Why it matters: Q markets its Fix bolt-action line to hunters, and its own field series now makes the case directly against the Blaser straight-pull. Episode 3 is the company's argument, made in the field, that a 45-degree bolt throw can keep pace with one.
Q LLC posted the third episode of its Uganda hunting series to YouTube on October 13. The episode, titled "A Blaser Hunter Tries the Mega Fix," runs about 12 minutes and follows the group through the last sitatunga hunts of the trip, shot from machans, the raised blinds built over papyrus swamp. Kevin Brittingham, Q's founder, who is called KB in the series, narrates most of it, with the cameraman, the professional hunter and the rest of the party also on camera.
The episode's description says it breaks down how a hunter identified as V moved from her Blaser to the Mega Fix, Q's larger model in the Fix line. In the video she is called Vanessa.
Blaser hunter switches to the Q Mega Fix
Brittingham opens on day three, saying that it is good for the company when hunters new to Q products shoot them, and that Vanessa is new to the rifles but not to hunting. By his account, she normally hunts with Blaser rifles, a .375 for dangerous game and a .300 Win Mag for everything else, and did not own a short-action rifle until he gave her a 6.5 Fix, which she had not yet fired.
That morning, the video shows, Vanessa and another hunter, John, each took a sitatunga bull from separate machans. Brittingham says John's shot came less than 10 minutes into his sit, at about quarter to seven. He calls both animals old and says the two bulls had "entirely different genetics."
Follow-up shot speed: 45-degree bolt vs. straight pull
The episode spends most of its product talk on Vanessa's follow-up shot. Brittingham says her first shot hit the bull and it ran, and that she fired a second shot while it was moving. He explains the urgency: in papyrus, he says, a hunter does not want to be tracking a wounded animal, so once a first shot is in, the rule is to put another one in wherever possible.
“The episode offers no timer and no side-by-side test; the case for the 45-degree bolt rests on one hunter's remark and the founder's telling of it.”
J.D. Whitfield, The ReticleAfterward, Brittingham says, Vanessa told him without being asked that she "couldn't have shot any faster" with her Blaser. He calls that "a huge compliment to the engineering staff." He says the Fix's 45-degree bolt throw is very fast and acknowledges that the Blaser's straight-pull action is also very fast, but argues that in acquiring the target and firing another shot, "there's no difference between a straight pull and the 45° bolt throw." He describes the Blaser as "a great gun" that, in his view, does not offer the functionality and versatility of the Fix.
Brittingham calls her comment his favorite product takeaway from the hunt, stressing that the shooter was not him but a serious hunter new to Q's rifles. The episode does not include timed splits or a side-by-side comparison of the two actions; the claim rests on the hunter's remark and Brittingham's account of it.
Q founder's sitatunga from a new machan
The second half follows Brittingham's own hunt. He says the group had sat in one blind for four or five sessions with little activity, then moved to a machan built in a large tree on a river system on another part of the property, about an hour and a half away. The professional hunter, Tom, climbed first and Vanessa second; she signaled at once that a bull was in sight. Brittingham describes waiting at the top for the cameraman, who he says was off filming the landscape, then climbed the ladder with his gear and set up in about a minute.
After the shot, the group says it heard the bull fall and waited before moving in. Brittingham says he took the animal with a Mega Fix and claims it was the oldest and largest sitatunga of the group. The episode closes with the celebration the series takes its name from, which Brittingham calls a kabubi, and with the trackers wrapping the horns in bark and capping the tips with water bottles for transport. Brittingham says bushbuck is the trip's remaining hunt.
For context
- Q's Fix is a bolt-action rifle with a one-piece aluminum receiver and a 45-degree bolt throw, about half the rotation of a conventional 90-degree bolt such as the Remington 700's.
- The Blaser R8 is a German straight-pull rifle, cycled by pulling the bolt straight back with no rotation, and is widely used by safari hunters in chamberings up to dangerous-game cartridges.
- Sitatunga are swamp-dwelling antelope, usually hunted in Uganda from machans overlooking clearings cut in the papyrus, and hunters often go days without seeing a mature bull.
- Kevin Brittingham founded Q after earlier founding Advanced Armament Corp., the suppressor maker.
