Our Handgun Editor doesn’t hold with limiting one’s range of shooting experiences. Despite his main interest in handguns, he’s been using centerfire rifles for over 40 years. He’s carried rifles in the service, in the Border Patrol, and as a sheriff in Texas. He’s also used rifles on metallic silhouettes and to hunt everything from varmints to bull moose. Those who like to pigeonhole writers are in for a surprise, because Skeeter has decided to fly the coop.
AMONG THE MOST frequent
complaints uttered by politicians is the one about having “labels” pinned on
them. In other words, they dislike being confined; they want the freedom to move
about. While I’m no politician, I sometimes find the label “handgunner”
adorning my vest a bit too confining. Fact is, I’ve been a user of centerfire
rifles for over 40 years.
My first rifle, and the only one for a while, had belonged to my dad. It was a bulky, slab-sided Model 8 Remington in .38 Remington, and he had toted this cumbersone semiautomatic annually in the mule deer country of northern New Mexico since before I could remember. When he died, I was too young to go deer hunting by myself and had no one to take me, so I lugged it over the plains of Deaf Smith County, Texas, and plugged a few coyotes with it.
During World War II, ammunition was hard to come by. If you were a rancher or farmer, you were permitted to buy .22 rimfires, shotgun shells, and .30-30 rifle ammunition. My family farmed and ran a few cattle, and I got the allotment list at the hardware store, buying my full share of everything. Needing a .30-30 to use up my ration in that caliber, I traded for a beat-up old Marlin with a color-casehardened receiver and a halved penny for a front sight. I sometimes toted it horseback in a floppy saddle scabbard, but I don’t remember using it on anything except rattlesnakes.
My stint in the Marines began when the war was almost over. My first issue rifle was a new, in-the-cosmolen M1 Garand. This rifle had been made by Winchester. My partner, a high-school pal named Red Reeves, drew a Springfield Arsenal-made M1. Red was good shot, but I thought I was better.
At the rifle range at Parris Island, South Carolina, I found a my M1 shot out in the white to the right of the black at 100 yards with the windage knob cranked clear over. My coach took his little wrench and moved the front sight so far to the right that it threatened to fall off the barrel. I was still printing right. He then told me to hold “Kentucky windage” and fire for qualification. I did, and I shot marksman. Red, of course, had no trouble and fired the platoon’s only expert score. I nearly died of humiliation.
I was issued another M1 in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and took it to China. I never fired it.
Shortly after I returned home in 1946, the NRA handled DCM sales of surplus 1903 Springfields and 1917 Enfields. I bought a Springfield for about $17 and also took a friend’s Enfield off his hands. He’d paid $7.50 for it, and both rifles were in excellent condition. About the same time, I bought a .30-40 Krag in nice shape.
A friend who shall remain nameless owned a lifetime supply of military .30-06 ammo. He was generous with it, and I got to work out the Springfield and Enfield constantly. I bagged a nice Canadian river gobbler with the Springfield and missed a shot at a mulie buck. I didn’t like the cock-on-close feature of the Enfield, and the Krag required storebought ammunition, so I gave them up.
Using a pal’s loading press, I worked up a 180-grain .30-06 load, using then-new Hornady bullets and Hodgdon’s surplus 4895 powder. My Springfield had been semi-sporterized, and I managed to Indian up on a deer and introduce him to Hornady’s pride and joy. I decided I needed a really deluxe rifle to go along with my several handgun. Gunsmith Potsy Baker offered to build one to my specifications, and his price was right. To get the funds for my basic rifle components, I had Potsy sell my dad’s Remington .35, my pet snubnose S&W Military & Police .38 Special, and a battered old Colt SA I kept as a spare.
Potsy used the proceeds to buy a commercial FN Mauser action, a Buhmiller barrel blank in .270 Winchester, and a premium-grade Bishop stock blank. As the work went on, I swapped for a Buehler one-piece scope mount, a new Weaver K4 scope, and a Timney trigger.
No speed demon, Potsy took a little more than a year to mold everything together into a rifle. The result was a beautiful eight-pound .270 sporter that would stay inside a quarter at 100 yards. Before I got to try out this jewel on big game, I fell on hard times. I had to sell it for $205, which was a month’s pay back then. I’ve mourned it ever since.
When I entered the Border Patrol, I was chagrined to learn the issue rifle was the .35 Remington Model 81, a later version of my dad’s old Model 8. The arms-room in the Tucson sector headquarters held a rack of them, a rack of Reising submachineguns, some cased commercial Thompson, and two or three Model 70 Winchesters in .30-06. There was also one Model 94 Winchester .30-30 in a saddle scabbard. Buck Smith and I were the only Patrol Inspectors who rode horse patrol every day, and I decided to carry the .30-30, which had a great deal more ranging power than the issue Colt New Service .38 Special.
I prevailed on Gordon Pettingill, the acting chief, to issue me the .30-30 as a reward for passing probationary Spanish and law exams. I soon got tired of having to haul the carbine out of its scabbard every time I loaded the horses in the trailer or dismounted for a smoke. To have done otherwise would have been to court a broken rifle stock, and I soon checked the .30-30 back in.
