Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A Close-in Deer Rifle

Here's another photo of a deer taken up close.

This occurred in Colorado around 20 years ago, when my friend Brad Ruddell (who worked for Weatherby for many years) and I went on a deer/elk hunt in the Middle Park area of Colorado. The buck was glassed bedded down quite a ways away, almost on top of a ridge near a thicket of quaking aspens and other stuff. We decided that I'd sneak onto the open ridge below the thicket, and Brad would sit around 100 yards above me in the thicket. Then another guy would come up the ridge below us and, hopefully, move the buck toward one of us.

It turned out to be Brad. The buck ran through the thicket and he shot it at close range with his "over-scoped" 7mm Weatherby Magnum--which Brad used a couple days later to kill a bull elk at around 300 yards. (The bullet, in case anybody's wondering, was a 175-grain Hornady Interlock Spire Point.)

Which is yet another of many examples of why I don't think the rifle, cartridge and sights don't matters as much as the shooter....