In today’s genre of weird gun genres, we’ll be talking about camp rifles. Camp rifles, camp carbines, and camp guns, in general, are both smaller and larger than most weird gun genres. Guns designed from the ground up to be camp rifles are few and far between, but rifles that make good camp guns are everywhere.
What Are Camp Rifles?
Camp rifles are guns you take camping, hiking, and beyond. It is a gun that’s easy to pack and pack out. It should be lightweight and fairly compact. You want to be able to pack it away and forget all about it until you need it. With that in mind, it should be tough and set up to be tough. Any accessories should match the tough profile of the gun while still keeping the weapon lightweight.
Camp guns don’t have a specific caliber. It depends on where you live and what you’ll use the camp rifle for. If it’s for defensive purposes and you live in bear country, you’ll have different requirements than someone who lives in South Florida and has to deal with Pythons at most. You need to make sure it’s capable of dealing with your threats, but you also probably want something cheap enough to plink with.
Shooting is fun and can be a big part of the camping experience. It might be huge for some if they don’t have a local range and live in a more urban area. They have the great outdoors and public land to go out and enjoy an afternoon of plinking. That means they should be cheap to shoot and enjoyable.
I’d avoid antiques and rarities due to the rough life camp rifles often live. They are prone to getting rusty, dirty, dropped, broken, etc. Don’t ruin something you can’t replace or warranty.
Notable Camp Rifles
Remember when I mentioned that this is both a broad and narrow category? I only know of one rifle ever advertised or proposed for camp use and it was known as the Marlin Camp Carbine. These predated the pistol caliber carbine explosion of the 2010s. The guns were produced from 1985 to 1999 in both 9mm and .45 ACP.
The guns were simple, blowback-operated magazine-fed guns with wood stocks. The 9mm variant used S&W 59 series magazines, and the .45 ACP variant used 1911 magazines. Their simple design allowed them to avoid the ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ of 1994. While simple, these guns are most definitely neat.
They were semi-auto rifles that weighed less than seven pounds and were 35.5 inches long. They meet the camp rifle definition well, especially in 1985. This thing was short and sweet for that era of rifles, although it’s fairly standard these days.
Modern Camp Rifles
Modern camp guns don’t even have to be rifles. The world of braced pistols makes for excellent camp rifles. An AR in 5.56 or 9mm makes a great camp rifle or camp gun in either a braced format or a standard rifle. You could build a fairly lightweight 5.56 rifle and have a great all-around camp rifle.
Guns like the Judge Home Defender could be a great camp gun even though its a handgun. You can use .45 Colt for most anything in a defensive encounter, and stuff like birdshot and buckshot can dispatch squirrels, snakes, rabbits, and beyond.
Guns as neat as the KelTec SUB 2000 make great camp carbines that follow the Camp Carbine’s route using pistol calibers. The SUB 2000 tends to be quite lightweight and folds nicely for easy storage. Oh, it’s cheap too!
Working The Camp
The Camp Gun can be whatever you really want it to be, but lightweight, reliable, easy-shooting guns tend to be best. Maybe a takedown Ruger 10/22 is the best design for you. The camp carbine is mostly a fun gun that should pull double duty for self-defense when you’re out in the wilderness, far from aid and far from society.