About this time, I learned that Ward Koozer, a master gunsmith then living in Douglas, Arizona, was converting .25-20 and .32-20 Model 92 Winchester lever actions into .357 Magnum carbines. I quickly acquired a nice .32-20 and sent it down to him, along with a handful of dummy rounds of my favorite .357 handload. When the gun was returned, it delighted me. I have owned several of these .357 carbines over the years, three of them converted by Koozer, and have been served well by them, both in law enforcement and in shooting game up to and including deer.
Back in Texas as a sheriff, I became interested in light sniper rifles and tried a custom .257 Roberts on a Remington action, as well as the first Model 70 Featherweight I ever saw. The Model 70 was chambered in .243; with it. I made the longest game shot of my life and dropped a buck antelope at a range so great I’m afraid to describe it.
At about the same time, I carried a “car gun” in a built-in zippered case attached to the front seat of my sheriff’s car. Much to the glee of my fellow officers, it was a large Model 86 lever-action Winchester in .45-70. One neighboring sheriff laughingly offered to trade me two .30-30’s for it, but there was no laughter the night I shot the fan off the car of two fugitives as they tried to run our roadblock. Their car quickly overheated and stalled, making them an easy catch.
Although my main interests remained with handguns, I found more and more uses for rifles as time passed, especially since I was doing more deer, antelope, and turkey hunting.
In the middle ‘50’s, the DCM turned loose another bunch of 1903A3 Springfields, and I drew a new one. I had Dave Beavers of Hereford, Texas, cut the barrel to 22 inches and turn it to below standard sporter diameter. We replaced the stamped trigger guard and floorplate with milled ones and installed a custom safety and trigger. The stock was fashioned from a Fajen blank, and a full pistol grip was left on it. The scope was again a Weaver K4 (my idea of an all-around rifle sight). Caliber was left .30-06 (my idea of an all-around rifle caliber). The oufit weighs seven pound with sling.
I’ve had this rifle for almost 30 years, and it’s still a tack driver. I have taken antelope with it, as well as whitetail deer in Texas and Mexico. It has brought home an abundance of mule deer from Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. A few years ago, I packed it horseback into the wilds of northern British Columbia, and I used it to down a nice bull moose with one shot at 300 yards. It is my favorite rifle.
Over the years, I have tested and used many rifle. When the Ruger.44 carbine was first introduced, I tested it as a law-enforcement weapon, but decided its five-shot capacity was too small. In later years, the .223 Mini-14 came along and filled the gap nicely.
I have two .243’s, one a Ruger Model 77 and the other a Savage Model 99. I’ve taken several deer with them and like to carry them, but I have concluded their light bullets are not consistent enough for use on deer. My Springfield .30-06 is backed up by antohther as-issued ‘03A3 Springfield and a gleaming new Ruger Model 77 in .30-06. I don’t want to run out of guns for this grand cartridge.
Everybody in the Southwest began shooting their rifles at metallic silhouettes a few years ago. This seemed the thing to do, and offhand rifle shots were being made and broken. I equipped myself with a new Remington 700 in .308 Winchester, topping it with a Weaver K6 glass. I haven’t shot all the silhouettes I intended to, but my son Bart put a sleek spike mulie in the freezer with this one.
My Colt Sauer .270 with its Lyman 4X accounted for two whitetail and a javalina boar last fall-in the hands of another hunter. I was busy on that trip trying to bag a buck with a scoped .44 Magnum revolver. I didn’t get a shot…so I did as well with the sixgun as I would have the .270.
Ed Nolan of Sturm, Ruger & Co. presented me with a medium-weight Model 77 in .22-250 caliber some years ago. I installed it with a Weaver 3-9X variable and bought loading dies and bullets. I use 4895 to power just about any rifle load, and I found a superb round for this one. I believe it is the most accurate rifle I’ve ever used. There are few prairie dogs around my part of the desert, but coyotes are here in force. I soon found it was no challenge to shoot coyotes with my .22-250. If they were still-or just fairly still-and I could see them, they were usually history. I gave the .22-250 Ruger to a Texas friend of mine who lives in prairie dog country, and it has found a home.
The great Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico is justifiably famous for its tremendous elk herds, and I hunted there a couple of seasons ago. A meat hunter, I’m not in the habit of looking for trophy heads, and a dry cow or a doe or a spike generally fills my needs to perfection. But something on this trip made me decide that nothing less than a six-point bull would do me. I’d never gone after an elk, and being determined to get the job done, I unlimbered my Ruger No 1 .375 Magnum. I conjured up some very accurate loads consisting of the Speer 285-grain Grand Slam bullet over a healthy charge of 4895. The Ruger shot like a show pony.
Within the first hour of the first day of my hunt, I jumped a small group of elk not 100 yards from me. I looked at them through the scope, resting the rifle on a fencepost, and found the crosshairs on the tail bone of a bull, slowly trotting away from me. He was big and in good flesh, but he was only a five-pointer. I let him go, and of course didn’t get another shot during the entire hunt.
I did take home an elk. Partner Evan Quiros gave me his rather than haul it all the way back to South Texas. It was, naturally, a six pointer.
My mini-14, my original 92 Winchester .44-40 short rifle, and my iron-sighted Ruger No. 1 .45-70 short rifle are all rifles that give me pleasure. I have quite a few more that are oiled and ready to go when the occasion demands. One is a Ruger Model 77 in 7mm Magnum. Maybe a cow elk will get acquainted with it this winter.
It’s said I’m a handgunner, pure and simple. My rifleman pals emphasize the “simple.” One day I’ll surprise them and write a story about rifles.