Good Morniing
You have vast experience worldwide and I respect you knowledge of these things.
My question to you is.... Are client hunters expected to zero their rifles on location where you have hunted?
I found if I observed their handling of the firearm, watched them check their zero and make the neccessary adjustments , it spoke volumes how they might be in the field.
Some brought no tools, to check the bedding , mounting ,machine screws etc. Furthermore, some would of never thought to do this.
One Weatherby guy told me his rifle was zero'd from factory
Muledeer , you must have oodles of these types of stories. Probably enough to write a book.
Happy New Year to you and all.
I'll start by saying yep! And yeah, have had guys insist their rifles was zeroed even though they'd never fired it, whether at the factory or the counter-guy at the sporting goods store where they bought it, who'd zeroed it with a bore-sighter.
Yes, all hunters have been required to at least check the zero on their rifles before hunting--and when I guided for a while around 30-35 years ago I insisted on it, partly for the reason you stated: " I found if I observed their handling of the firearm, watched them check their zero and make the neccessary adjustments , it spoke volumes how they might be in the field."
Though I did have to shoot a couple guys' rifles to get the zero close before they check-fired it, as they were obviously over-gunned so started flinching after taking their first shot or two. Many guys were also classically over-gunned.
One was hunting pronghorns and mule deer in the open country of central Montana. He was from somewhere Back East, and apparently believed he needed a more powerful cartridge to take game at "western" distances. So he left his .243 Winchester at home and bought a new 7mm Remington Magnum. (He eventually got his game, but it wouldn't have taken as long with his .243.)
One my Montana outfitter friends, sees the same sort of thing all the time. His pet peeve was guys bringing a .300 magnum of some sort to hunt mule deer, since 3/4 of 'em couldn't shoot a .300 well enough to put the bullet in the right place at even 200 yards, so shooting at 300+ was out of the question. (Finn Aagaard also observed this happening with safari clients who brought .300 magnums, saying only a third could shoot .300s well.)
Oh, and I ran into another guy who couldn't shoot a .300 magnum well on a horseback hunt in northern British Columbia. He was a European who'd hunted Stone sheep the previous year with the same outfitter--then decided to come back and hunt caribou and moose. He'd brought a 7x64 Brenneke for the ram, essentially a metric .280 Remington, and made a 1-shot kill at medium-long range. But he decided it wouldn't work on moose, so bought a .300 Winchester. When we did the 100-yard zero-check in camp, he shot a nice round 18-inch group with his new .300--and took several shots to get his moose dead, and the same thing happened on the caribou.
Most also brought no tools, and I saved some trips by using mine--including some epoxy to fix a cracked wrist on one guy's stock. But they also didn't bring really basic stuff, such as a screwdriver with the correct bits to tighten the screws on their stock or scope mounts.
Have written about all of this in various books and articles....
