Only killed woodchucks with the couple .308’s that have passed through my hands...but what is a watermelon neck deer???
My guess would be a buck at the height of the rut.
I never gave the .308 much respect until 1973 when in desperation I bought one. St the time my only rifle was a 9+ pound 30-06 based on a badly bubba'd 1903A3 Springfield. My hunting buddies and I have found a choice place to hunt but it was up around 9,000 to 9.500 feet MSL and I was at the time a heavy chain smoker. I had to find a lighter rifle that I could afford at the time. I was living in a small western cow town that had exactly two hardware stores at the time and one of them had a Remington 660 in .308 for $99.95 They'd been trying to sell it and when I looked at it they offered to give me a 15% discount. I bought it and the stuff to mount a 4X Bushnell scope plus a couple boxes of ammo. I finally got it sighted in at 3" high at 100 using the 150 gr. Remington Core lokts in time for deer season. I was not a fan of the .308 but it was light and reasonably accurate.
My buddies were off to one side and was maybe 200 or so yards to the left of them when they kicked out a nice 4x4 and started shooting. I knew they'd hit it and as it ran out in front of me way out yonder I took a shot to try and bring it down. Shocker hell out of me when it dropped at the hit. My buddies came over and we paced it off and total the results. The average was 426 paces. That rifle and I took many a deer back in the 1970's.
In 1979 I moved to Arizona on a job transfer and was using a lightweight FN Mauser that looked ugly as sin but shot like an angel. Over the years I was always looking for a replacement for a 6.5x54 M/S that was stolen back in 1975. I found a Ruger M77 RSI back in 1980 that felt and handled exactly like that old M/S that I lost. Guy was honest when I asked him why so cheap? He said he could not find a load for that rifle that would give any kind of a usable group. I thanked him for his honesty and bought it anyway. It took a little over two years before I found a load that would do 1.5" or less from that rifle. I'll just say a stiff load of W760 and the 165 gr. Speer did the trick. Velocity is only 2550 FPS but it's taken deer out as far as 250 yards. For some reason, when ever I've drawn a tag for the Kaibab National Forest I've taken that little RSI and it's always brought home the meat. I had to buy another one as my wife took over the first one and somehow fell into a third one, all in .308. The load for the first rifle has worked very well in the latter two. They were also cheap because the guy selling them couldn't get them to shoot bug holes.
Paul B.
