12 years old borrowed dad’s Remington 788 .243 shot my first buck a spike x fork and a few hogs Few years later I bought myself a used Remington 700 BDL .270 at the local gun shop. The owner of the gun shop knew the previous owner of the rifle and that it had been bedded and the trigger worked on and he was tired of me coming in his shop every week to fondle every rifle and ask a million questions. So when it came up he insisted I buy it! But what sets that rifle aside in my memory was the scope. On his recommendation I bought a Leopold varix-II gloss 3-9x40. My dad taught me to hunt and he had a few good rifles but for some reason he never spent the money for a decent scope! At the time I didn’t wear a wrist watch and because my dad always had cheap scopes we would hunt “till dark”then hike to camp or a meeting spot, because he couldn’t see through his scope before legal shooting light faded. Well end of my first day with my new gun and I’m hiking back to camp as the sun was setting and see a good size buck on the hill above me feeding in oat grass. I shouldered the rifle and could see him plane as day in the scope the yellow grass almost back light him up so I steadied and shot him. I was so excited my first forked horn with eyegaurds, shot with my own rifle! My dad was hunting the ridge parallel to me, heard the shot and came running over flashlight in hand and met me at the deer and proceeded to chew my ass!?!? He was convinced I had spotlighted it with my flashlight because there was no way I could have seen through a scope when it was that dark!, and he was convinced that I had shot after legal time! We weren’t that far from camp and few guys heard me shoot and noted the time and defended me saying I still had 30 seconds to spare! The next morning dad took my rifle and sat looking through the scope and checking his watch as the sun came up and then looking through his Simmons scope on his rifle and just shook his head as he could see through my scope a full 1/2 hour before he could through his. After that I have always had a wrist watch on while hunting. And my dad now has a thing for European glass on his rifles.
Ha! This is great. I remember my first move up from a Bushnell to what I considered "expensive" glass after college. Most of y'all would probably still consider it lower end, but it was a world of difference moving into the $300+ range.
