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Nighthawk Custom Counselor

By: Massad Ayoob

The most precise and shootable compact on the streets?

Nighthawk’s Counselor, from their top-of-the-line Ambassador series, is billed as the company’s smallest and lightest pistol yet. The first thing you notice, of course, is the price: suggested retail starts at $4,499.00. A tag that high is suggestive of bling, but not so in this case. The nitride finish is intended for “go” instead of “show” and has a subdued, non-reflective, businesslike look. No mammoth tusk grips, no Royal Blue finish – but since you’re going to carry it concealed anyway, who cares?

The single-side thumb safety was neither too big nor too small and positive on or off without being too hard or too easy. This just-right “momma” bear adjustment comes from the fact that each Nighthawk pistol is built by a single craftsman at the factory. I’ve toured the place and watched them built, and they aren’t kidding about that.

The Counselor came equipped with Nighthawk’s optional Interchangeable Optics System (IOS), which is a very smart way of switching between iron sights and an optic without losing zero on either. The IOS consists of two removable plates—one for the optic (a Trijicon RMR RM06 in this case) with an integral fixed rear iron sight sitting just ahead of it and one with a Heinie Straight Eight drift-adjustable rear night sight.

Conventional grasping grooves at the rear of the slide were complemented by Nighthawk’s own unique grasping groove treatment at the front. The slim, G10 “Railscales” grips gave good trigger reach and “felt good” in the widely varying hands of the testers, from literally a child’s hands to humongous meathooks. As on my other Nighthawks, the slide stop stud that protrudes from the right side is flush with the frame, so it can’t be inadvertently pushed out by a stiff trigger finger in the “register” position, which has been known to lock up 1911s. It’s dished, so you can push it out with a bullet nose if you don’t have a punch.

The butt has a widened integral magazine well that doesn’t really compromise concealability but does definitely make magazine insertion faster and more fumble-resistant. The muzzle has a dished crown, associated with improved accuracy, and is coned with a full-length recoil spring guide, set up in such a way to give this pistol another big plus…

Nighthawk’s smart IOS (Interchangeable Optics System) is a great box to check when ordering your pistol and allows the end user to quickly swap between iron sights and an optic without losing zero on either. We used a Trijicon RMR plate with its own fixed rear iron sight built-in, sitting directly in front of the optic and providing a lower 1/3 co-witness sight picture.

Potential Life-Saving Feature

Sometimes, desperate life-or-death fights at belly-to-belly distance require a defensive shot to be fired with the muzzle against the body of the homicidal attacker. Press contact pushes the barrel slide assembly of most autoloading pistols, including off-safe 1911s, out of battery, preventing the shot from being fired. The way the recoil spring guide is set up on the Counselor creates a stand-off effect: you can push the front of the gun against a firm surface with the safety off, and it will still stay in battery and still fire the life-saving shot. (Muzzle contact shots also direct the violently expanding gases into the body, magnifying the wound.) It continues to amaze me that companies that make pistols that work this way don’t advertise this critical advantage.

Controls operated like every Nighthawk pistol we’ve ever tested to date, which is to say, with a level of smoothness you only get by meticulous hand-fitting. Both the mainspring housing and bobbed concealment grip safety are made from aluminum in an effort to further shed weight. The slim G2 Railscales grip panels were unanimously liked by everyone who handled the Counselor.

Shooting the Counselor

A sweet trigger is one of the things we’ve come to expect in Nighthawk pistols, and the Counselor delivered. Short, light take-up, crisp break, and a very short re-set. Pull was consistent and averaged 63.12 ounces, barely under the four-pound minimum this writer prefers on a “street” 1911.

Recoil was negligible on this 27-ounce 9mm. We never lost sight of the red dot on the target, even when running rapid fire at roughly 0.20-second split times. The low bore axis helped the slide and the optic “track straight.”

The two magazines it came with were slightly different. Both were marked “Nighthawk,” but only one was marked with the Metalform logo. The one that was not so marked stuck upon pressing the mag release button and had to be manually removed. (a complaint, but a relatively minor one.) They worked fine, though, as did full-length nine-round Metalform mags I took out of my 1911 accessories pile.

Nighthawk is all about innovation when it comes to the 1911 platform, and their patented Flush-Fit Magwell is a great example. This magwell slides in from the front, holds the sear spring in place, and does not extend the length of the shorter officer frame, maximizing concealability while providing lightning-quick reloads. Two eight-round magazines are included.

