The Fix
Just a few weeks ago I traveled to New Hampshire to Q firearms. The company initially gained fame for their Honey Badger SBR and their Fix rifle. When I told my son Bat about the upcoming visit, he was immediately excited. I on the other hand was a bit skeptical. Q is notorious for their roguish marketing, and from what I’ve seen, shooters either love or hate them. However, the visit turned out to be one of the best manufacturer tours I’ve had in the quarter century I’ve been writing about guns.
The focus on the visit was the Fix rifle. I’m not going to go into detail about the rifle here; a full review is upcoming at Field & Stream. One thing I’d like to share is that I’ve never been to a firearms manufacturer where everyone involved seemed to be having so much fun, and were also so dedicated to delivering the best product they could. Additionally, I got to build a Fix while I was there, and the best part about that experience was working with Nick Shafer who is one of the lead engineers at Q. I’m not sure I’ve met a more knowledgeable gun genius who was as good at conveying design principles. Not only that, Nick is also a hunter, and it’s been my experience that hunters almost always design the best hunting rifles.
I also got to spend some time with Kevin Brittingham who owns Q. Keven founded AAC – Advanced Armament Corporation – which he sold to Remington – and was the man behind the 300 Blackout. The Fix rifle was his vision to offer a suppressed, compact, lightweight hunting rifle, that was suitable for shooting at the distances most hunters shoot at. Keven can be a bit brash in some of the videos from Q, but he is very genuine, knowledgeable, and a serious gun guy, and hunter who spends about half the year at his home located in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Maybe the most telling thing about Brittingham was how much his employees like him. (That’s always a good sign.)
My point of contact at Q is Brett Stayton. He manages their media relations and might best be described as a good old boy from Kentucky. In fact, you could probably and accurately describe the entire marketing and engineering crew at Q as good old boys – but they’re damned smart and talented good old boys. Most are hunters, some are veterans, and I got along marvelously with everyone. Regardless of your opinion on the company from what you might have seen on-line, these guys make damned fine firearms and they’re serious about their work.
I really enjoyed working with Nick to assemble the Fix rifle. It gave me insight into the design and operation I would not have gleaned had Q just sent the rifle to me to evaluate. I learned why and how they build it the way they do. It arrived last week, and yesterday I mounted a scope and screwed on a suppressor to shoot it a bit. I’m holding off on a full test and evaluation until I get the Q Trash Panda suppressor for the Fix that perfectly interfaces with their Cherry Bomb muzzle device. (Who knows how long that can take. Wait times are running from a day to months on approvals.) Also, with deer season just around the corner, I thought I might want to hunt with the Fix a bit.
I only shot a box of ammo through the rifle to get an idea of how it shot and establish a zero. Using Buffalo Bore’s Supercharged 150-grain Barnes TTSX load to compensate for the Fix’s short 16-inch barrel, all groups were right at the MOA mark. I chose that load partly because of its velocity performance out of 16-inch barrels — it averaged 2720 fps — but also, partly because I’ve seen that bullet/load work on a lot of game.
Just as I was finishing, my son showed up to help install a ladder stand for us to use this upcoming deer season. When he saw I had the Fix he was ecstatic. You need to understand that partly because Bat does most of my photography, and partly because he’s a shooter who likes guns, he has been witness to almost every new rifle introduced over the last decade. I’ve never seen him this excited about one. The first thing he said was, “I want to shoot it.”
Bat poked the remaining three rounds from the box in the Fix’s magazine, and then, from the standing off-hand position, he proceeded to ring a steel plate that was right at 200 yards. When he was done he said, “I like it!” and I said, “Hell, I reckon so. You sure can shoot it.”
Admittedly, Bat is a good shot with a rifle, but I think those three shots also speak very loudly to the concept, design, and execution of the Fix rifle. Q designed the Fix to be a suppressed, compact, lightweight hunting rifle, suitable for shooting at the distances most hunters shoot at. Three shots and three hits, off-hand at about 200 yards — out of a rifle he’d never fired — might be as good a validation of a rifle design as you can find.
I’ll let you know when the full review at Field & Stream is available and I suspect I’ll also offer some additional and deeper analysis on the Fix here. In the mean time, check out some of the videos from Q. Their approach to marketing is as different as the guns and gear they make.
A Little Something Extra: Buffalo Charge
Speaking of good rifle shooting — I do not think buffalo are hard to kill, but I do know that if you fail to kill them with the first shot, it can get nasty. I know this because I’ve seen it, and I agree with Craig Boddington who once said he was sure you could kill a buffalo, but was not sure you could hurt one.
Lately, there’s a lot emphasis placed on long range shooting, but I tend to agree with Philip Perceval — as relayed by Robert Ruark in his book, Horn of the Hunter, “I don’t care a damn about these people who can split a pea at three hundred yards. What I want to know about a man is how good he is on a charging buffalo at six feet.”
If you know how to run a ballistic calculator, hey, that’s great, and more power to you. But in a situation like these blokes are in, you better damn well know how to run a rifle!
Note: This video was sent to me by Bill Wilson of Wilson Combat, but I do not know where he got it.
You should!
I have The Fix rifle. It’s the 12” SBR in 8.6 BLK with one of the “prototype” 8.6mm cans. I need to bring it to Africa.