Watchtower Firearms, heretofore best known for their line of rifles, is now producing the Apache, a 2011 pistol that operates with incredible smoothness and delivers unsurpassed accuracy.
The Apache is a double stack 2011 pistol, so it has a meaty grip area that allowing shooters with larger hands plenty of area around which to secure their hands. The pistol ships with one 17-round magazine and one 20-round magazine, allowing 17+1 capacity and 20+1 capacity.
A compensator at the end of the slide allows the Apache to stay remarkably flat as round after round is fired. This flatness, combined with the sizeable grip and silky smooth action/operation, is complemented by amazing accuracy.
How accurate is the Apache?
Consider this: Although we only had a review model of the Apache for a short time–roughly five weeks–it was deep into the fourth week before we recorded our first miss with it. Until that point, we had hit the steel plates or silhouettes every time we pulled the trigger, from distances of 20, 30, and 60 yards.
We ran roughly 450 rounds through the Apache and did not record the first miss until 200+ rounds.
The Apache we reviewed was topped with a Trijicon SRO reflex sight and we were able to bring the pistol on target with ease.
We traveled to Tucson, Arizona, with the Apache and put it in the hands of a former Navy SEAL who was immediately enamored with the pistol. Together we shot from 60 yards and listened to the “ping” of the lead slapping the steel plates.
On top of the smooth operation and tack-driving accuracy, the Apache is also gorgeous to behold. In large part, the pleasing aesthetics are the result of the physical vapor disposition (PVD) coating on the slide, as well as the frame and major pistol components. The PVD coating not only makes the pistol attractive, but serves to make it corrosion-resistant as well.
The 2011 pistol market is booming right now. The Apache enters a field where Staccato’s C2 and XC 2011s, Atlas’s Athena, and Springfield Armory’s Prodigy are fighting it out for a place at the top. And for all their similarities, each of the aforementioned 2011s also bring stark contrasts, making them different from the others. Such is the case with the Apache: It differs from its predecessors in ways that 2011 fans may not be able to resist.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
