My Deer Rifle
Perhaps I’m in the small minority. One of those people who wants to know esoteric details about things that don’t really matter, and that no one else cares about, but one thing I find lacking in virtually every hunting article, blog post, and television show is information about the hunter’s rifle (or bow). The only exception in modern hunting exposition is when I get a glorified commercial from hunters who are sponsored. What those guys use are inconsequential to the average hunter because they use what they’re paid to use which may or may not coincide with what they would choose to use were they not obligated to pimp their sponsor’s gear. Their job is to sell gear to the masses by showing you a cool hunt. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of sponsorship; most hunting shows wouldn’t have the budget required were it not for corporate benefactors, and many modern hunting shows play an important role in hunting culture besides selling gear (and even Steven Rinella sells gear). Hunting shows make real the endless possibilities of what hunting can bring to a hunter who works hard and helps fuel a multi-billion dollar segment of the economy (PDF) that supports nearly 700,000 jobs in America, while others give away gobs of great information for free. But I want to know what those hunters would use, not what they’re contractually compelled to use. Would Rinella use an awesome but prohibitively-expensive-for-your-average-hunter Carolina Custom rifle on Meat Eater were they not giving him one (I’m pretty sure he didn’t use one when he made The Wild Within)? Or would he use an off-the-shelf Savage in the caliber of his choice? Would Scott Haugen of Trijicon’s The Hunt use the comparatively expensive Accupin with Accumount bow sight or the insanely expensive Acog Crossbow sight were he not the host of a Trijicon sponsored show? I don’t know. And one can’t expect an unbiased answer (nor should we).
Many hunters don’t put any special thought or consideration in to their hunting rifle. Their father and grandfather used a Remington 700 in .270, so they will too. It’s a fine choice that’s likely taken down more deer over the last sixty-five years than any other, no doubt. But others of us have specific reasons why we choose the weapons we do, and often make modifications for very specific reasons as a means to help us be more productive hunters in the field. Some alterations or additions are merely creature comforts, others are more necessary or done with a specific purpose in mind that make the hunt more enjoyable or that can make the hunt more likely to be successful.
My deer rifle was put together with a lot of thought. I had minimal experience with hunting, but I have done a fair amount of backpacking and I know the absolute importance of packing as light as possible. Simply put, carrying light makes walking long distances over rough terrain a much easier task, and for some it makes possible what otherwise may not be. Most of my rifle hunting was going to be spot and stalk hunting in the open plains of Wyoming, so when putting together my deer rifle, weight was of paramount importance because I knew that I’d be huffing the hills. A full bore tactical or bench rifle isn’t a good choice for a hunting rifle, even if one can hit an egg at 1000 yards because it’s just too damn heavy. In short, my rifle had to be light because carrying a fourteen or sixteen pound behemoth wasn’t an option. With weight at the top of the list, I scoured different gun manufacturers until I came upon the Remington 700 Mountain LSS. It was as light a deer rifle as I’d find, and came in a caliber that I was comfortable with.
After my heart attack in 2010, virtually any rifle would leave some of the biggest and nastiest bruises you’ve ever seen because of my blood thinners. They would last for a month or more and to be honest, they were embarrassing. They didn’t hurt any, but they were ugly. I stopped shooting for a while but realized that was probably a bad idea. I wasn’t going to let a bruise keep me from one of the things I enjoy most. So I when I considered my hunting rifle caliber was a big deal. I had initially avoided the Mountain LSS because I had assumed that the 7mm-08 was a gawdy long action caliber like the other three calibers they offered in the gun. But I was wrong. It had everything I was looking for. A stainless finish that would resist the elements and that was designed to trim off weight from the barrel, the heaviest part of every rifle. A light stock. No iron sights that would just be in the way and add weight. And it wouldn’t bruise me to all hell. It was perfect, so I ordered one.
