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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Looking good Ron! Hopefully they open a quota back up...

It looks like you've got your Ruger tweeked just right for your intended purpose,what is your load?

Autofive, reloading metallic cartridges is not legal over here. I like factory loads by Geco, their "Plus" load, 255 grain, good expansion, excellent penetration, more energy than Winchester Power max bonded 180 and a flatter trajectory. The Geco (German) Plus bullet behaves much like the Norma Oryx bullet, if you are familiar with those. RJ

Very nicely done and in a great caliber.

l like that a lot! Wish that I had done that to my old Ruger 9.3x62 African instead of trading it.

Looks like a nice rifle

That's some pretty fancy gunsmithing.

RS

I like your rifle, and can appreciate your concern for brown bears as I deal with them often while deer hunting here in Alaska. I use a Winchester stainless classic Model 70 which I had rebored to 9.3x62 and cut to 20.5", and I alternate between a peep sight and 2-7 scope using Talley mounts. I feel the same as you regarding short barrels, they seem to make a noticeable difference in the thick stuff.

I believe the brown bears in Alaska are a bit more aggressive than the ones here. They are over populated here. Almost every year several people are killed by them, usually people surprising them in their mountain gardens. However they have been getting about one hunter per year. I heard on the news that the game department may make available as many as 3000 tags this coming season to thin the bear population down to where they think it should be. The last couple of years there's been incidents of bears chasing people around in a couple of the outlying cities. The trophy fee on a bear here can be thousands of Euro. The hunter is required to pay it whether they are a resident here, another country or the Moon. I may have to go for one this year. RJ

The aggression of the bears here can vary depending on where you're at. Here in the southeast part of the state they are supposedly less aggressive due to the abundance of salmon. Interior bears, though smaller have a more grumpy reputation. Nonetheless, we have plenty of maulings and charges in this area of the state every year, so it pays to be on alert at all times.

What do people there do for bear defense when they're out hiking or hunting? Alask has a law called "Defense of Life or Property" (DLP) which allows people to kill bears or other animals which are a threat to them or are damaging things. Animals so killed have to be turned into the state. So it's common for people out an about in the wilds here to have some sort of firearm and every year various people save themselves by doing so. Do you folks have any options like that?

the rifle looks great, and sounds like it can handle anything there. I have been in the Carpathians a number of times, on the Hungarian side. A good friend owns a 900 year old house (Kastely, as he calls it) in Bercel. I have an open invite to stay there and hunt, but never got around to it.

What a nice set up in a great caliber. Congratulations! Good work. Terry

I like how you set that up. It's definitely an improvement over what Ruger put out.

Thanks for the comments guys, Pabucktail, unfortunately the bear usually has the advantage over the average Romanian. To own a firearm here, you must have a firearms license, hunting license and be a member of a hunting organization. These requirements are expensive and the first 2 are very time consuming to get. Many Romanian hunters own just a 12 gauge shotgun, some also own a rifle of some sort ( most popular caliber being 30-06 Spr.) A few Romanian citizens with many firearms own up to 6 or so. I have 14 and the police think I have a big arsenal. Anyway, what I am getting at is that the vast majority of Romanians are not armed and even if they are, you are not "allowed" to shoot a bear unless you are "being" attacked. Now, how do you determined if you are being attacked? Most of us hunters here know what to do.
Manlicher, do take your friend up on that offer to hunt there. You will have great memories for a lifetime. I have not hunted Hungary but Romania's hunting is as wild as it gets. I do not know how the red stag hunting is in that area. In September, during the rut here in Lepsa, Romania I took a great stag. It was a little after 6 AM in the morning in a dark forest. After following the roaring, I finally got close enough to see him. He was facing me straight on. I shot him once in the frontal chest with my M70 30-06 using a S&B factory 180 grain Nosler Partition load. He dropped at the shot and never moved. The bullet went through him length wise and we found it in one of the hams. He scored 239.76 CIC points which is well into the gold medal class. I would have been happy with a lesser head, but was ecstatic to get this one. RJ

rj,beautiful stag,and an exciting hunt!

Congratulations on a most excellent trophy! Thanks for sharing.

Why aren’t you allowed to reload?

I can only suppose that the Government forbids reloading to "save people from themselves" (accidents). The firearms regulations are in need of an overhaul here. Exe. 7x57 is legal for hunting boars where 308 Win. is not ( 7mm minimum bullet dia., 57mm case length minimum for boar), I surely believe 7x57 is very adequate for boar, but so is 308 Win, RJ

Very nice, purpose built rifle! I really dig those sights!