NX8 2.5–20x with the illuminated MOAR F1 reticle. If there’s one answer I should have on autofill every hunting season, it’s my preferred magnification range: start low at 2–3x and top out around 18–20x. That spread gives you a wide field of view for close work and enough magnification to make precise shots when distance demands it.
I also favor cleaner reticles like the MOAR and TMR. I’ll dial my elevation and hold for wind—simple, uncluttered, and effective when it matters.
On the glass theme, but the handheld variety, I used two products this year that truly made a difference in my capabilities. The Revic BR10’s which I’ve written about before and mentioned several times this year. If you want to make one significant upgrade in your system this year, look at the Revics. Great glass, powerful rangefinder, precise ballistic solver, and onboard environmental sensors. Hit the button and shoot the dope it tells you, it’s that simple.
The other set of binos I fell in love with for chasing western game is the Sig Zulu 6 HDX Pro image stabilized binocular. It took a bit to get them dialed in for my eyeball, as the 16x is powerful and the diopter adjustment could be a little finer, but once they were set, my lord, finding animals at distance was stupid simple. These are so good in the wide-open spaces that my friend/client Bubbles could even spot sheep in the crags past 300 yards.
The curious mind of Uncle T is always interested in shooting new bullet designs into animals and sometimes pushing limits on what they were intended to do theoretically. We’ll start with the easy one first.
For birds, Fiocchi Golden Turkey TSS #9 did exactly what it was supposed to do. Although I shot my bird in the face at roughly 15 feet, not exactly pushing limits, my hunting partner dusted one at 30 yards—technically past our self-imposed limit, but what the hell. I also packed Fiocchi Field Dynamics #6 and #7 for a West Texas deer hunt and managed to keep the appetizer tray full with plenty of quail for the group.
On the rifle side I stuck primarily to Barnes VOR-TX LR with excellent results at distance on animals on a couple different continents. And to feed my curiosity I had an unhealthy relationship with subsonic 8.6 Blackout this year, taking several animals out to 352 yards with impressive terminal performance.
I tested multiple loads, but kept coming back to Just Cause 350 and 352 Maker bullets, along with the Discreet Ballistics 280-grain Selous. When something consistently works across conditions, distances, and species, it earns repeat business—and those did.
Keep asking questions, I truly love sharing my knowledge of things and such with our audience. This was a brief rundown of the Big 3 from a hunting perspective, and I’ll be back soon with another edition focused on shooting things with pistols and long-range rifles.
The post Uncle T’s Best of ‘25 — Hunting Edition appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
As 2025 races toward its final curtain call, I find myself sitting in my own house for a change—coffee in hand, scrolling through photos from this year’s “work” trips. Somewhere between the caffeine and the memories, I started taking stock of the gear I tested this year—some new, some long-time favorites that continue to earn their place.
In true Uncle Terry fashion, I figured I’d share a few standouts and my honest take on them. This won’t be a deep technical dive—more of a quick, down-and-dirty recap from the field. I’ll break it into my two areas of perceived expertise: hunting and shooting. This campfire chat will focus on the hunting gear.
The Big 3 — Guns, Glass & Ammo
I answer more questions or provide my opinion on the “Big 3” than probably any other topic from our readers and followers, so it seems natural to start here for the hunt edition.
Guns
We’ll start with the bangers, literally, and of course my favorite was the quietest of them all, my Fix SD by Q. This year I wanted to focus on the challenge of learning and hunting with subsonic ammo, and my 8-inch 8.6 Blackout made it not only fun but challenging as shit with ballistics.
Continuing the theme of challenging myself for no other reason than I want to was hunting birds with the .410. This Spring I knew shooting a gobbler in the face with the old 12 gauge was typically an easy task, so jumping down to the smallest gauge commercially available seemed par for the course this year. Chasing thunder chickens and some uplanders with the CZ Drake .410 did not disappoint. There’s something about shooting .410s and 22s that make you feel like a kid again.
I’ll round out the gun section with what I’d call a great lightweight, all-purpose rifle, which I took to Africa for the 3rd annual FE Outrider x Crusader hunt, the Browning X Bolt 2 Speed SPR chambered in 7mm PRC. This rifle is light, accurate, and easy to sling around the mountain or shove in the seat next to you while on Safari.
Eye Candy
Glass is what separates most hunting rigs, and it’s something my old eyes can judge immediately—what’s good, what’s acceptable, and what’s absolute ass. I’ll cover more optics in the shooting section, but on the hunting side I leaned hard on two proven, trustworthy scopes this year.
For my subsonic work, it’s tough to beat the venerable Leupold Mk5 HD 2–10x with the illuminated FFP TMR reticle. Any animal inside 500 yards is in trouble with this optic. It’s compact, fast to acquire targets, and the low-light performance is exactly what you want when the clock is running out at dawn or dusk.
For my “normal” hunting setup—African plains game, western elk, and everything in between—I run the Nightforce NX8 2.5–20x with the illuminated MOAR F1 reticle. If there’s one answer I should have on autofill every hunting season, it’s my preferred magnification range: start low at 2–3x and top out around 18–20x. That spread gives you a wide field of view for close work and enough magnification to make precise shots when distance demands it.
I also favor cleaner reticles like the MOAR and TMR. I’ll dial my elevation and hold for wind—simple, uncluttered, and effective when it matters.
On the glass theme, but the handheld variety, I used two products this year that truly made a difference in my capabilities. The Revic BR10’s which I’ve written about before and mentioned several times this year. If you want to make one significant upgrade in your system this year, look at the Revics. Great glass, powerful rangefinder, precise ballistic solver, and onboard environmental sensors. Hit the button and shoot the dope it tells you, it’s that simple.
The other set of binos I fell in love with for chasing western game is the Sig Zulu 6 HDX Pro image stabilized binocular. It took a bit to get them dialed in for my eyeball, as the 16x is powerful and the diopter adjustment could be a little finer, but once they were set, my lord, finding animals at distance was stupid simple. These are so good in the wide-open spaces that my friend/client Bubbles could even spot sheep in the crags past 300 yards.
Freedom Seeds
The curious mind of Uncle T is always interested in shooting new bullet designs into animals and sometimes pushing limits on what they were intended to do theoretically. We’ll start with the easy one first.
For birds, Fiocchi Golden Turkey TSS #9 did exactly what it was supposed to do. Although I shot my bird in the face at roughly 15 feet, not exactly pushing limits, my hunting partner dusted one at 30 yards—technically past our self-imposed limit, but what the hell. I also packed Fiocchi Field Dynamics #6 and #7 for a West Texas deer hunt and managed to keep the appetizer tray full with plenty of quail for the group.
On the rifle side I stuck primarily to Barnes VOR-TX LR with excellent results at distance on animals on a couple different continents. And to feed my curiosity I had an unhealthy relationship with subsonic 8.6 Blackout this year, taking several animals out to 352 yards with impressive terminal performance.
I tested multiple loads, but kept coming back to Just Cause 350 and 352 Maker bullets, along with the Discreet Ballistics 280-grain Selous. When something consistently works across conditions, distances, and species, it earns repeat business—and those did.
Uncle T’s Take
Keep asking questions, I truly love sharing my knowledge of things and such with our audience. This was a brief rundown of the Big 3 from a hunting perspective, and I’ll be back soon with another edition focused on shooting things with pistols and long-range rifles.
The post Uncle T’s Best of ‘25 — Hunting Edition appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