Accuracy

We set out to see if Nighthawk’s promise of amazing accuracy from this 3.5” barrel was for real. Testing was done at 25 yards from a Matrix rest on a concrete bench. Each five-shot group was measured twice: all five to see what it could do hand-held by an experienced shooter under ideal conditions and once again for the best three hits. We determined long ago that under these circumstances, the “best three” would factor out unnoticed human error and closely duplicate what all five would have done from a Ransom machine rest. As usual, we tested with representative ammo of the three most popular bullet weights for the caliber.

147-grain subsonic 9mm is famous for its accuracy. Our test load was Remington-UMC jacketed truncated cone from a lot known to win shooting matches in the past. Not surprisingly, it put five shots in 1.55”, with the best three in a stunning 0.65”, the best of the test. These were our first shots with the pistol, and we were sighting in as we went, so the cluster was somewhat high left of point of aim: my fault, not that of either Nighthawk or Trijicon.

For a 124-grain, we chose the Federal HST +P, which has earned an excellent reputation in the field. One of my students belongs to a large sheriff’s department in New York State and reports outstanding street results with this load. Indianapolis went to it after some failures to expand with the 147-grain version they’d used previously, and I’m told they’re very happy with the 124 +P. Overall, the group measured 2.15″, including a tight double and the best three, 85/100ths of one inch.

Our 115-grain load was the long-since street-proven 9BPLE, a +P+ from Federal rated for 1300 foot-seconds from a four-inch barrel. The Counselor’s half-inch-shorter barrel delivered all five into 2.0″ and the best three matching the other Federal load at 0.85″, measured to the nearest 0.05″ hole center to center between the farthest-flung holes being measured.

The average was under two inches for all five shots hand-held on a rest 75 feet away, and a best three measurement of under an inch, which tells me that mechanically, this is a one-inch gun at 25 yards. Wanna know why a very compact pistol might cost a lot of money? This is one big reason.

Accuracy and ergonomics made it “shootable.” On my Bianchi Cup plate rack, I ran through a box of 9mm balls — well, 48 rounds, actually — because in each six-plate run, the Counselor never let me miss a shot.

From this angle, we see the crowned muzzle that rides flush with the slide, Nighthawk’s unique “positive” serrations protruding from the slide (as opposed to “negative” serrations milled into the slide), and a one-piece guide rod assembly that helps keep the pistol in battery when the muzzle is pressed against a hard object. Pictures do not do the slide’s outstanding looking smoked-nitride finish justice.

Carrying the Counselor

I wore the test gun for a couple of days in a quality sharkskin holster by Sam Andrews, which seemed to fit the deluxe theme of things. If you’ve carried a lightweight Commander style 1911, you’ve carried a Counselor already; no particular discomfort, even though I have sciatica on the right hip where I wore the gun. When your pistol has an RM06 optic on it, which rises the better part of an inch above the slide, you do have another bulge point if you carry on the hip. This is one reason why so many folks who use carry optics concealed go with appendix inside the waistband carry: the greater overall height of the gun matters less when it rests against the abdomen, which has a broader expanse than the more protuberant hip.

The Counselor’s best 25-yard performance came with Remington-UMC 147 grain jacketed truncated cone, producing this impressive 1.55-inch five-shot group with a remarkable 0.65-inch “best three” measurement. The cluster was somewhat high left of point of aim, as we were sighting in as we went.

Reliability

If you buy a quarter-million-dollar Lamborghini, many of your friends will be eager to drive it. The same is true if your friends are shooters and you offer them trigger time with a $4,500 pistol. On the first day alone, we had this gun in a dozen hands: righty and southpaw, male and female, veteran Master shooters and newbies, and people ranging in age from 76 to, yes, eight years old.

I took it to Pennsylvania, where I was teaching a couple of classes, and passed it around to the staff. They loved it, and Brad Newton used it to shoot a club PPC match and finish in the money, as well as shooting an excellent demo target in a MAG-40 qualification.

All those hands gave thumbs up to the Counselor. Everyone who shot this pistol was positively impressed with it.

With all those shooters, we got a bucket of bullets through the Counselor in short order. My range was soon littered with spent brass and empty ammo boxes. The only malfunction was a limp-wrist failure to fully chamber for one of the shooters whose wrists were unlocked. The gun had never been cleaned or oiled: it was shot right out of the deluxe, cushioned, heavy-duty zipper bag it came in.

The folks at Nighthawk Custom learned a long time ago that they needed both quality and performance to justify their lofty prices. The Counselor is yet another example of why they’re still in business, producing top-line pistols and selling all they can make. See the Counselor at your nearest dealer, or for more information, contact Nighthawk Custom; Tel.: (870) 423-4867; Web: www.nighthawkcustom.com