After reading this I don’t think you had a clue how well your rifle shot and occasionally you shot good enough to be a 4 MOA shooter. Somewhere between then and after you started reloading, you became a better shot.
You have a very good point there. As I said, the 742 was always a bit of a sprayer. Even with reloads, it never came to heel, but the groups got tighter. The Winchester 670 responded quickly to being fed the right stuff. It went from being a blaster to a real rifle. That was the rifle that really convinced me to start shooting regularly at 100 yards.
How good a shot was I back then? I was quite passable with a 22. I was at least good enough to realize something was wrong with the deer rifles. However, I never much shot them past 50 yards, because I didn't need to. Therein lies the nut of all this: If you hunted deer in our corner of the world, a slug shotgun was your benchmark. A treestand on the edge of cedar thicket was your view of the woods.
I'll tell you another thing that was a huge influence. Back when I started in the early 80's, it was hard to find a range. The closest public range was an hour up the road. I joined a club, but that was still close to an hour from work. I might have an hour or less of shooting before dark. When I'd go on the weekends, the rifle range was crowded. After I got my farm in 2001, I could shoot off the front porch up to 500 yards and not be bothered. However, until I had that opportunity, I really didn't think seriously of firing at more than 50 yards. That's all part of living on this planet where a 4 MOA rifle makes sense.
Was it the rifle? The shooter? The loads? The setup? Yes, one of those will do nicely.
It's funny that this is all coming up, because I inherited my buddy Bob's Ruger Model 44 Carbine back in the spring. I'm getting it ready to hunt it this fall. It's by no means a tack driver, but I put an old Aimpoint (a leftover from another dead friend) on it and I'm going to hunt the cedar thickets. This is going to be a real back-to-my-roots kind of season.
