Vintage Hunting Part I
Vintage Hunting, Part I
When you want to test your hunting skills or relive moments from earlier days afield, grab a vintage gun in an old caliber, top it with period correct mounts and optics and be ready for the time of your life!
At 4:00 the buck finally stepped out and this time he didn’t have the doe with him. I had waited all day hoping he would step out of his bedroom without her, which would give me a chance at this breeder buck on this, the published peak rut day in Nebraska, November 15, which also happens to be my birthday. He was old - sway backed and pot bellied. He put his head down to grab a quick bite. Now that his doe was bred and gone, I would have a small window of time to seal this deal. He would power feed for a little bit before he once again turned his attention to the 30 or so does that were already feeding in the field. It was now or never but I had one problem. I was sporting a 1959 Remington 721B with period correct rings, bases and Weaver K6 scope but the range was 497 yards. If I was going to make a one-shot clean kill for certain, I was going to have to climb out of my tree and belly crawl past 30 other deer and 100 turkeys that had congregated before going to roost. That’s when my hunt really got vintage…
Sometimes a vintage gun needs to be displayed, sometimes it needs to be stored away, but sometimes it needs to go hunting. It needs to conjure up fond memories of hunts gone by and hunters passed on. It needs to challenge your hunting instincts and remind you why you hunt and how you came to enjoy it so much.
This fall my 13-year-old son and I planned a vintage hunt of our own. We would pack up a few of our guns and travel back to the very area where I first learned to hunt.
Dads love spending time in old haunts. Seeing the sights and hearing the sounds brings back a multitude of fond memories and stories to share. And, as I learned, kids love to hear them!
The Plan:
Our plan was to road trip 16 hours to hunt whitetail deer in the Middle of America, Nebraska’s sandhills region where we would hunt within two miles of the exact location of where I shot my first whitetail with my Dad. We would each have a buck tag and a doe tag. We hoped to each take a mature buck through hard, selective hunting. Cort had his eye on a particular buck, one that had eluded him each of the past three years. Two of those years, we caught up to the buck and could have shot, but each time he had broken most or all of one antler off, so Cort passed. The buck had become known as “the spider buck”.
Quite out of the ordinary for me, I did not have a certain buck on my hit list. I was first and foremost interested in seeing Cort hunt hard for a particular buck and either win or lose. If he were to be successful, then I hoped to fill my buck tag on a mature whitetail but use one of my favorite vintage build rifles to do so.
If we were to be so lucky as to fill two buck tags, we would then either hunt for does or waterfowl if any were in the area. I would be having my 50th birthday during the trip, so as was customary through my entire life, an evening birthday party one night of season would be inevitable with family. Of course, I always secretly hope to tag a big buck on my birthday, and since it is on the peak day of the whitetail rut, it has happened on a number of occasions.
The guns:
For this hunt I would be packing a 1949 Remington 721B. This is one of my favorite builds. This barely post-war rifle represents the second year of the 721, the fancy model of which only a few were made. It was also the same year that the Weaver large thumbscrew detachable top mount rings were introduced. I originally had topped this gun with a KV scope, which was Weaver’s first variable introduced in 1950, but since I would be hunting open country, I swapped it out for a K6 at the last minute. A leather military style sling completed the ensemble.
My hope was that if we finished up on bucks early we would get a chance to hunt either does or ducks. For the ducks we brought a couple of Browning Auto 5’s. For the does, I packed a mid-60’s Marlin 336 in 30.30; the same one I shot my first deer with. I had to borrow it for the week from my Mom; it’s hers. I swapped the optics package out for a Weaver K2.5 with pivot mounts. We intended on hunting the does old school, on the ground and in the brush.
For the buck hunt, Cort would be packing his favorite, non-vintage gun. A Thompson Center Dimension in .270 cal. It’s an amazingly accurate rifle that I’ve watched him literally punch out the bulls eye with in as many shots as he wants to take. I told him it was supposed to be a vintage hunt. He claimed it was vintage because Thompson Center had recently discontinued the gun. Whatever. Anyway, for the doe hunt he made up for it. He would carry an iron-sighted Remington Model 81 in .300 Savage.