Two shots a year rifle...

[Redlg155]

I primarily hunt Tyndall AFB here in NW Fl and was seriously considering purchasing a Savage 220 f 20 ga slug gun. Enough so that I have already started to buy ammo at $12.00+ a box of 5. Once sighted in I will most likely only shoot it again at live game.

The high price of ammo got me to thinking of my father who passed away several years ago. He hunted with a Remington semi auto chambered in 30-06 that he used every year to harvest a couple of deer. 2 shots. 2 deer. Then back into the cabinet for another year. He never touched it otherwise, it was a tool, plain and simple.Year after year he repeated the same pattern. 2 shots. 2 deer.

He had other rifles and handguns that he would love to shoot, but in the end it was back to the 30-06.

It's funny how some things trigger memories and made me wonder how many other folks are the same way about certain guns.

 

[BK]

Not me.

I hunt big game every year and throw at least a good four dozen rounds down range out of these rifles every year just to make sure they and I are doing what we are supposed to be.

And I admit that I do enjoy seeing how well, or not, they perform from one year's hand loads to the next.

 

[Cocked & Locked]

Post #1 brings back memories of hunting in the early 1970's. I hunted with a fellow that bought a 7.5 (I think) Swiss Schmidt Rubin. To go with it he bought one box of Norma soft point ammo.

He would shoot one deer a year when deer were scarce to see one around here. We all kidded him about his looong rifle with the straight pull bolt, but he always got the last laugh each year. After his third consecutive season of success he let us all know he had enough ammo left to last for 17 years.

 

[mgmorden]

My dad is pretty much the same way. For the most part, to him, target shooting is "wasting bullets". The only time he shoots is hunting. Admittedly, because I practice I'm a better shot than him (with a handgun or rifle anyways - he's a better wing shooter), but he still gets 4-5 deer and 5 turkeys every year.

Ironically enough, he also used a Remington 742 semi-auto .30-06 for most of his hunting "career". It eventually developed a habit of ripping the rims of cases that were sticking in the chamber, and my mom bought him a Ruger M77 in .270 for Christmas a few years back to use instead.

 

[Poper]

It eventually developed a habit of ripping the rims of cases that were sticking in the chamber,

Sounds like the chamber could use a good cleaning.
If that doesn't fix it, a trip the the 'smith is in order.

 

[Cocked & Locked]

Lots of locked up Remington 742 rifles around the country setting useless in safes, cabinets, and hanging on walls because of the same reason. Remington can't fix them and cleaning the chamber is a short term fix at the best. That usually doesn't work even temporarily..

 

[GBExpat]

As a kid the highlights of my summers were visits to my maternal grandparent's farm (where I have lived for the past quarter century).

I can remember my grandfather being mildly annoyed with my cousin and me over wasting all of the .22RF ammo (and, later, CF ammo). He was always telling us that every shot should produce something to eat.

Some mornings, he would get up before dawn, grab his .22 rifle from the arsenal in the alcove behind the front door of the farmhouse and head for the woods on the west ridge where he would bark squirrels.

He had this ancient double bit axe that he kept so sharp that he would use it to clean those squirrels ... but I digress ...

Redlg155, thanks for triggering the good memories.

 

[The Alaskan]

He was always telling us that every shot should produce something to eat.

I think that's a generational thing and a product of growing up in hard times.

My dad, b. 1930, grew up in the depression in rural New England. He told me similar stories of how his dad would give him a 12 gauge and 2 shells and told come back with something or he wouldn't get any more shells to shoot. (Herb Parsons-exhibition shooter for Winchester in the 1950's oft told a similar tale during his shows. His was, I think, "Come back with something to eat or don't come back.)

Those were hard times that made hard men. To be honest, our country could probably benefit, over the long run, from a similar experience today.

On a side note, Farley Mowat (Canadian author) touches on this in his novel "Lost In The Barrens" where his native/First Nations character says to a white guy "Only white men waste bullets on bullseyes."

 

[buck460XVR]

The high price of ammo got me to thinking of my father who passed away several years ago. He hunted with a Remington semi auto chambered in 30-06 that he used every year to harvest a couple of deer. 2 shots. 2 deer. Then back into the cabinet for another year. He never touched it otherwise, it was a tool, plain and simple.Year after year he repeated the same pattern. 2 shots. 2 deer.

My ol' man was the same way. Once he got it dialed in when bought new, bout the only time he sighted his 742 again, was after he missed a deer.....and that didn't happen very often. Generally a box of shells would last him a decade. He wouldn't even shoot a downed deer again as that as just a waste of good ammo and preferred to walk up and cut their throat. I remember my Grandpa giving me his Winnie lever .32 special in 1964 so I could hunt deer. He bought it after he came back from France after WWI. He gave me a box of shells that had two left in it. It was the box of shells the dealer thru in when he bought it. As a young kid before I could hunt on my own, when dad would take me out squirrel hunting, he would always let me take one shot with the .22 when we got back to the truck. We never went to the range unless someone got a new gun or a brother/sister became old enough to hunt deer. Then it was one or two shots just to make sure the gun was still "on".

....and folks wonder why I now like to shoot so much.

 

[browningguy]

I hunted Tyndall in the late 60's and early 70's growing up there, and caught a lot of speckled trout in the bay too.

Back to your thoughts, I have one rifle that I really don't shoot very much anymore, a custom in 7x57. But every hunt it goes out with me. I shoot one shot to make sure it's still sighted in, then 1-3 more depending on how many deer/pigs I am taking home. That's it, year after year.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

My father used a .22 when he grew up on a farm in the 1930s, when ten cents an hour was a good wage. He was used to shooting only if it meant meat or protecting livestock from predators. But we did do a lot of tin can plinking in the 1950s and 1960s. And he approved of me taking 8 squirrels with 10 shots (two misses head shot only) on a hunt with my uncle Ed and his dog Henry.

Went to the mountain this spring and put flowers on dad's grave at the Brown's Mountain Cemetery and went to the old home place and shot my .22 at some cans.

50s and 60s I knew folks who would buy a rifle and one box of ammo, fire three shots to be sure of the sights, then only fire with wild game in the sights. Maybe buy a new box of ammo when down to two or three in the old box. .22 s, l, lr, 12ga, .410, .30-30 on the shelves of most general stores.

The gun control rhetoric in the 1960s made me start stockpiling ammo.

 

[MedWheeler]

Seems I recall an anecdote being posted (perhaps here?) by a gentleman that owned a hardware shop "back in the day."

An older man, about 80 or so, would come in at the start of each deer season and purchase just two rounds of ammo. One would be to sight in his rifle, and the other to take a deer. The store's owner kept the box of ammo behind the counter with this man's name on it.

When another man in the store asked the octogenarian about his practice ("Why don't you just buy the whole box?"), the response was that the older man would then no longer have any reason to come to the store and see people, and also that he did not expect to live longer enough to get full use of the ammo in the box..

 

[huntsman]

My old man was tight with his money and so am I.

We shot .22lr a bit when I was young and I always got a box of shotgun shells for my Bday( I was born in Oct and small game opens in Nov) that box was to last a year, I could buy more ammo myself or ask for it for Christmas but the old man would only pay for one box so I'd better not waste.

This frugality still affects my attitude toward ammo, when my boys were growing up we'd shoot 1 box of slugs(5) each the Saturday before opening day then each carry a box for the week.