308 Norma, wow does that ever bring back a memory. Your far from being old sir, I,m 77 and still Deer Hunting and I will till the good Lord switches me off. I,m in excellent health and always hunt with guy,s that are good good friend,s. They have the RV,s ect.. All I do is fill my tag out, dress my Deer and the boy,s either pull or drag my Deer out of the wood,s.
Over my life time I,ve forgotten how many (legally) tagged whitetail,s I have dumped. And the memories to me boil down to one important thing and that,s friendship. It,s like the true story from WWII about Brother,s in Arm,s. I am also a Vietnam Vet.. Anyhow, back to the 308 Norma. Years past, a friend of mine who has moved on hunted with a 308 Norma Magnum using 180 grain reload,s. When we were together with other friend,s I always used my Remington Pump Shotgun and Remington 1 Ounce slugs. We,ll one weekend we went up to Star Lake N.Y. to hunt Aldrich, N.Y.which was 7 miles back in. We had a parked park permit trailer we ate and hunted from. You had to get with a Park Ranger once a week to renew your park permit. We,ll the story goes, my friend was not feeling good so he let me take his 308 Norma and gave me a handful of 180 grain reloads. We had hunted all day Saturday and we decided to head back Sunday afternoon. Four of us heading out on a back wood,s dirt road. I was in the passenger side up front. I had the Norma resting between my legs leaning back with my friend,s reload,s in my hunting coat pocket keeping them warm with my hand. A friend in the back behind the driver had a 30-30 Winchester Model 94. We are slowly driving out when a nice full grown Doe jumped from right to left in front of our vehicle I,d say 25 feet in front of us. The driver now hit,s the brakes and then the biggest rack Buck I have ever seen in my life followed the Doe and cleared the whole road in one jump. Now remember, we were perfectly legal, there were no loaded gun,s in this vehicle. Now what was strange is the Buck when into a simple walk,. I got out of the car and said to myself, don,t screw this up. I walked across in front of the vehicle , got well off of the road took about 8 to 10 more step,s more and said piece off cake. I dropped a 180 grain reload into the barrel and went to close the bolt and I could not close it and I was beating on the bolt thinking what-ta hell,s happening here. I glanced to my left and my buddy with the 30-30 and there was shell,s all over the ground by his feet and nothing in the gun and then I broke out laughing and started moving deeper into the wood,s on a fast walk because I eventually got the bolt closed. Of course by then the deer were gone. Later, I could not open the bolt so I had to discharge the 308 Norma into the ground and walked out of the woods in another 30 or 40 yrd,s. We,ll here,s what happened. My buddy that owned the gun , after I told him the story started laughing his ass off. He said, this gun has a Mouser action so you cannot drop one in the barrel and close the bolt. If you had pushed one into the internal clip there would have been no problem and just maybe you would of had a happier ending. The funniest part of that memory, was seeing my buddy with definite Buck fever trying to load that 30-30.
