Great Gadgets For Shooters

Anything that makes your favorite sport more fun, more rewarding, or easier is a welcome gift. For a shooter, there are a lot of great options at a variety of prices. Here are a few great gift ideas for the shooter in your life.

Shooting Vest For Women

Hey, just because a company throws some pink trim on a shooting vest, that doesn't mean it's great for women. Women are built differently than men, and a well-fitting vest is extremely important in a sport where lifting a shotgun to your shoulder quickly and perfectly is vital.

If a woman yells "PULL!" and her gun catches on the loose fabric of her shooting vest, odds are she's going to miss that clay pigeon, and that's going to put her in a bad mood.

Men, save your marriage and get your woman a great-fitting shooting vest. My wife wears a MizMac vest and she loves it. She's had it for years and it fits and looks great on her.

MizMac shooting vests have Velcro adjustments for a perfect fit in the waist, and elastic comfort seams on the sides. The non-slip pad looks and feels like leather and there is a pocket there for a recoil pad. There is a hidden zipper pocket in the divider of the main pockets at the front, and the expandable pockets have hidden snaps.

If you're a reloader, the back pouch will hold over 100 hulls, and there is also a spare shell holder with Velcro flaps. The metal clips on the back hold your competition number; there's plenty of room if you want to get your name embroidered on the shoulder, and every vest has a lifetime warranty.

MizMac vests come in great colors like hot pink, turquoise, navy, and purple. Right now, there are close-out sales and you can get one of these great vests for as little as around $30. See them at mizmac.com.

Shooting Cart

When sporting clays is your game, you can cover a lot of ground in a day, and the whole time you're lugging around box upon box of shells, your shotgun, and any other gear you might need - like water, maybe a snack, and a multi-tool in case there's a problem. This can get old in a hurry, especially if it's hot out and you're trudging along on the big course at Ben Avery where shade is scarce.

The solution is a shooting cart. I see lots of these at Ben Avery and they are the nuts. They look a bit like one of those fancy baby strollers, but instead of a baby, they hold shotguns and gear. They are specifically built for a certain number of guns.

RuggedGear.com has a variety of them for two, three, or four guns. They have features like a swivel wheel with a lock lever, rear pockets, gun holders with soft Neoprene, a hand towel, compartments for carrying long guns muzzle up or down, drink holders, a folding shelf, accessory bag, flat-free tires, and an ammo-reloading tray.

Even with all those features, they start at around $230 for a two-gun cart and they're worth every cent. A four-gun cart will run you a bit over $400 at ruggedgear.com.

Leatherman Pocket Tools For Shooters

The Leatherman Pump is a multi-tool for shotgunners. It has four bits, a scope-adjustment tool, a gut hook, wrenches, choke tube tool and disassembly punch. Any shooter would be delighted to find one of these in his stocking Christmas morning.

If your shooter is more of an AR kind of guy, Leatherman has that covered as well. The Leatherman Rail has a front sight adjustment tool, tactical rail wrench, bit driver with a #2 Phillips, a ¼-inch flat, 7/16 Allen and a #15 Torx bits, as well as a tool punch, oxygen bottle wrench, and carabiner.

The Pump is $32 at Leatherman.com and the Rail is $24 at Knifecenter.com.

Real Avid Tools

The RealAvid Gun Tool Plus is ideal for the shooter who likes both rifles and shotguns and frequently heads to the range with both. It combines 18 of the most commonly used tools for rifles and shotguns into one compact item.

It has a gun-pin punch, choke wrench for all gauges, three Torx drives, Allen hex wrenches, a driver with a bunch of bits, and even a bore light, all packed into a handy pocket tool with a stainless steel frame that is perfect to toss into your range bag.

You can get it on sale right now at cabelas.com for about $22.

Rangefinder

Every shooter understands how critical knowing distance is. Some guys seem to have a natural talent for estimating yardage, but others aren't blessed that way. A rangefinder will help even out the field.

There are many different options, and you can spend from under $100 to well over $2500, depending on how fancy you want to get. There are binoculars and scopes with built-in range finders as well. You can even get night vision.

But, if all you want is a good, sturdy, compact unit that will tell you just how far away that target is, check out the Bushmaster Bone Collector at cabelas.com. It's on sale right now for $149 and it will show you the exact distance with +/- one yard accuracy.

It is simple to operate, small enough to stick in a pocket, and it has great optics even in low light. This is a great price on a really good rangefinder.

Spotting Scope And Tripod

When you're out at the range or even just outdoors shooting, it is nearly impossible to see where that shot went on the target without a spotting scope. We always take a new rifle out to Ben Avery to sight it in, and a spotting scope is essential.

It doesn't have to be expensive, but it does need to be on a good sturdy tripod so you can get it fixed on the target. When you're at the range, you can't just walk out there an look any time you want, so a spotting scope is indispensible. You can get them for as little as $150 at Cabelas.

Targets

I don't know about other shooters, but we go through a lot of targets in our family. The girls love those splatter targets because when you hit them, it doesn't just make a hole, it makes a hole with a big bright-colored splatter around it.

At the pistol range, this is easy to see for instant feedback on how you're doing. These splatter targets are pricey compared to regular paper targets, but they are a lot of fun, so any shooter would be very happy to get a few packages of them.

You can get them at any outdoor store or online, and prices vary by how many targets are in the package. Get lots!

Pistol Tool

I can't leave out the people who love shooting handguns, especially since that includes my wife and granddaughters. Every now and then a shell doesn't eject or some other minor little thing happens, and when it does, the Real Avid Pistol Tool comes to the rescue.

For about $40, the Pistol Tool has almost everything you'll need to do just about anything to do with a handgun, whether you're a Glock fan like my wife or a 1911 buff like myself. You can mount accessories, adjust laser sights, change grips, disassemble and reassemble - you name it.

Each tool locks open and the whole thing will fit inside a standard pistol mag pouch. It has a bushing wrench for the 1911s, four hex wrench keys, a pick/scraper, a bit driver, pin punch, knife, and a metal file, plus even more.

Check it out at realavid.com.