Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles What rifle did your Dad hunt big game with?

He basicaly used 3 rifles while I was growing up. A Browning FN Safari in 30-06, a Browning BAR in 30-06 and a Marlin 336C in .35 Rem.

His favorite rifle for the last 16 years has been a Browning A-Bolt Micro Medallion in 7-08.

He hunted whitetails with a Winchester model 94 32 special

My Dad never hunted big game and only took me duck hunting a couple of times before he quite hunting. My big game hunting mentor (who eventually became my father-in-law) used a Remington 721 in .270 Winchester with a Weaver 4X scope for everything. He was deadly with it.

My dad started hunting deer with a Model 94 in 32 Spl and then went to an early Remington 760 in 30-06, which he still uses to this day (over 45 years)

I do not remember what his first big game rifle was but growing up I all my Dad ever used was his remington 700 8mm Mag. It was the only big game rifle he owned and while it may have been a little overkill it worked very well on PA whitetails. He now does almost all of his rifle hunting with a model 7 in a 7mm-08. My brother and I have also used both guns to shoot deer.
I only got to hunt with my grandfather for one year and his go to rifle was a remington 760 in 300 savage with a 4x unertl. He used 150 gr for deer and 180 gr for bear. My Dad now owns that gun and I have also used it to shoot a doe a few years ago.

started out with a double barrell lafever 12guage with punkin balls. then he bought a model 94 30-30 when i was a kid.

Aside from a daisy pump action BB gun, my dad only purchased one firearm in his life......a winchester model 37, 16 ga. shotgun, for me to use when I was 13 yrs old. It just came out of the blue one day, when he said, "come on lets go to the hardware store". Next thing I know, we got us a shotgun at the house. He'd hook me up with a squirrel hunter,or a deer hunter (dog drive). He had served in the North Carolina Guard during college and he spoke of becoming a decent marksman once he switched to shooting left handed. Even though he didn't own a firearm, he had a passion for turkey shoots (he could not drive past one without stopping). He took a casual interest in any long gun I purchased but he had no interest in hunting at all. We lived in a neighborhood and couldn't do any shooting on our property, nor did he ever pursue any recreational shooting elsewhere. He used to say, "nothing can kill you quicker than electricity and natural gas". Those were two subjects he had absolutely no desire to learn about. I think he regarded firearms as a close third and left it at that.

Dad used an open sight Rem .270 pump exclusively. He could let 'em fly with that rig.

Winchester model 94 in .32 Winchester Special.

Ithaca 37 in 16 bore. For everything.

My dad's deer shotgun was a Ithaca auto 10, rifle was mannlicher stocked carl gustav 7mm Wtby, rifle for bear the same but in 340.

Although my Father hunted and had guns as a kid, After he came home from Korea, he wasn't into guns.

He took me and a friend hunting for our first time out and didn't bring a gun. He just wanted to ensure we were using safe gun handling techniques.

Eddystone 300 win mag and .444 Marlin.

My dad hunted with a 1950s winchester model 70 300 H&H magnum. I still have the rifle but can't afford to shoot it too much.

Dad started with a surplus Swede when he was a pup, along with his dad and older bro. Then a Savage 340 in 222 Rem for a few years and sold it while in a bind. Always kept the Swede hot,with the exception of the occasion to use his Hornet.

A couple years ago I refurb end his old Swede with some new stuff, barrel, trigger, swing safety and such. Last Feb I found another Savage 340 222 like he had after high school. I bought it for this birthday. He passed last August without ever using his refurbed Swede or new/ old 222. I have them both now.

Dad used an Enfield in 303 British up until about 1976 and then he bought a Remington 760 in 30-06.

My dad had two beautifully finished, sporterized 98 Mausers - one in 7x57 and the other in 8x57 - both with aperture sights. This is way back in the 40's and 50's before scopes were popular. He did 95% of his huting with these two. He taught marksmanship in the army and he could really shoot some. His favorite of the two was the 7x57.

Another gun that he had and loved was a Win71 in, of course, .348. He didn't hunt with it much. I sure did admire that gun.

He hunted with a Shilen barreled Winchester 70 chambered in 280 Rem.

As a three year old kid, I accompanied my dad to buy his first deer rifle in 1956. (I don't remember the day, but he told me the story many times.) The local gun shop had a flood sale, and on the rack were a bunch of new rifles, all with water damaged stocks to one degree or another. He walked in with his tax refund money burning a hole in his pocket- a whopping $60. (How he talked Mom into letting him splurge it on a gun, I'll never know.) Sitting there side by side was a new Savage Model 340 .30/30 for $45, and a Model 70 .30/06 for $60. Since the M70 would've taken all of his money leaving him with nothing to buy shells with, he opted for the 340, and used the change to buy two boxes of shells and a cheap hunting knife. He used that rifle for many years and shot a bunch of deer with it, but he always regretted not having been able to swing for the M70. Later he 'graduated' to a Springfield sporter and a bunch of Savage lever guns.

As a little kid I thought that rifle was the epitome of high power rifles, and couldn't conceive of a better one. (I especially liked how my ears would ring after he would fire it! Yikes!)

He passed away young (59) in 1990, and I gave his old 340 to my nephew a couple of years ago, who has carried it a few times deer hunting in honor of his grandfather.

First was a Win 92 in .25-20. The action went through a fire. A new barrel was screwed in with a pipe wrench, tracks are still on the barrel. Headspace is horrendously excessive. He still shoots it about as much as anything else. I've never killed a deer with it but I've killed a black bear or two with it.

Second was a Winchester 95 in .30-40 he bought when he was in grade school or high school. It's Mexican Army surplus, missing about 8 inches of rifling. It still shoots.

Third is a sporterized 03-A3 given to him by my mom's dad right after he and mom got married. The trigger is crap, some kind of aluminum alloy I think, and he has to re-cut the sear every few years. It has a Palma Match barrel on it but he he let that rust so it's nothing special. The gunsmith who drilled and tapped it did so off center so the rear bridge is swiss-cheesed and the scope mount is shimmed ... now with layers of soda can, used to be match book paper.

He's got a handful of other rifles ... a '92 in .38-40 that was mom's before she died.

Truth is, other than the .25-20, the rifle he uses most is one I picked up, 50/50 with him, for mom as a birthday or christmas present. It's one of the "green meanie" Ruger 77s in '06 ... one of 200 or so Ruger made to market test green laminate vs brown laminate stocks. Unfortunately, he cut the stock down for her and added a recoil pad ... did an ugly job of it, too ... so it's just a rifle. He cusses it up one side and down the other, but he keeps on shooting it.

Tom