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Hunting miss-teries

Contrary to the modern saying, real men do so eat quiche, particularly when non-hunting, non-game eating women are present.
RichardsHarleyMugMay23jer
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Contrary to the modern saying, real men do so eat quiche, particularly when non-hunting, non-game eating women are present.

Robert Short, with our two hunting friends from B.C., Gilles Patenaude and George Landry, was bringing quiche for a Sunday hunting lunch at my Stump Ranch cabin where Herself would be present for many good reasons, including cutting the several small Christmas trees she needs for our Red Deer deck.

But that all-day Saturday and Sunday morning blizzard, with up to 45 cm of snow out west, changed plans. Gilles, a year older than I am, and having had bypass surgery earlier this year, decided he needed to evacuate early back to salubrious Victoria. So Robert packed everyone up the following Wednesday, including the quiche, and brought them in to our house in Red Deer for lunch, and so Gilles could catch his plane later at Penhold.

After the quiche was dispatched, we four real men retired to the living room and quietly started speaking Huntarian (a seasonal variation of Anglish). The three of them seemed needful of some down time; not surprising since they had just experienced the dark downside of moose hunting — schlepping seven huge sections of a big bull in from too far back in the swamp. This was their harvest of the first week of the season, plus some uncharacteristic missed shots at deer, possibly caused by shivering.

The only missed shots that haunt me — to this day — are the two or three miss-teries I can’t understand, or explain. Total misses, or wounding rifle shots at big game generally have four main causes. The most common cause is not sighting-in the rifle before every season with exactly the ammunition (make, bullet weight, etc.) that is going to be used for hunting. The sighting-in should be done with the rifle rested solidly on sandbags, and the object, for modern hunting calibres, is the Rule of Three: to have the bullets print three inches (eight cm) above the bullseye aim-point at 100 metres (yards).

Unless you are a trained Olympic marksman, never shoot offhand at live game. Find a steady rest, or have a bipod on your rifle, assume the sitting, or prone positions, etc.

There is no longer much excuse for another common cause of misses: not knowing the range. Modern rangefinders are quick to use, accurate, and not expensive. Even quicker, less expensive, and almost as accurate is the method I favoured: using the Dual X reticule on a variable power rifle scope as a rangefinder.

A too-common reason for misses and wounded animals comes from respecting your abilities too much and not respecting the animals enough to refrain from blasting away with Hail Mary shots at standing or running game at unknown, but always excessive ranges.

A frustrating cause of misses, seemingly more common recently, is defective, improperly loaded factory ammunition. That problem, years ago, is what got me started meticulously handloading the ammunition for all my rifles.

“So, what is your favourite scope and rifle?” George Landry asked. Well, I started with Weaver scopes, but ended with light, compact Burris variables on most of my rifles and a couple of big, light-gathering, range-finding Redfields on very long-range rifles.

Looking back, I have tried more than two dozen centre fire rifles, ranging, in calibres, from a .223 Remington and a .22-250 (both illegal for big game in Alberta), up to a couple of .358 Winchesters. Eventually I settled on the seven mm, or .280 calibres, mainly because of the wide range of bullet weights offered the hand loader.

After much getting talked out of, trading, trying and selling, I ended up with five faithful, superbly accurate, smooth-functioning, bolt action rifles: a Ruger 77 in .22-250, a custom, Mannlicher stocked seven mm Mauser on a Husquvarna action, a custom seven m. 08 on a Remington 788 action with a Brown Precision fiberglass stock, a fibreglass-stocked Ruger 77 in .280 Remington, and a fiberglass — stocked Sako in seven mm Remington magnum.

I sold all but two four years ago, back when buyers and I still had to do the registry paperwork. “So, what did you save?” George asked. Well, the Ruger .22 — 250 for varmints, and the seven mm — 08, not so much that I’ll ever hunt again, but because it has in it more stories of game taken — and missed — than any of my rifles.

For example, with it, on its bipod, I made my longest shot ever — 425 yards (in those days) — paced by hunting buddy John Horn, a land surveyor, and his party chief. But I still can’t believe, or understand how I earlier missed the same pronghorn buck at 50 feet … offhand shooting, maybe, or “that buck was too close,” akin to a flustered nimrod once explaining how he totally missed a whole magazine of ammunition at a very close moose: “That bull was too big.”

The quiche was delicious, but the après-lunch, Huntarian non-table talk was even better.

Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.