Some of you may have seen a couple of posts I made recently about my BSA Martini Cadet. Some of you were even kind enough to offer advice on load development.
Quirky load for 32 Win Spl
and shared my story of trying to determine the groove diameter of the barrel
How to ruin barrels in your old rifles...
I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the history of my rifle. I know very broadly about the history of the Australian Cadet rifles – but I don’t know enough about the serial numbers to know what year mine was made. Of the numbers on the rifle I assume that the 77036 on the action body and the barrel mean that is the SN, and the single 29522 underneath COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA VIC is a rack number from a school or cadet unit in Victoria.
It’s even got the cute little ‘Roo
As I read it, most of these rifles have been converted from the original 310 Cadet chambering. I don’t know which conversion is the most common, but mine was re-chambered to 32 Winchester Special. On the face of it a sensible choice in the 1950s when these surplus rifles were imported to the US. Due to the encountered bore diameters of the 310 being between about 318 and 323, the 32 Spl at 321 is a close enough fit, and most of the work was able to be accomplished by reaming the chamber out to the new, larger, size, and relieving the extractor in the same way. @Rookandrabbit revealed that the best of these conversions had some additional work done to reshape the firing pin and strengthen the bolt face. I don’t have anything to compare it with to know whether this was done to mine or not. What I can say is that shooting 170 grain factory loads is unpleasant, indeed the word I would use is spiteful. Certainly not conducive to any great feats of accuracy. And in any event, factory 32 Win Spl is $3 a round if you can even find any. Clearly this rifle deserves, needs, hand feeding.
After the experimentation referred to above I came up with a load that was pleasant to shoot and chambered and extracted without any issue, and grouped well enough that hunting with it didn’t trouble my conscience. Here’s one of mine on the left next to a factory W-W Super round:
By mid-January the Pennsylvania deer hunting seasons are mostly over, and I had planned to use the fairly generous after Christmas flintlock season, but having the mainspring in my cheap Traditions flintlock break on me (again), I was left with few options to avoid another “dry” license year. I was lucky enough to have a very small window, by virtue of an extra “antlerless deer” tag valid for the extended season in Northampton County which borders my home county of Monroe, using what the Pennsylvania Game Commission are pleased to describe as a “regular” firearm. With only a small number of days I could take off work, and quirky old Martini type rifle to take into the field, my desire to get a decent load was inflamed.
Initially I thought that I would be trying to find a suitable cast bullet, but here I struck out, failing to find a suitable mould (seemingly Lyman made one such, dropping an approximately 140 grain 322 calibre GC bullet – but that is long since OOP). I even went to the trouble of buying a secondhand RCBS lube sizer. I was also was finally able to determine the groove diameter of my barrel (about .3205),
and ascertain that the inexpensive Lee bullet sizing dies will in fact work nicely on jacketed bullets. In addition I found some 323 diameter PSP bullets (I can only assume that these are intended to be a hunting bullet for the 7.92 Kurz). These sized down nicely to .321. At the same time, 30-30 brass sized up nicely in my 32 Spl dies and I was able to manage some hasty load development – with results acceptable enough for some close range hunting. To complete the package I popped into SARCO to try and find a suitable sling, preferably an Enfield type which is what I imagine they would have been used with. Their slings were a mess and the bin labelled “Enfield Slings” contained something that had a weird spring/gate clip at one end, and whatever they were, certainly wasn’t Enfield slings. In a hurry and needing something I picked up what I think is a reproduction M1 Carbine sling. It’s OG canvas and allowed me to be able to climb up trees and over obstacles with the rifle slung. With barely four days of the season left that was going to have to be good enough.
The following day I went and scouted an area overlooking the Delaware river I had seen deer before. It was on my way home after work and I wasn’t expecting success, indeed wasn’t prepared for it! But I was fortunate because I discovered that a tree had fallen in the little hollow I used for parking. After clearing enough of that away to be able to park decently, I had about 45 minutes of “armed hiking” Didn’t see any deer, and what was potentially worse, I saw a lot of what I took to be buck sign (bigger slots, lots of poo, rubbed branches etc). It would be just typical to encounter a monster buck when my only valid tag was for an antlerless deer! Doubly so because such a buck would have been legal if I was hunting with the flintlock. Either way, I found a good tree to hang my stand, overlooking several fresh tracks and some forage, so I had a pretty decent idea that if I was able to spend a full day there then I’d almost certainly see deer, which would be an improvement on my season to date.
