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Being a lifelong, sans Navy, Illinois resident I haven’t hunted with any rifle larger than a .22LR! I have been collecting several rifle calibers for my Thompson Center Encores (7mm Rem, 338 Win Mag, 300 Win mag, 223 Wylde, 204 Ruger, 223, etc.) in hopes of spending some considerable time out west (New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, etc) over the next 10 years or so. My oldest is off to play collect football in 2016 and my youngest boy is a freshman in HS. Lots of free time is on the horizon.

With all this said I stumbled into an estate sale recently and bought a bunch of old Colt 1911’s and picked out a couple rifles. Namely a Ruger Mini-14 (yawn) and a beautiful early to mid-eighties Browning Model 71 in 348 Winchester along with 1200 rounds of factory and reload ammo. Basically I paid about $1.25 per round for the ammo and the Model 71 was free.

What are some of the things to know about hunting with the M71? Any gunsmith modifications recommended? Re-chambering an option? Right now I have more questions than answers as I don’t know where or what I will be hunting.

Looking forward to learning more.

Thanks.