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Around the Campfire (General Discussion) / OLDER Rifle To The Rescue
« on: November 01, 2020, 01:51:28 AM »
Maybe not quite twenty-five years ago, Ruger did it's first run of Stainless synthetic Model 77's in 7.62x39. It had what I think people called the "boat paddle " stock, with cocobolo wood inlays. I have never been a huge Ruger rifle fan, although I have a number of them, but I thought that that rifle was rather innovative, especially in that caliber. It was one of the first bolt guns available at that time for the 7.62 Soviet. The bore was sort of "in between" from what I read, so you could shoot the surplus ammo, and you could reload it with regular.308 caliber bullets. But shortly thereafter, the bullet manufacturers came out with the proper diameter bullets for it, in the best weights. Anyway, I had heard horror stories on the accuracy of these rifles, but I got lucky with mine I guess, it would shoot just under an inch with my handloads. I put a Redfield Five Star Compact variable on it, remember those. It was a DANDY compact all purpose rifle, with CHEAP ammo available for it. For the next year's coming deer season, I practiced with both of my Sons, 10 and 12 at the time, first with a Ruger 77/22 with that same "boat paddle" stock and was almost exactly like the 7.62, and then we graduated to shooting the real thing at hand drawn by me deer silhouette targets. They both shot their first bucks with that rifle that year. You know how it is, after a year or two they needed "their own" rifles and such, and the Ruger got put way in the back of the gun safe. Well, fast forward to ten years ago. Those of you that were on the board then may remember when I presented Erich, the older of the two Sons with a Weatherby Accumark in .257 with a Zeiss scope on it, as a gift for he and his wife presenting me with "Daniel," my first Grandchild. That is when I joined Weatherby Nation. Well, fast forward ten more years to the present; guess who is hunting this year. That little fellow is now ten. His Dad is very busy with his job, but we have got the little fellow pumped up for hunting. Of course we waited to the last minute but a month or two ago, "Little D" did not have a rifle of his own. I had recommended some of the nice affordable "hunting packages" available to his Dad. But Erich asked me. "Does Weatherby make a youth model. "Yes" I said. "What caliber?" I said that the 6.5 Creedmoor is really popular these days. "What kind of scope?" I recommended one of the lower tier Leupold's. "Rings?" "Talley's." He got it all ordered. Well, the rifle and rings came in last week, the rifle is still at the FFL; the damn scope has not come in. It was supposedly in stock, we do not know what the holdup is. The FFL was going to mount it for him. Well, last week, I am still going through firearms that had been salvaged from the flood. I was going through one group of them, and low and behold, there was that old Ruger 77. I looked through the scope with my one semi-functioning eye, and it looked OK. I showed it to my Son that evening, and it brought back some GREAT memories for him. So today he asked, "Do you think that Ruger will still shoot after the flood." I said that it probably will, but all of my handloads were shoveled away. He then said that he had some commercial Hornady's lying around that he had bought for hunting pigs with his ....... "truck gun." (Hopefully next week it will not have to be a 'post election' gun). So we went to my forty yard "range" behind the house this afternoon. This rifle has not been shot in twenty-five years, and it soaked in a flood for a day and a half. It had been thoroughly cleaned immediately though. I told Erich to take the first shot. He squeezed off one of the Hornady rounds, looked through the scope. "Sheeeiiit!" I asked, "Did you miss." He looked up at me grinning. "It hit EXACTLY where I was aiming. So we did a crash "operation" course with Daniel and the rifle; operating the bolt, the safety, a bunch of dry firing. ACQUIRING THE TARGET through the scope. Young new shooters sometimes have trouble with that. He was picking it all up pretty quick. He was shooting at one of those folding Caldwell "deer" targets. It is a real photo of a buck. Erich had showed Daniel where to aim. Daniel had never shot a centerfire rifle before. "Bang!" They went to look at it. I stayed at the bench. I saw them do the "high five" thing. They came back. Erich said, "Dead deer, he hit exactly where I had told him to aim." We banged off just a couple more shots, and all were good. I hope that he will at least get a doe or something. There is one legal buck coming around though, maybe that will be an opportunity. My little "shooting range" is literally ONE FOOT out of the city limits. I DID NOT want to be annexed into the city way back when. "City limits" is 500 feet from the center of the highway, and my range is 501 feet from the highway, parallel to it. With SO MANY "transplants" in our area, maybe "citified, not gun friendly" types, I did not want to shoot too much. So we will see if they see something. Trust me, in the "good ole days, we would have fired HUNDREDS of rounds in preparation. But it just doesn't work out that way for us anymore. I will keep y'all posted. MM