(The following short story is the first in what may be a series of hunting, shooting, gun test, and "how to" articles. A life long shooter, hunter, and gun owner, I am winding down a 30 year law enforcement career. I have always wanted to write, as a hobby. After several conversations with "Graybeard" - AKA Bill, we decided to test the waters by posting an article in the 'Ole Pot - Bellied Stove" forum. If the readers feelings are positive, it may become a regular feature in its own slot. Any comments, good or bad, are welcome. Larry)
My first deer rifle.....
No serious hunter ever forgets his first deer rifle, or the memories that go with it. If he is lucky, he still has that rifle, to be passed down to a deserving youngster, to carry on the tradition. No big rush though, but when the time is right.
I still have mine, and cherish it for all the traditional reasons. A hard lesson in gun safety and economics came along as a bonus.
My father was a stone mason, and worked hard all his life. Not much of a gun nut, but he loved to hunt, and come hell or high water, each year he always made the time for the first two weeks of the Maine deer season. I remember as a youngster how badly I wanted to go, and being so excited each year when he came home, seeing that beat up green Ford pick up pulling in the driveway. There was usually a big Maine buck in the back. You know the kind, with the dark, heavy antlers, the swollen neck, and that big roman nose that mature bucks seem to have. One year, there was a black bear. Boy, was I hooked.
Well, this torture seemed to go on forever. Then one day, when I was 8 years old, the 'ol man announced I was old enough to go. Not to hunt, but as an observer. A career scaring song birds with my BB gun, and shooting tin cans off the back porch with a Remington pump .22 had led me to this big moment, and I was thrilled. Having been raised in rural Connecticut, northern Maine was big adventure, true wilderness. It still is.
The next three years were spent learning the etiquette of deer camp, the importance of being observant and quiet in the woods, and just how much work a cabin full of grown men can find for a kid to do. But I loved every minute of it. At the time, Maine law provided for hunters 12 years of age or older, as long as they were with a Licensed hunter. I was ready.
My old mans deer gun was a pre-64 Winchester model 94, in 30-30, and he was going to let me use it. He had purchased it upon his return from a tour of duty as a flight mechanic in the Korean War. It had accounted for a pick up load of venison, along with a few black bear thrown in for good measure. A year or two earlier, he had seen an advertisement for the new Ruger .44 magnum semi-auto Deerstalker, and decided he had to have one. He had built an outdoor Bar-B-Q pit for Bill Ruger, of all people, a few years earlier, so he called him. Bill had a rifle from the first production run shipped to the old "Sportsmen's Den" in Stratford, CT for my father. It has a three digit serial number, and a beautiful fancy walnut stock. Never wore a scope, only iron sights. I still have that rifle.
So I spent the summer practicing with that 30-30, always under my fathers eye. That was the rule, I could shoot my .22 in the woods behind the house whenever I wanted, but the 30-30 was off limits unless he was present. So, of course, one day I snuck it out of the gun cabinet, and fired a few shots off the back porch.
Even cleaned it real good so he wouldn't know I had used it. I was a lot sharper then I looked. To bad I didn't notice the bronze cleaning brush had come unscrewed from the cleaning rod, and was still in the bore.
The next "authorized" firing of that 30-30 went about like you might imagine. I was lucky, the barrel or action didn't explode, but there was this funny looking bulge in the barrel, about half way down.
OK, so I'm not that smart after all, but I was smart enough to tell the truth, that I had snuck it out and fired it without permission. A little detective work identified the bore brush, missing from the cleaning kit. I expected the worst. I figured the belt was coming off. See, in those days, when you messed up, really bad, there was a price to be paid. Nothing too bad, more scare tactic then anything, but you learned. This was before kids ran wild, and had their parents arrested for raising their voices at them.
But he took a different approach. He checked with a couple gun shops as to the rifles value, if it was undamaged, mint shape. About $150.00. Then he advised me I owed him $150.00 I asked him where I was going to get $150.00. He advised me I was going to sell my minibike. Now understand, this was not just any minibike, this was a Rupp Roadster, bright red paint, chrome gas tank, 5 HP motor. In the group of neighborhood junior juvenile delinquents I rode with, it was one hot ride.
So I sold it, $250.00 if I remember right. I paid my father the $150.00, and asked for the rifle, figuring I would use the remaining cash to get it re-barreled. No. But, I said, "I paid for it, its mine". That's when I heard a popular expression for the first time: "Life sucks, get used to it".
Deer season was coming, and I had no rifle, but I did have $100.00, so off to the Sportsmen's Den I went, my mother in tow. 12 year olds couldn't buy guns - an adult had to sign all sorts of paperwork. How silly. I read almost any gun related book or magazine I could get my hands on at the time, and had formed some pretty definite opinions on the perfect deer rifle, helped along in no small measure by Elmer Keith. At the time, Keith was the guru of big bore, and Jack O'Connor was the champion of real small looking bullets, like the .270. Bigger is always better, right? So, when I spotted the DWM 1909 Argentine Mauser, sitting in the rack, in complete military dress, I had an plan..
I think I paid $50.00 for the rifle, in really nice shape. The quality of the metal work on that rifle was outstanding, all hand fit. The bolt slid open like it was on oiled ball bearings. It had the rare factory hinged floor plate, a feature that I think is exclusive to the Argentine contract rifles. I left it at the gun shop, with instructions to cut the barrel down to 22 inches, and re-bore / re-chamber it to .35 Whelen. I had the bolt handle lowered, and the action drilled and tapped for scope mounts and peep sights, and the barrel drilled for a front sight.
When it was completed, I took it home and cut down and sportsterized the stock myself. The wood was some kind of hard walnut, but had no grain to speak of, so I took several different shades of wood stain, and "painted" in some rather nice fiddle back. A couple layers of hand rubbed oil, and it looked nice. ( I remember a few years later thinking my "technique" had been stolen when Browning got busted using Japanese artists to paint some rather beautiful grain onto some otherwise rather plain gun stocks)
I was running into cash flow problems at that point, so I forgoed mounting a scope, and instead mounted a clean, used Lyman peep sight, and a Williams ramp front sight with a big gold bead. I did not change the trigger, as I liked the feel of the smooth and crisp two stage military pull. Stan at the Sportsmen's Den reloaded me .35 whelen's, if I remember right, at $5.00 a box. I don't recall the load, but I believe it was a Speer bullet.
That rifle would shoot about two inches at 100 yards, with my young eyes, using peep sights. It wasn't long after I started reloading, and that rifle and I became a fairly deadly team. I used hard cast 158 grain semi-wadcutters loaded to about 1500 FPS as practice / small game loads, and 250 grain Speer's at about 2500 FPS for big game. Over the years I have often thought about replacing that military barrel, maybe restocking it in a piece of fancy French walnut, a nice bright blue job. But I never have. That rifle has too many memories attached to it, scrapes, scratches and all. No, I think I will leave it just like it is.
I would like to say how I used that rifle exclusively over the next 20 years to bag a boat load of bucks, but that would be un-true. I was too much of a gun nut, and could never be satisfied with just one rifle. After my rifle stage, I went through my black powder and handgun stages. For a while, I even tried shooting stuff with pointy sticks from a bow, but lost interest. It didn't go "bang". These days, I hunt mostly with a handgun, but still often carry a rifle.
How did I do that year in Maine, you might ask? Didn't even see a buck. But the following year, on a cool November Maine morning, I shot a 130 class buck at about 35 yards while he was busy tending to his scrape. He just about dropped in his tracks. The ol' man said he could hear me hootin and hollerin, all the way back at the cabin..
Big Easy 1-28-09
