Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles My 21" Ruger African 9.3x62

I hunt the Carpathian mountains of Romania where I live. I do a lot of drive hunts, mostly for boar and fox, and hopefully brown bear next year. During drive hunts you will encounter many bears. In one day, 3 drives, I saw 8 bears at distances between 15 and 50 yards. In the early months of the drive hunts, September to mid November, before the leaves drop, I like to use my 9.3 or at least a 30-06. On some stands (mostly always standing on the ground) the foliage is very thick and by the time you see the bear, he is too damn close. After November, I am comfortable with a 7x57 or a 308.
I made a few mods to my Ruger African in 9.3x62 to make it more usable where I hunt. The action is glass bedded with a tiny gap behind the rear tang and barrel free-floated. I shortened the butt stock 1/2" and installed a Pachmayr Decellerator recoil pad. The rifle always felt a little too muzzle heavy to me. Plus, when working my way through thick stuff, I would be catching the end of the barrel on brush, a lot. So, I removed the front sight base and lopped a bit off the barrel, recrowned and replaced the front sight base. From the original 23", it is now 21 1/4" and balance is close to perfect. It is surprising what removing just 2 ounces of barrel do for the balance of that rifle. As much as I like the express rear sight provided from Ruger, I found a rear sight that is much easier faster to use on running game, especially if you are shooting in the dark forest or in the open on the shaded side of the mountain on an overcast day (like so many days here in the winter). Another advantage of this sight is that it blocks out very little of the target when shooting. This sight is made by Recnagel in Germany. They can be had in white yellow or red. I tried red with the white bead but in low light red does not show up well. White on a white bead is problematic foe precise sight picture but yellow shows up well and has enough contrast with the white bead for precise sight alignment. Also red fiber optic front beads are available, but on dark days, without much light to illuminate the fiber optic bead, the white bead is more visible. The only caveat with this rear sight is that it only comes with a European 16mm length dovetail and heights of 10,12,14 and 16mm. So, If the height is not exactly what you need, you have to pick a height above that and remove steel from the bottom to get your correct height, THEN cut material from the front of the dovetail to make it .375" to fit a standard American sight dovetail. It's a PIA but once you get these sights right, they are damn near bomb proof.
A good red dot sight is also very useful here, Killing shots on large animals up to approx. 150 yards can be made with a 2 or3 MOA dot. I like good small red dot sight that do not add much bulk or weight. On this rifle I use a Holosun sight. With just irons, the rifle now weighs 7 pounds, 7 ounces and with the red dot sight it goes 7 pounds 10 1/2 ounces. I made an adapter base to use light weight red dots on the gun. I used a small piece of steel picitinny base, mounted with a 8-40 45degree countersunk torx head screw and a 1/8" recoil pin. I drilled and tapped the rear receiver bridge for the pin and screw. Also, I epoxy bedded the base, so it will go exactly back to the same position when removed and replaced. I replaced the attachmement screw on the red dot with a thumb nut for no-tool install-removal in the field. RJ






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