When I hunt for myself I never carry a back-up to camp, but I always do when I take others out. It's come in very handy 5 times too.

I never had the idea cross my mind until I started seeing hunters show up with rifles that gave them problems, and sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I started to put in an extra rifle when I took out other hunters.
I am a gunsmith so most times I am able to fix those problems in the field and get them out after their deer, sheep or elk with the rifle they brought, but in all the years I have been doing this there were 5 that were beyond the ability to repair in the field and in those cases I loaned them what I had in camp. One time it was an AR15 in 6.8. 2 times it was a Mossberg MVP in 308. One time it was a Mauser in 25-06 and one time it was a 338 Mag on a Mauser.
The failures I could not fix on the spot were 3 broken extractors, (one Marlin M7 and 2 Remington M700s) one BLR in 308 that had bad rust in the chamber and one rifle that had the bolt handle come off the bolt, also a 700.

As to my personal viewpoint, I was a US Marine and also I did work for the DOD for some years, and did independent military training for several jobs and in every one of those times I never had a "back-up" rifle. In that kind of work, the stakes of what you're gambling are much higher then what you'd loose on a deer hunt if your weapon fails you. For myself I have a tendency to choose rifles that have very low rates of failure for my personal collection.

Not everyone is so dedicated to reliability however, and it is noteworthy how many hunters are really not "gun-guys". Many times don't even know they have a problem until hunting season. That's why I always throw in a gun or two more then I'll need if I am guiding.

Any rifle that I think is likely to need a "back-up" is a rifle I'd sell off or trade off very quickly.

One tip that I like to follow myself is simply to have a new Weaver K4 scope in the box, packed in the gear. In my years of hunting and guiding I have found that scope failures are far more common then gun failures,and if the hunter has some extra ammo to re-zero, having a "one-size-fits-all scope" along is a hunt saver. Swapping out their scope for a K4 takes minutes only ,and the times I have done that made a hero out of me in the eyes of the hunters, especially those that came from many states away to have a dream hunt.

At the end of those hunts I remove the scope if they don't want to keep it and if the do want to keep it, (most have) they simply pay me the cost of it's replacement, and I order another one the day I get back.

Last edited by szihn; 05/01/19.