Vintage military surplus arms for deer and bear hunting.

[Adam Helmer]

Every deer and bear season I carry an "as issued" military bolt action rifle afield. Tomorrow, our PA rifle bear hunting season opens. I have a M1898 .30/40 Krag rifle ready to go afield with 180 grain handloads. For rifle deer on Monday, November 28, 2011, I have a Springfield Mark I M1903 and 150 grain handloads put by. For subsequent days hunting, I have a M1938 Swedish 6.5x55MM rifle ready for a trek afield.

Who else hunts with vintage military arms?

Adam

[skeet]

To be very honest.. I am sure you have much more user friendly hunting rifles to use. Oh I know they will work fine for deer. ..or bear. But nostalgia for military arms doesn't really suit my ideal hunting rifle. Luck to you though. Shoot straight.

[Adam Helmer]

skeet,

Thanks for the good luck. In PA, only about 1% of the bear hunters bag a bear, so the bear are not in real danger from my 1898 Krag. The deer situation is not a lot better due to the deer decimation policy of the last 11 years by the Game Department.

Yes, I have scoped commercial rifles like a Remington 7mmRM, a .30-06, .308, .270 and a sporter Mauser built to a .264WM. The problem is there are very few deer. To sit for three or four days and see NOTHING kinda votes for an "As Issued" iron sighted rifle and a trek in the big (empty) woods.



Adam

[skeeter@ccia.com]

Adam, I have an 8mm 98K Mauser that has the trainer 22 insert..minus a stolen bolt when butthead broke into house once..got no guns but found the bolt in drawer...anyhow, I guess it is close to the 06 and my brother has borrowed it a few times for deer..and is a joy to shoot...I also use to scarf up those 30/40 craigs and rebuild them for the nephews..great gun in my book...esp for the first rifle..and one thing I must comment on though...it is not our PGC that killed off all the doe, it was/is us hunters that filled up all the tags the GC made available to us. I am sure you do and have done as lots of us in our area do..we buy as many doe tags as we can but only fill what we use...and that in our books helps offset for those slobs that overkill doe and toss out the meat next yr...I as well as you have a problem with that...do you have a problem with the 'gun clubs' in your area? Do you have to belong to one in order to hunt anyplace if you don't own your own land?

[Adam Helmer]

skeeter,

For ALL the years I bought a "Doe" license since 1958, I bought the license to SAVE a doe's life. I hear you when you say you know of game HOGS who LEGALLY buy Four, Five or SIX "Doe" tags from the Pennsylvania Game Commission and then go and bust their asses to FILL all them doe tags. The next year those same "Numb Nuts" CANNOT understand why they see NO DEER! I tell Numb Nuts, " You did NOT KILL 3 does last year, you killed NINE deer." The Numb Nuts CANNOT do the MATH, BUT they DID the PGC DEER DECIMATION kill deer policy!

I own 60 POSTED acres adjacent to 969 acres of the Watershed Land West of my farm. I go afield to repel the tresspassers on Opening Day of Rifle deer season. I buy a $6.60 Antlerless Deer Tag to legally dispatch a wounded doe I see stumbling across my fields. Since the time I bought my farm in 1988, I have dispatched two wounded does. I have expelled far more tresspassers. Some were aggressive, but removed themselves when they understood they were not confronting a lessser landowner!

Adam