------------------

I was at a public range outside of Logan, Utah, around 1976. Not much of a range, a couple of crude benches and a flat spot up against the side of a big hill. There were five or six of us sighting in scoped rifles held over sandbags or some other good rest. We were all making those last half inch adjustments. Up comes this beat up Fifties vintage green pickup with a man and woman in it. Out steps a �Grizzled Old Timer� right out of Hollywood central casting, three day growth of beard, sweat stained shapeless cowboy hat and all. He proceeds to put a brown cardboard box at the 100 yard line, about as big as might hold a small stove or a big TV set. No target on it, just the brown box. He takes a fairly beat up iron sighted 30-30 Model 94 and fires three shots off hand fairly quickly. He goes back down and retrieves the box. There, pretty much in the middle of one side, is a roughly triangular group about 12 inches in diameter. He takes the box to his wife and says �Looky there, Martha, she still shoots where she did last year.� And off he drives.

As I was returning back to Logan, I passed a farm yard with that same green pickup parked out front. On the barn were nailed more deer and elk antlers than I could count as I drove by. Now maybe those were someone else antlers, but I tend to think not.

It�s a poor carpenter who blames his tools, and a poor hunter who blames his rifle.

Many hunters forget some very basic truths.
First, that almost everything man has killed since the crust of the earth cooled has been done within 100 yds. Will someone tell me what good a 1/10th of an inch better trajectory is going to do me within that 100 yards? Like Zippo!

The second thing everyone overlooks is simply spotting the target to begin with. Most hunters never even see their game until its within 200-300 yards...and in that range almost any intelligently sighted in, adequately powered rifle will work.

Years ago I got on a kick of hunting jackrabbits at "extreme ranges." I put scopes on my rifles up to 16 power and carried 8X binoculars and hunted and hunted.
Finally I realized that it was dang near impossible to spot a jackrabbit over 300 yds. Most were around 200-225 before I could spot them...even with these optics.

I know guys take P-dogs further but they've got a couple of unnatural advantages. They know exactly where the dogs are and the game is played in a very open arena.

90% of all game animals don't make it this easy for us.

The point to this long-winded post is simply in the real world the endless quest for velocity and energy and flatter trajectory is just a bunch of baloney. The fastest way hunters can improve their scores is simply to become better shots and more familiar with their guns...and that won't cost them anything but a little practice.

Always remember:

------------------
A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

------------------
Frank

I've got a friend who manages to kill a buck every year.His 30/06 is sighted "dead on at 100 yards".This is really quite funny,since from the few times I've shot with him,I've noticed his '06 is sighted in about 8 inches high at 100 yards.He kills his bucks every year though.He gets buck fever REALLY bad,but at the end of the day he has more fun than I do with my cool head.

There's a guy here in town that likes to hunt a piece of rather rugged mountains in this area.You can see bucks quite a distance off.After his first year of hunting,he built a rifle because his current rifle (don't remember what it was)didn't shoot flat enough for those "long shots".

SO,he built a 7x300 Weatherby (today's 7 STW)that ended up weighting 14 pounds once he put a 6.5x20 Leupold on it.The thing was pretty darn accurate (less than 0.5 inch at 100 yards)too.

So he packed this 14 pound rifle for five miles back into the rather rugged country,and killed about the prettiest 4x4 blacktail you could ask for at the ultra-long range distance of about 40 yards.He then had to pack the buck AND that 14 pound rifle 5 miles back to his rig,when he could have been packing that buck and a 6 or 8 pound rifle in just about any caliber from 22/250 on up.That buck didn't know it was shot with an ultra accurate,ultra flat shooting,ultra presicion rifle.You could have shot that buck with Uncle Bob's ancient 30/30 and he would have flopped over just as dead,and it would have been a lot easier to pack to.

------------------
I'm out to wrong rights,depress the opressed,and generaly make an ass of myself!

When hunting is putting meat on the table for hungry growing boys, it takes on a little more serious light than some of the unreal threads of the pc crowd on some sites.

Some of the guns I have hunted with can group 2-3" at 100yds, plenty good enough for deer.

My dad had a habit of blowing shotgun cups into deer. I remember asking him how close he would let a deer get before shooting it? I'll never forget the look when he said, "when it bumps the end of the barrel."

That was a good day. We were guest on a doghunt in Indian Neck, at the time a beautiful mix of old hardwood and 2nd growth pines. Sandy land, remote.

The old man had sat on the side of a path where the path cut down and there was a natural seat. He was peeling an orange when he heard something behind him. The deer was laying 2 steps from the peels.

most guns group pretty tight at 2 steps.

------------------
Arild Iversen
~ Ad spes infracta ~

Ive heard so many variations of the "Ole bastard with the rusty 30/30 taking home the 12 point buck every year" that Im starting to believe its a part of folklore. Maybe its the same "Ole Bastard with tobaccy dribbleing down his chin, with the 3 day stubble" and he just flies around the country visiting shooting ranges. Maybe theres an exclusive "Ole Bastard club" and to get in you not only have to be an "Ole Bastard" but you have to have a rusty 30/30, tobaccy dribbled stubble, a wall of 12 pointers, and a bunch of crusty putdowns for anything new and/or clean/accurate.

I mean, the best hunters/shooters Ive ever seen have been the %2 I would classify as the "obsessed crowd". They might not be the "crusty ole bastards of yore" but they have honed their abilities,hardware,loads, and techniques down to a micron. They hunt hard, from dawn to dusk, have the skill and patience to know when to "set" and when to "move", and have the skill/rifle/load to make anything within a 400 yrd radius "just plain dead".

No insult intended to any of you crusty Ole Bastards, with your rusty 30/30's, out there. Personaly I'd rather have a rusted brain then a rusted rifle..................J

They certainly know how to "talk that talk", too sad that most of them can't "walk that walk".

Was that Atkinson that you saw?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Need Just 1 More Gun:
JimInIdaho,

Was that Atkinson that you saw?

---

Now that you mention it, there WERE a couple of Cape Buffalo horns nailed to that barn as well. And I do believe there was a double rifle in the gun rack in the pickup window, right below that old Model 94.

On another note - it's not just the "grizzled old timers" that I've seen. I hunted once with a fellow back there in Utah (was going to Utah State at the time) who was 19 and carried a box stock Savage 340 bolt action .30-30, open rear step ladder sight and all. We went hunting with a third guy one afternoon after school, had to stop at the sporting goods store for him to buy a box of Remington 150 grainers along the way. I asked him if he needed to sight it in and he asked "why?" as he hadn't fiddled with the sights since the previous season.

We were walking a hillside and a third guy was walking a shallow draw below us, the third guy pushed a deer out onto the opposite slope and began banging away with his scoped rifle, sorry I don't remember the brand or caliber. Anywho, the fellow in the draw emptied the magazine without hitting anything and yelled to my friend to get it. He waited until it stopped at the top of the far ridge and calmly dropped it with one shot from the off hand position. I'd guess that deer was close to 200 yards away when he shot it.

My friend razzed the third guy about that for the rest of the school year.

[This message has been edited by Jim in Idaho (edited 05-14-2002).]

------------------
A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

"Beware the man with one gun."

The inference is, he's mastered how to shoot it well....

Regarding his rifle he just has absolutely no care whatever for what it looks like, he just requires it to stick a shot within a couple of inches of the aiming spot!

I would have thought that a quick clean would be wise but thus far he's the one with more game to his name.