this is a copy of one of my favorite stories, from Gray's sporting journal. Just wanting to share not steal Ed Gray's work in any way. I think most will really enjoy this if you haven't ever read it.
2386936
A couple of years ago Becky and I went up to Norb and Sig's place in Vermont. They were having their annual invitation-only deer hunt; it's about half hunt and half party, but the men who go up every year seem to know why they go, and the year before they had put a half-dozen deer on the pole. Becky and I didn't even buy licenses; all we wanted to do was to shake a few hands, hear one or two of the stories, sort of a tire-kicking trip.
We got there late in the afternoon of the first day of the hunt, an most of the boys were already back at the house. No deer.
"No snow," somebody said.
"Too hot."
"Herd's down."
"Lotta hunters out there."
"Let's eat," somebody said.
The meal was the standard, put-a-lot-of-stuff-in-the-pot-and-let-it-simmer number, and while the simmering part took place the boys fell loosely into the various chairs and benches around the fire and started talking. You know the script.
You really know the script if you know the group. Norb is one of those upper-echelon gun nuts who thinks about firearms the way Eddie Arcaro must think about horses - passionately, but with respect. So the boys who hunt with Norb tend to be cut from a cloth. A cloth anointed with Hoppe's.
Anyway, it didn't take long for the talk to get around to calibers. Tom had his moment then, for he was recently back from a hidden valley in British Columbia where he had reduced a truly large grizzly to possession with a single shot from his new big bore Colt Sauer. He even had pictures, but the
boys sort of tuned out after they agreed that a .458 Win Mag. might have too much stopping power for the Vermont deer woods. Tom didn't have it with him anyway.
An interesting thing to do in any deer camp is to glance across the gun rack, and you could tell right away that the boys in Norb's bunch weren't just deer hunters. All bolt actions and scopes here, and the ordnance leaned a bit to the heavy side of .270. Becky and I weren't really in the thick of the
conversation, and I was having fun imagining where some of those rifles had pointed when Norb's brother Charley came over.
"Where's your gun, Ed?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm not hunting this time," I answered. "Going up to New Hampshire next week."
Charley nodded.
"But I did bring the gun," I said. "My good .30-30. The one Becky gave me. Pre-64, really a good one. You ought to see it."
Charley didn't want to see it. In fact he didn't want to hear about it. "Don't use it," he said.
He was right, of course. If you spend all year working up to your few days in the woods, if you truly love venison, and if your rifle is simply the tool to get the job doen, then you certainly will increase your odds if you put some extra foot-punds behind your bullet. "Just remember," Charley said, "The first time you trail a wounded deer for six miles is the last time you'll use that .30-30."
"Yeah," I said. The problem is that I've never hunted deer with anything but a .30-30. To me it's a part of the package, just like woolen pants, new snow and lunch alone deep in the woods. I wasn't going to change just because it made sense to do so.
Like most of us, I spend the better part of my time on a deer hunt alone, not seeing game, and the only thing along for company is my little rifle. It's the sort of circumstance that turns inanimate things into pets, and the .30-30 that Becky gave me had become that. So I listened to Charley, and I worried a bit about what he had said, but I took the little gun with me anyway.
I took the little gun when Larry and I went back to the cabin near Bog Brook. I, and the rifle, had been there before, and when we got there I hung the rifle on its peg by the back door. Not an event, just one of the little rituals that marks the edges of a regular hunt; a quiet pleasure marked and quickly forgotten, to be remembered much later.
The moment passed as quickly three days later when I took the gun of the peg, a minor act lost in the glow of what had turned out to be the best hunt that I've had yet. I packed the gun in the back of the jeep, in with the duffel and seemingly detached from the trophy it had cleanly taken - the dressed northern whitetail that hit 212 pounds on the scale at West Milan. The deer I'd spent ten years seeking. The deer that people still want to hear about. The deer that hangs next to me in the funny snapshot that Larry took, the picture that shows my day-glow hat that Larry talked me into wearing that day. And it shows the little rifle resting on my knees as I sit there on the porch of the cabin up near Bog Brook. I'll show you the picture. I'll show you the mounted head of the deer, and I'll even show you the funny hat, as long as you don't ask about the rifle.
Because the rifle was stolen ten months later.
So now I spend a lot of time in gun shops, elbows on the counter, peering at the rack where they keep the better used rifles. If Charley were with me he'd smile, I'm sure, as I looked over the nicely-checkered .30-06's and.308's. But he'd have no way of knowing that this was just idle window shopping, a casual glance across the whole selection. I only get serious when I come to the place where they keep the .30-30's, the Model 94's.
When I find them, I stand back a bit and look carefully, searching for the right touch of age, color and grace that marks a good one. If I don't see it, I move on. But if one of the little guns has it, if the patina is right on the stock and the detachable swivels are there, then I pick it up.
I pick it up and turn it over. If you saw me do it you might think that I was checking for rust or dry-rot, feeling the action or checking for wear. No.
When I turn over the .30-30, I'm looking for just one thing. A number.
2386936.
I think Charley would understand.
Ed Gray, October 1979