A bit of messaging, bartering with my bosses (work manager and SWMBO) and gambling on the extended weather forecast secured Friday 27th of January as the day. I could have from before sunrise to after sunset. Even better, whilst I would be solo in the morning, my good friend (and Pennsylvania hunting mentor) Walt was free to join me for the afternoon. Walt and I have been hunting together on and off for the past few years. I have learnt most of what I have needed to be successful in PA from him, and we have each had our own successes individually in that time, but we’d not yet made a kill whilst out together, and this was the penultimate day of the last extended season for the 22/23 license year. True, it wasn’t the last day, but the arrangement I have with my wife is that I don’t hunt weekends. Truthfully, it’s not a bad compromise because weekend hunting sucks in PA – it’s generally very busy and whenever I have hunted at weekends I’ve invariably seen lots of hunters and few if any deer, and I suppose my wife and kids deserve to have my attention occasionally too.
Come Friday morning I rose early and followed my standard “hunting day” routine, basically wash my face and rinse my mouth with plain water, no smelly chemicals, dress and sneak out of the house without waking anyone up! I wanted to have been well in position for 30-45 minutes before legal hunting to maximize the chance of seeing something shootable at a time that was legal to shoot it. However, I had obstinately “chosen to forget” that I was nursing a broken rib, and hadn’t really taken into account how much harder that was going to make climbing the tree and hanging the stand. Incidentally, it’s actually an archery stand, so similar to a high seat, but you stand up to shoot, and there’s no rails or guards, hence the harness:
I think this is the first time I have ever taken a "selfie"...
I managed it, but it took a lot longer than I allowed for, and by the time I was up off the ground I had about 10 minutes before legal hunting, and I had made much more noise than I wanted, and had got turned around slightly in the dark and was maybe 120 degrees SW from the orientation I had intended. Still, no use crying about it! I had a view with plenty of ground and lots of potential safe shot angles.
The hills in the background are in New Jersey on the opposite bank of the Delaware. It really is a surprisingly beautiful and tranquil place to hunt despite the fact that Interstate 80 runs along the base of those hills!
As the sun rose the woods began to come to life around me. I chambered a round. A good size fox trotted past my stand. There’s a campground nearby and I don’t doubt he lives well. I looked at him through the sights of the rifle, but I wasn’t protecting anyone’s chickens, and I don’t have any need of a fox fur. He looked up at me and scarpered. As the sun came up and the mist lifted, a few birds fluttered about, and a squirrel or two got my hopes up. I started playing a little game with myself, picking the odd leaf or stone somewhere I imagined a deer might walk through, and seeing how quietly and smoothly I could get it lined up in my sights. After this I put my rifle over my shoulder to take a swig from my water bottle and dig out my little Vortex monocular to glass the bushes at the edge of my field of vision. Of course, this was the moment, before I even started glassing, that I saw the tantalizing silhouette of two, no three, deer silently browsing up the hill toward the field above me.
Bracing my back against the trunk of the tree, I thrust the monocular into a pocket and began to raise the rifle to my shoulder. I don’t know if they winded me or not, or if something else gave me away, but I had the rifle in my shoulder, and I followed these deer waiting for them to stop. They were crossing my field of vision from right to left, climbing the hill. The largest one, I can only assume the mother doe, made occasional pauses and cast her head in my direction. The angle was awkward for me and the light was still fairly low. I hesitated, and did not fire. I could swear that I didn’t make a sound or sudden movement, but something spooked them and they ran. And were gone. It was near 0800.
I waited an hour.
It began to snow.
I waited another.
Shivering a little I pressed my spine against the treetrunk, wiped a few snowflakes from the Cadet’s barrel, and closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes. At about 1030 I considered climbing down, but held on, scolding myself for entertaining weak thoughts.
