Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage model 340 30-30 scope mounting HELP

you can always have the barrel drilled and taped and use a low power scout scope if a scope is what you are determined on using

Perhaps I'm jaded, but all my life I thought there was a difference between deer hunting and deer killing; between getting in close to the quarry or bidding it a good day, or precision sniping it from long range. I can't tell you how many nice deer I cheerfully waved bye-bye to when they showed themselves in places I couldn't get closer to. Ce'st la vie. It's no loss of honor to resort to relying on technology to secure one's venison come-what-may, but sniping from a fixed position with a comfy seat and steady rifle rest does omit several of what I think are key ingredients of the overall hunting experience- beating the animal at his own game through stealth and guile.

Being immersed in the Eastern Woodlands for 61 years now, and not having missed deer seasons up and down the Appalachians for 47 of those years assuredly has tempered my views on the subject, so forgive me my opinions. But on the other hand, forays to the lonesomes of Wyoming after antelope and mule deer did nothing to alter them. A pickup truck load of animals in total, none of which took a bullet farther than 50 yards away, put lie to the concept of needing a scope on a flat shooting rifle to fill a tag. Limited experience? Sure. But definitely an exception to the rule.

I always had more respect for the raggedy old men I met in the woods toting iron sighted grey rats than the Dime Store Cowboys and their slick scope mounted bolt guns. Having seen multitudes of pics of our comrades on this forum posing with iron-sighted guns and dead animals leads me to feel I'm not totally alone here.

LAUGHIN Here
Rory, Your Killing Me, All The Photo's of Deer You've Taken, the Shots you made, were outstanding, you could not have gotten any further than they were.

Wow guys I'm amazed at the tangent this post is on! Really was just a Grandfather looking to give his grandson what he wanted. You know in todays day of information it's not easy for a knowledgeable 9 year old to understand the importance of a family heirloom. They all want Zombie killing AR's.

I will let you know the Savage is not being drilled nor is the stock being shaved to accommodate the scope mount. This rifle will stay true to its roots and a new "modern" bolt action in a .243 is what this young man will be getting...probably an Axis or Ruger American. We shall see

Thanks again for all the constructive input.

You know, I can imagine an old fart spouting off in 1900 about all these new fangled rifles that let you shoot 6 or 10 shots at 200 or 300 yards and nobody has any interest in actually learning to hunt properly. One shot with black powder is all any real hunter needs.

My comments are for new hunters. A quick, clean kill at 200 yards or less is more important in my mind to getting new hunters hooked than trying to teach them to hunt the same way their great grandparents hunted.

Laughin

Again

good solution! that way he can learn with both eyes open so to speak. he will have the choice of open or optic. good on ya!

Yep. Even back then sage opinion-aters could see the writing on the wall as mankind marched triumphantly into a Brave New World where technology trumped human wits.

Of course having a newbie kid hunter score cleanly is paramount. But, propping that same kid up in a shooting arrangement by which all he needs to do is swivel the crosshairs onto an unsuspecting animal and pulling the trigger is nothing more-nor-less than an extension of his sitting on the sofa with a game controller in his hand while zapping zombies on the flat screen. Might just as well give him a deer hunting game for the X-Box (or whatever) and call it a day. It comes back to my premise of deer hunting versus deer killing. It is a sport rich in tradition and elemental to man's existence- why not encourage "the old ways?"

As to a nine year old kid breaking into deer hunting, IMO if he can carry his rifle all day in the woods, calmly line up the sights, cooly and with a cold heart take the animal's life, and then assist in getting it out of the woods, then he's ready to hunt. If that same kid needs to be dressed in the morning, led to a blind/stand, handed a rifle when it's time to shoot, etc. because he doesn't have the build or the moxie to do it un-assisted, then I posit that he's not ready for the deer woods yet and he needs to grow up some more. I can't tell you how often I witnessed that phenomenon in which the tyro was indoctrinated to be a deer killer instead of a hunter. Heck, it's happening in my world as we speak- my boss is hell-bent on taking his whimpy little 10 year old boy deer hunting this year and all he's done so far is put him through a half-assed Hunter Safety Course and sat him down at a benchrest to become "familiar" with his 6.5x55, with the stated intent of "putting deer meat in the freezer." Argh!!

