What's your mothers favorite rifle?
My mothers favorite was a Stevens bolt action 30-30 with iron sights. It was the only rifle she ever used.
My mother didn't start using a rifle until she was 70 years old. She only wanted to learn to shoot after a particularly barren deer hunting season for my dad and my brothers and I.
While we were hunting the rest of our farm, mom was either sitting at her sewing machine or doing all the other chores she did each day and watching deer foraging for leftovers in her garden while we hunting and not seeing anything. She was a little frustrated with that.
She needed at least 4 deer a year to freeze and can in those Mason jars.
Whenever her children and grandchildren came to visit her at the farm she would always give them a "care package" to take home with them. This consisted of various canned vegetables, fruit, soups and deer. When someone was ready to leave, there would be a box sitting on top of the chest freezer by the back door. You didn't dare tell her it wasn't necessary, you just picked it up and put it in your car. Inside that box would always be a note reminding us to bring back those empty Mason jars.
So this one year we were not producing any meat for her care packages. She wasn't happy. My youngest brother was the best shot in the family so mom told him, she didn't ask, to teach her how to shoot. I wasn't there to watch but my brother told us when she shot, the recoil jerked her head and shoulder back violently. He asked her if she was okay and she just said "why"? As if nothing had happened.He told us it was difficult to watch as she shot.
She learned how to shoot and a couple days later she saw a doe in the garden, she opened the sliding glass window, rested the rifle on the sewing machine and shot it about 50 yards away. We used to joke that she was the only person in the history of hunting to use a sewing machine as a rest. When we came in for lunch that day she told us to leave our jackets and boots on and go get the deer. It was the same tone as asking us to go get the mail.She wasn't excited, just a matter of fact statement. With my dad and moms generation, bragging was as rude as talking back to your elders or missing church on Sunday just to go hunting. It just wasn't done.
For the remainder of her life she would hunt from the house and even spent a few mornings and afternoons at the hunting shack my dad used about a hundred yards from the house. She shot more deer throughout the years but that first deer has been indelibly etched in the minds of my brothers and I.
So, on this Mother's Day, I can't help but think about that 30-30 and my mom and that deer some 50 odd years ago.