Except that it wasn’t perfect. While the stock was extremely light, it had some deficiencies that I couldn’t deal with. For one, it just didn’t fit me right. I’m not exactly sure what it was about that stock that didn’t feel good, but it didn’t. Whether it was the length of pull, or the angle of the comb, or something altogether different I can’t say. I just know that I hated it. So I decided to see if there was a suitable replacement that might save me from having to send the rifle back. I looked for a while and didn’t find much. Mountain contoured barrels are pretty specialized. You don’t see them very often because many hunters wrongly interpret the ultra-thin barrel as a weakness that leads to accuracy issues, which is hogwash. And because there are so few factory branded rifles that have a mountain contoured barrel, there are even fewer aftermarket stocks designed to fit them. The Bell and Carlson Alaskan II, however, is one of those few, and it met every standard I had for my deer rifle. It is user replaceable (meaning I wouldn’t have to make any alterations to the stock or gun to make it fit), the lightest on the market, and tough as hell. This was the one for me. Or at least I had hoped it was because there weren’t any other options out there. Fortunately it worked out perfectly. It fit, the composite material was even lighter than the laminate stock stock, and I knew it would take a beating.
But there is more to a hunting rifle than the gun itself. You need optics too.
When I first started shooting, like most people I tried to buy scopes as cheaply as possible. They can get pretty expensive. But after numerous frustrating experiences with cheap optics at the range and an untimely fogging up of my scope while aiming at my first deer, I knew they wouldn’t work in the field where the difference between a reticle that shifted when you bumped it as you slid down the embankment of a particularly nasty creek bed isn’t a shot that missed the paper instead of the bullseye, but a wounded animal instead of a dead one. We’ve all seen it happen. You take a shot and realize that you need to move the reticle. Then you click the dial on your turret and though you heard the clicks and saw the dial turn, the reticle didn’t move one bit. You blow in the turrets. Tap them. Push on them really hard. You try everything you can, but the reticle just won’t budge, and you realize that the money you spent on that cheap scope would have been better used if you had piled it up and burned it. The margin for error is too small, and the chance that cheap optics will go awry under tough conditions too high. I don’t mean to say that you can’t go out to the woods with a seventy-five dollar Bushnell or Simmons and kill a deer. Plenty of hunters far better than I’ll ever be do it all the time. But I’m a gear head. I love gear, and I want the absolute best gear that I can afford so that I feel like I never have to worry about it. If my rifle falls while trying to scale a rock ledge or jump a creek, I don’t ever want to have to worry that the scope may not be right. When it’s time to squeeze the trigger on the ungulate of my choice, wondering if my equipment is going to work should be the furthest thought from my mind.
I have some experience with top-end optics, but most of those are seriously heavy. They need to be. They’re designed either for bench work or for the military. I didn’t need my scope to be bomb proof or capable of moving my reticle one eighth of an inch. I needed it to be durable under extremely tough conditions, and the turrets needed to be reliable. If I make an adjustment it needs to take, and it needs to stay there no matter what happens to the rifle in any hunting scenario. I also wanted an illuminated reticle because most shots on deer are going to be in low light. With that in mind I also needed it to have good light gathering ability. If I’m going to shank a pill down range, I don’t want to blame my equipment (like I tried to do on my very first hunt when I was using lesser equipment).
I looked at a few scopes based on the reticles they had available, but none of them seemed right. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I’d found it when I saw it. Then I remembered about a scope on my AR15: the Trijicon Accupoint 1-4×24. It was obvious that it didn’t have enough magnification for a hunt on the open prairie, but the 3-9×40 might work. It can take a beating, adjustments to the reticle are solid unless I change them, Trijicon has legendary glass with fantastic light gathering abilities, and the triangle reticle is great for pinpoint accuracy and is bright under ANY conditions. Perfect.
So there’s my deer rifle: A remington 700 LSS Mountain Rifle in 7mm-08 with a Bell and Carlson Alaskan II stock and a Trijicon Accupoint 3-9×40. What’s your deer rifle? Why?