As to one shot with a black powder gun- as much as I'm a died in the wool rifle loonie, a tally of my deer kills in my life would show that I killed more deer with traditional muzzle loaders shooting patched round balls with open sights than with all my "modern" rifles combined, and there were a lot done with "modern" rifles. (And "modern" to me pretty much ended with WWII. Nothing in my hunting battery is newer than 1940.) One shot, one kill, baby.

This is why we love you.

Yep, gnoahh's a keeper even when he does disagree with me.

I actually agree with him in theory.. but I don't see how using a 1-4x or 2-7x scope turns hunting into killing. I'm over 50 and I have to go back 3 generations to find a family member who didn't use a scope as soon as they could for high power rifle hunting. That would be depression and earlier. So maybe I just come from a line of killers. I can live with that.

My land isn't quite 30 acres.. so it would be a short hunt if we skipped the stand and went traipsing through the woods. I do miss the days when I had access to 2 or 3 sections of river bottom and could walk all day, but that's a couple decades in the past. All the serious ranches up where I hunt are leased out, mostly to Omaha "hunters" or guys from down south - so no chance of getting on any of them for less than $1500/person. But a few days in the stand watching the turkeys and deer and coyotes go past is a far cry from sitting at home with a game controller. Gonna treasure the memory of the look on my eldest son's face last fall when a goldfinch landed on the end of the barrel of my 99. That was a new one for me.

There is a couple of areas of public land up there, but hunting them on the weekends is putting your life in jeopardy. They are empty during the week though, so hopefully we'll have time to do some spot and stalk or still hunting this year. Goes from tree lined draws to wide open ranges though with chance at a muley, so we'll definitely have scopes!!!!

Not often you and I disagree, Rory! (Insert kissy face smilie here!)

I realize the limitations suffered by a small property owner trapped by draconian land use practices. Heck, I don't own any property. But, I'm only an hour or so from huge tracts of public land. Living back East has disadvantages in some ways, advantages in others. Said tracts used to be crowded as heck and had me mooching invites from land owners. Nowadays, with the hunting population declining in free-fall, those public lands aren't so bad- especially during the week. (Being semi-retired I can get out there on weekdays and generally avoid Saturdays except for Openers. Sundays? What's that?)

I guess it's all in how you were raised. One thing sure to raise the hackles of any hunter is to impugn the sage wisdom of his forebears- which I would never do. In my case, my old man taught me from a tender age to still hunt, and chastised me when young for bellyaching for the kinds of guns that were (and are) ballyhooed in the slick magazines. He was dumb as a bag of hammers about most things in my adolescent mind, but thankfully he got smart pretty quick when I found myself cutting my own path in the world. Probably the most important lesson I learned from him was a love for the outdoors: the sun peeking up through the pine slashings at dawn, sneaking like a ghost through snow-filled woods, the antics of squirrels (and gold finches ), chocolate candy bars in a pocket, and the delights of carrying a light iron sighted carbine, etc.- the sum total of which is my definition of "deer hunting." Just one man's philosophical maundering.

Shot my first bolt action rifle last year and first scoped rifle a couple years before that and I'm 40. I haven't set the world on fire killing game with peep sights but will continue to use them as long as possible. I did buy an older scoped bolt gun because I wanted to have at least one in the event I'd get it out west somewhere someday. I had to ask lightfoot about the scope to find out what it was since I'm ignorant of them. As far as growing up hunting I wish I did a lot more and I honestly wish I had started with a quality single shot rifle with an aperture sight. Liked your guys' conversation here and it's another enjoyable example of a thread taking on some new life above and beyond the OP.