At around 1100 I admitted that I was unlikely to see any deer again now until later, so I unloaded my rifle, climbed to the ground, stripped off a few layers of clothing, then climbed back to set the angle of the stand to where I had meant it to be in the first place.
Probably, I told myself, that had I got my arse in gear earlier and taken the necessary time to hang my stand facing the direction I actually wanted, I’d be long gone from the woods having cut my tag. Still, I had to head back to town to run an errand or two, and collect Walt who lives very close to me, for the afternoon portion of the hunt.
Before long Walt and I were back in Northampton county (Mount Bethel Township for those following this with a map). He paid me the compliment, on seeing my selected ground, of saying that we might see and shoot a deer anywhere and in any direction given the large number of crisscrossing paths and other fresh looking sign. This was a pretty bid deal for me as he is a better hunter than I will ever be. The small amount of snow that had fallen earlier had by now completely cleared so the temperature must have risen to above freezing. At length, we walked the ground and looked for the best vantage points. After perhaps two hours, and getting close to the “golden hour” of 1530-1630, I went back up the tree-stand, and he took a position behind a fallen tree and some scrub, covering the arc that I could least easily pivot to.
It was a pleasant afternoon. The sun was up, birds and squirrels were moving about. Time past, perhaps 45 minutes to an hour. Then, I saw them. A small group of deer, perhaps the same ones I’d seen in the morning. They were in the field above me – across the line on private property. Perhaps 150-175 yards away from me. They were across the field. Not in my direction, but they might come towards me. I spent a tense 10-20 minutes watching them browse. The sun was shining directly on them but the branches between me and them meant that they kept disappearing and reappearing as they slowly browsed towards a hedgeline running directly across the field. Occasional clouds passed overhead turned the field intermittently dark, and during one of these transmissions I lost them for moment. Then, as it seemed, the head and neck of a deer emerged from behind a tree-branch, and the last of them continued toward the hedge and out of my sight.
My pulse was raised and my rifle was up to my shoulder and I willed them to change course and come down into the trees where I was. Had I been using a scoped rifle they would have been well within range, although unless or until they stepped out of the field and down towards the woods where I was, they were untouchable. But still I watched, desperate that at this 11th hour of an 11th hour my luck would change. They had been so close! But they did not come back. Reluctantly, I lowered my rifle and raised the little Vortex instead and took in the entire periphery of my potential arc of fire, scanning from extreme right, to extreme left and back again.
On that backwards sweep, at the right hand most corner of the field there was a tantalizing silhouette. A big dear, heavy set, noticeably bigger than three who had crossed the field before, and looking initially like a late moving member of the same group. But no! Turning a little to the left and towards me, this new deer began to approach my direction. Stopping every few paces to browse. A heavier whitetail than I had seen all season. And antlerless! Having been becalmed a moment before, my heart was in my mouth now, I slowly tried to get the optic back into a pocket. He (I was pretty certain it was a he by this point) looked up in my direction. Could he see me? The sun and treetrunk were behind me. I slowly began to raise the rifle, moving each time he lowered his head to chew, and freezing each time he raised it again. He kept browsing in my direction. Kept casting a gaze in my direction, but not turning away. Finally the rifle was in my shoulder, and a realized that I was holding my breath. I tried to breath fully a slowly, feeling my broken rib again as I did so. The he was at the edge of the field. Then he stepped over into the wood, and, half a dozen steps further he was into something spindly and bushy with tiny little lilac colored berries in it. A decent size tree trunk covered his right shoulder, but his head and neck extended beyond it. Decision time, any closer and he might smell me, and his heavy neck presented a large target. I wrapped the sling around my supporting arm and held my breath – on purpose this time – and pressed the trigger. One advantage of using iron sights is that, counterintuitively perhaps, you see more. His reaction to the shot was instantaneous, it was like he went suddenly boneless. Folding up on the spot and tucking his head in almost.
