HERE’S MORE on that Zel Custom .50 rifle I mentioned Friday. Considering its immense power and impressive size, it’s really pretty easy to shoot. Shouldering it is work, since it weighs something like 35-40 pounds. On the other hand, all that weight smooths out the recoil, too, so the felt kick isn’t so bad — roughly comparable to a 12 gauge shotgun, I’d say. And, of course, it’s not really meant to be fired from the shoulder. Note that it’s actually a bolt-action, with a side-mounted box magazine. Here’s a closeup:

The small cartridge is a .45 ACP — a pretty big pistol cartridge — added for scale. It’s hard to really tell about accuracy here — we only had a 300-yard range — but the gun’s reputed to shoot quite straight out past a kilometer. I suppose I could convince myself I had a use for it (there’s a thousand-meter rifle range near here where they have competitions) but I don’t think it’s worth the $1500-$2000 price tag to me. More serious shooters will probably feel differently.

More over at SayUncle and Les Jones’s place. And yeah, the ammo’s kinda pricey at three or four bucks a pop. But (1) this isn’t really a plinking rifle, and (2) the LuckyGunner folks were buying . . . .