I reached into a pocket for a hasty reload catching the empty case as it was kicked out but the extractor. People say that these actions are known for weak or troublesome extraction and ejection, by mine reliably sends brass sailing over my shoulder when cycled with any sort of positivity at all. I watch him for a moment. There was a brief shudder, then absolute stillness. I looked over my right shoulder towards Walt, who had stood up and was looking in my direction. We were close enough to shout to each other, but as far as I remember I simply gave a big “thumbs up”. I unloaded the rifle again, unclipped my safety line and climbed down, reloading again on the ground. I couldn’t quite approach along the line that I shot, and on reaching realized how far behind the tree trunk he had actually been standing. I tapped his eye with the muzzle of my rifle, more for formality than anything else, then I rolled him over and gave him a small piece of the bush he’d been eating:
Walt had caught up to me by now, and preserved this moment for me:
The light was fading quickly as it does in January, I tagged my deer, and we performed a quick gralloch to take advantage of the last of it. Then the drag, downhill all the way which was nice, and at the bottom of the hill, there was my car. And again I am indebted to Walt, as without him I could barely lift my deer. As it was, I didn’t want to have to wash blood from the interior of the car, so I threaded loops through the ISOFix points on the backs of the rear seats over the rear door, and suspended him across the back of the car for the drive home. Something that until recently was a common sight where I live, but that now draws quite a number of surprised looks. I saw more than one mobile phone camera pointed in my direction by people who should have been driving.
Getting home that night, I was just about able to suspend my deer from the garage door rails, but the effort required told me that it was high time I bough a gambrel and some pullies. So the following day I hit up that American institution that is Harbor Freight and for the princely sum of $20 secured gambrel, pullies, rope and D-ring supports to mount the whole assembly. True, it’s not a very good gambrel, but at that price it’s worth the money (especially as nowhere else within driving distance had one in stock). I don’t know if there’s an analogue to Harbor Freight in the UK, certainly I don’t remember one, basically it’s a discount tool retailer, sort of like the bastard offspring of a Screwfix and a Halfords, but with their own brand of knockoff Peli-Cases. Some stuff is excellent, and some is crap, and mostly it’s serviceable. This one will be getting a new rope next year, but it allowed me to get my deer decently suspended to be broken down and butchered.
One way or another, it’s been extremely satisfying to take this old rifle, that has almost certainly circumnavigated the globe, and press it into service as a lightweight and handy deer rifle.
All the picture, and a few others are available here:
Guy Harrison, on Flickr
In case anyone is interested
Quirky load for 32 Win Spl
and shared my story of trying to determine the groove diameter of the barrel
How to ruin barrels in your old rifles...
I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the history of my rifle. I know very broadly about the history of the Australian Cadet rifles – but I don’t know enough about the serial numbers to know what year mine was made. Of the numbers on the rifle I assume that the 77036 on the action body and the barrel mean that is the SN, and the single 29522 underneath COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA VIC is a rack number from a school or cadet unit in Victoria.
It’s even got the cute little ‘Roo
As I read it, most of these rifles have been converted from the original 310 Cadet chambering. I don’t know which conversion is the most common, but mine was re-chambered to 32 Winchester Special. On the face of it a sensible choice in the 1950s when these surplus rifles were imported to the US. Due to the encountered bore diameters of the 310 being between about 318 and 323, the 32 Spl at 321 is a close enough fit, and most of the work was able to be accomplished by reaming the chamber out to the new, larger, size, and relieving the extractor in the same way. @Rookandrabbit revealed that the best of these conversions had some additional work done to reshape the firing pin and strengthen the bolt face. I don’t have anything to compare it with to know whether this was done to mine or not. What I can say is that shooting 170 grain factory loads is unpleasant, indeed the word I would use is spiteful. Certainly not conducive to any great feats of accuracy. And in any event, factory 32 Win Spl is $3 a round if you can even find any. Clearly this rifle deserves, needs, hand feeding.
After the experimentation referred to above I came up with a load that was pleasant to shoot and chambered and extracted without any issue, and grouped well enough that hunting with it didn’t trouble my conscience. Here’s one of mine on the left next to a factory W-W Super round:
By mid-January the Pennsylvania deer hunting seasons are mostly over, and I had planned to use the fairly generous after Christmas flintlock season, but having the mainspring in my cheap Traditions flintlock break on me (again), I was left with few options to avoid another “dry” license year. I was lucky enough to have a very small window, by virtue of an extra “antlerless deer” tag valid for the extended season in Northampton County which borders my home county of Monroe, using what the Pennsylvania Game Commission are pleased to describe as a “regular” firearm. With only a small number of days I could take off work, and quirky old Martini type rifle to take into the field, my desire to get a decent load was inflamed.
Initially I thought that I would be trying to find a suitable cast bullet, but here I struck out, failing to find a suitable mould (seemingly Lyman made one such, dropping an approximately 140 grain 322 calibre GC bullet – but that is long since OOP). I even went to the trouble of buying a secondhand RCBS lube sizer. I was also was finally able to determine the groove diameter of my barrel (about .3205),
and ascertain that the inexpensive Lee bullet sizing dies will in fact work nicely on jacketed bullets. In addition I found some 323 diameter PSP bullets (I can only assume that these are intended to be a hunting bullet for the 7.92 Kurz). These sized down nicely to .321. At the same time, 30-30 brass sized up nicely in my 32 Spl dies and I was able to manage some hasty load development – with results acceptable enough for some close range hunting. To complete the package I popped into SARCO to try and find a suitable sling, preferably an Enfield type which is what I imagine they would have been used with. Their slings were a mess and the bin labelled “Enfield Slings” contained something that had a weird spring/gate clip at one end, and whatever they were, certainly wasn’t Enfield slings. In a hurry and needing something I picked up what I think is a reproduction M1 Carbine sling. It’s OG canvas and allowed me to be able to climb up trees and over obstacles with the rifle slung. With barely four days of the season left that was going to have to be good enough.
The following day I went and scouted an area overlooking the Delaware river I had seen deer before. It was on my way home after work and I wasn’t expecting success, indeed wasn’t prepared for it! But I was fortunate because I discovered that a tree had fallen in the little hollow I used for parking. After clearing enough of that away to be able to park decently, I had about 45 minutes of “armed hiking” Didn’t see any deer, and what was potentially worse, I saw a lot of what I took to be buck sign (bigger slots, lots of poo, rubbed branches etc). It would be just typical to encounter a monster buck when my only valid tag was for an antlerless deer! Doubly so because such a buck would have been legal if I was hunting with the flintlock. Either way, I found a good tree to hang my stand, overlooking several fresh tracks and some forage, so I had a pretty decent idea that if I was able to spend a full day there then I’d almost certainly see deer, which would be an improvement on my season to date.
A bit of messaging, bartering with my bosses (work manager and SWMBO) and gambling on the extended weather forecast secured Friday 27th of January as the day. I could have from before sunrise to after sunset. Even better, whilst I would be solo in the morning, my good friend (and Pennsylvania hunting mentor) Walt was free to join me for the afternoon. Walt and I have been hunting together on and off for the past few years. I have learnt most of what I have needed to be successful in PA from him, and we have each had our own successes individually in that time, but we’d not yet made a kill whilst out together, and this was the penultimate day of the last extended season for the 22/23 license year. True, it wasn’t the last day, but the arrangement I have with my wife is that I don’t hunt weekends. Truthfully, it’s not a bad compromise because weekend hunting sucks in PA – it’s generally very busy and whenever I have hunted at weekends I’ve invariably seen lots of hunters and few if any deer, and I suppose my wife and kids deserve to have my attention occasionally too.
Come Friday morning I rose early and followed my standard “hunting day” routine, basically wash my face and rinse my mouth with plain water, no smelly chemicals, dress and sneak out of the house without waking anyone up! I wanted to have been well in position for 30-45 minutes before legal hunting to maximize the chance of seeing something shootable at a time that was legal to shoot it. However, I had obstinately “chosen to forget” that I was nursing a broken rib, and hadn’t really taken into account how much harder that was going to make climbing the tree and hanging the stand. Incidentally, it’s actually an archery stand, so similar to a high seat, but you stand up to shoot, and there’s no rails or guards, hence the harness:
I managed it, but it took a lot longer than I allowed for, and by the time I was up off the ground I had about 10 minutes before legal hunting, and I had made much more noise than I wanted, and had got turned around slightly in the dark and was maybe 120 degrees SW from the orientation I had intended. Still, no use crying about it! I had a view with plenty of ground and lots of potential safe shot angles.
The hills in the background are in New Jersey on the opposite bank of the Delaware. It really is a surprisingly beautiful and tranquil place to hunt despite the fact that Interstate 80 runs along the base of those hills!
As the sun rose the woods began to come to life around me. I chambered a round. A good size fox trotted past my stand. There’s a campground nearby and I don’t doubt he lives well. I looked at him through the sights of the rifle, but I wasn’t protecting anyone’s chickens, and I don’t have any need of a fox fur. He looked up at me and scarpered. As the sun came up and the mist lifted, a few birds fluttered about, and a squirrel or two got my hopes up. I started playing a little game with myself, picking the odd leaf or stone somewhere I imagined a deer might walk through, and seeing how quietly and smoothly I could get it lined up in my sights. After this I put my rifle over my shoulder to take a swig from my water bottle and dig out my little Vortex monocular to glass the bushes at the edge of my field of vision. Of course, this was the moment, before I even started glassing, that I saw the tantalizing silhouette of two, no three, deer silently browsing up the hill toward the field above me.
Bracing my back against the trunk of the tree, I thrust the monocular into a pocket and began to raise the rifle to my shoulder. I don’t know if they winded me or not, or if something else gave me away, but I had the rifle in my shoulder, and I followed these deer waiting for them to stop. They were crossing my field of vision from right to left, climbing the hill. The largest one, I can only assume the mother doe, made occasional pauses and cast her head in my direction. The angle was awkward for me and the light was still fairly low. I hesitated, and did not fire. I could swear that I didn’t make a sound or sudden movement, but something spooked them and they ran. And were gone. It was near 0800.
I waited an hour.
It began to snow.
I waited another.
Shivering a little I pressed my spine against the treetrunk, wiped a few snowflakes from the Cadet’s barrel, and closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes. At about 1030 I considered climbing down, but held on, scolding myself for entertaining weak thoughts.
At around 1100 I admitted that I was unlikely to see any deer again now until later, so I unloaded my rifle, climbed to the ground, stripped off a few layers of clothing, then climbed back to set the angle of the stand to where I had meant it to be in the first place.
Probably, I told myself, that had I got my arse in gear earlier and taken the necessary time to hang my stand facing the direction I actually wanted, I’d be long gone from the woods having cut my tag. Still, I had to head back to town to run an errand or two, and collect Walt who lives very close to me, for the afternoon portion of the hunt.
Before long Walt and I were back in Northampton county (Mount Bethel Township for those following this with a map). He paid me the compliment, on seeing my selected ground, of saying that we might see and shoot a deer anywhere and in any direction given the large number of crisscrossing paths and other fresh looking sign. This was a pretty bid deal for me as he is a better hunter than I will ever be. The small amount of snow that had fallen earlier had by now completely cleared so the temperature must have risen to above freezing. At length, we walked the ground and looked for the best vantage points. After perhaps two hours, and getting close to the “golden hour” of 1530-1630, I went back up the tree-stand, and he took a position behind a fallen tree and some scrub, covering the arc that I could least easily pivot to.
It was a pleasant afternoon. The sun was up, birds and squirrels were moving about. Time past, perhaps 45 minutes to an hour. Then, I saw them. A small group of deer, perhaps the same ones I’d seen in the morning. They were in the field above me – across the line on private property. Perhaps 150-175 yards away from me. They were across the field. Not in my direction, but they might come towards me. I spent a tense 10-20 minutes watching them browse. The sun was shining directly on them but the branches between me and them meant that they kept disappearing and reappearing as they slowly browsed towards a hedgeline running directly across the field. Occasional clouds passed overhead turned the field intermittently dark, and during one of these transmissions I lost them for moment. Then, as it seemed, the head and neck of a deer emerged from behind a tree-branch, and the last of them continued toward the hedge and out of my sight.
My pulse was raised and my rifle was up to my shoulder and I willed them to change course and come down into the trees where I was. Had I been using a scoped rifle they would have been well within range, although unless or until they stepped out of the field and down towards the woods where I was, they were untouchable. But still I watched, desperate that at this 11th hour of an 11th hour my luck would change. They had been so close! But they did not come back. Reluctantly, I lowered my rifle and raised the little Vortex instead and took in the entire periphery of my potential arc of fire, scanning from extreme right, to extreme left and back again.
On that backwards sweep, at the right hand most corner of the field there was a tantalizing silhouette. A big dear, heavy set, noticeably bigger than three who had crossed the field before, and looking initially like a late moving member of the same group. But no! Turning a little to the left and towards me, this new deer began to approach my direction. Stopping every few paces to browse. A heavier whitetail than I had seen all season. And antlerless! Having been becalmed a moment before, my heart was in my mouth now, I slowly tried to get the optic back into a pocket. He (I was pretty certain it was a he by this point) looked up in my direction. Could he see me? The sun and treetrunk were behind me. I slowly began to raise the rifle, moving each time he lowered his head to chew, and freezing each time he raised it again. He kept browsing in my direction. Kept casting a gaze in my direction, but not turning away. Finally the rifle was in my shoulder, and a realized that I was holding my breath. I tried to breath fully a slowly, feeling my broken rib again as I did so. The he was at the edge of the field. Then he stepped over into the wood, and, half a dozen steps further he was into something spindly and bushy with tiny little lilac colored berries in it. A decent size tree trunk covered his right shoulder, but his head and neck extended beyond it. Decision time, any closer and he might smell me, and his heavy neck presented a large target. I wrapped the sling around my supporting arm and held my breath – on purpose this time – and pressed the trigger. One advantage of using iron sights is that, counterintuitively perhaps, you see more. His reaction to the shot was instantaneous, it was like he went suddenly boneless. Folding up on the spot and tucking his head in almost.
I reached into a pocket for a hasty reload catching the empty case as it was kicked out but the extractor. People say that these actions are known for weak or troublesome extraction and ejection, by mine reliably sends brass sailing over my shoulder when cycled with any sort of positivity at all. I watch him for a moment. There was a brief shudder, then absolute stillness. I looked over my right shoulder towards Walt, who had stood up and was looking in my direction. We were close enough to shout to each other, but as far as I remember I simply gave a big “thumbs up”. I unloaded the rifle again, unclipped my safety line and climbed down, reloading again on the ground. I couldn’t quite approach along the line that I shot, and on reaching realized how far behind the tree trunk he had actually been standing. I tapped his eye with the muzzle of my rifle, more for formality than anything else, then I rolled him over and gave him a small piece of the bush he’d been eating:
Walt had caught up to me by now, and preserved this moment for me:
The light was fading quickly as it does in January, I tagged my deer, and we performed a quick gralloch to take advantage of the last of it. Then the drag, downhill all the way which was nice, and at the bottom of the hill, there was my car. And again I am indebted to Walt, as without him I could barely lift my deer. As it was, I didn’t want to have to wash blood from the interior of the car, so I threaded loops through the ISOFix points on the backs of the rear seats over the rear door, and suspended him across the back of the car for the drive home. Something that until recently was a common sight where I live, but that now draws quite a number of surprised looks. I saw more than one mobile phone camera pointed in my direction by people who should have been driving.
Getting home that night, I was just about able to suspend my deer from the garage door rails, but the effort required told me that it was high time I bough a gambrel and some pullies. So the following day I hit up that American institution that is Harbor Freight and for the princely sum of $20 secured gambrel, pullies, rope and D-ring supports to mount the whole assembly. True, it’s not a very good gambrel, but at that price it’s worth the money (especially as nowhere else within driving distance had one in stock). I don’t know if there’s an analogue to Harbor Freight in the UK, certainly I don’t remember one, basically it’s a discount tool retailer, sort of like the bastard offspring of a Screwfix and a Halfords, but with their own brand of knockoff Peli-Cases. Some stuff is excellent, and some is crap, and mostly it’s serviceable. This one will be getting a new rope next year, but it allowed me to get my deer decently suspended to be broken down and butchered.
One way or another, it’s been extremely satisfying to take this old rifle, that has almost certainly circumnavigated the globe, and press it into service as a lightweight and handy deer rifle.
All the picture, and a few others are available here:
Guy Harrison, on Flickr
In case anyone is interested
