Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters The Planet where they shoot 4 MOA rifles

After reading the responses on the thread about current rifle accuracy, I was moved to write this, but I didn't want to go off on a stray tangent on that thread, so I though I'd start another.

It would seem that, for a change, I am the ultimate expert on a subject on this august forum. It would also seem that a lot of the folks on here must have been living in a parallel universe to the one I was experiencing back in the 1980’s. In their world 4 MOA rifles weren’t acceptable. In mine, they were quite common. Not only that, we accepted them and we used them to kill things. I suppose it could be said that just about anyone can make a 1 MOA rifle work. However, it takes a certain genius to turn a 4 MOA tomato stake into a legitimate deer killer.

I got a used Rem 742 in 30-06 back in the early 80’s. With Remmie Corelokts, it was a solid 4 MOA rifle. It didn’t matter much. I was a bow hunter who spent rifle season in his deer stands. It was hard seeing past 50 yards, let alone shoot anything. I later added a WIN 670 in 30-06. It wasn’t all that accurate as a deer rifle, but it shot 30-06 Accelerators well, and so it became my groundhog gun. I called it “The Vaporizer,” because it would turn a woodchuck into a cloud of mist.

So how does one cope with a 4 MOA rifle?

1) To the rest of the world, you lie a lot. To yourself, you know your limits and you stick with them. You’ve got a scope on it-- it must be accurate. For those who don't know it looks awesome. For those who do know, the REM 742 is a tip-off that the jokes need to be told slower.

2) Deer hunters like me learned to deal in paces or steps instead of yards. You called them yards, but deep inside you knew better. I once had a fellow tell me he shot a big buck at 300 yards with his 30-30 by just puttin the irons in the middle of the chest, and pullin’ the trigger. He was about 5foot-nothin. He probably had a stride that was inside of 24 inches.

3) Parallax? Shmaralax! I was told to set my scope to be dead on at 50 yards (paces) and be done with it. Anything else? Just hold onto the top of the back. If it’s too far out, the bullet goes underneath the buck’s legs.

4) Grains mean nothing. I shot mostly 180 grainers, but I bought whatever was available for years. If there were 150 grainers, they shot just as good. Don’t bother sighting in with each little change, you’ll just waste ammo. I found that 180 grain Musgrave (South African) shot well in the 742, so I bought a case of it.

Quit laughing. I’m giving history here. Y’all probably laugh at the guys who go to Walmart and buy a new deer rifle the night before the Opener and get it bore sighted by the counter monkey. No. I was never one of those. However, I did figure out one time that a bore-sighted 30-06 will probably take a deer out to 80 yards or so from a raised stand. It may sound ugly, but that’s the truth.

5) Forget paper targets with bullseyes. Just get a big reactive target and fill it with something so it goes blooey. A 5 gallon bucket with water is fine. A 2 -liter of diet Walmart Soda is cool if you want to be a sharpshooter. Now put it out at 25 yards and shoot at it until it goes blooey. Tell yourself that you’re good to go.

Remember: this is a 4 MOA rifle you’re talking about. At best you can probably keep it on a pie plate at 80 yards offhand.

6) Don’t read those stupid magazines that talk about premium ammo and all that crap. For one thing, finding that ammo on a regular basis at Walmart ain’t going to happen. Second, this is a 4 MOA rifle for chrissakes. It’s going to shoot $5 boxes of ammo just as good as $20 dollar boxes.

7) Groups are for somebody else. What I had to go for was more of a pattern. If I knew it would hit a pie-plate at a given distance, that was all I needed. I wasn’t going to get much better-- and certainly not better offhand. If you read a magazine that talks a lot about groups, they’re just telling you stuff about rifles that have nothing to do with what you have. You’re there to kill deer, not make groups.

8) The best time to find a solid 4 MOA deer rifle is at the gun show right after deer season. Everybody’s selling off their deer rifles for Christmas money. You’ll get your best deals on 4 MOA , 6 MOA and 8 MOA rifles then. Make sure you shake the rifle. You want a scope that has some rattle to it. You can get $25 or more off if you find one that rattles.


Look, I went 20+ seasons shooting this crap. Even worse, I shot a Remington 1100 12 GA with Remmie Sluggers for the first 5 years. Crap? This isn’t crap when your longest shot is nearly straight down out of a treestand. Both 30-06 and 12 GA slugs are awesome inside 10 yards, and the number of MOA's just doesn’t enter into any of it.

So how did I end up here? Just because I shot Rem 742 for a number of years, I’ve been called a booger-eating moron on this forum. Truth is, it took a lot of creativity and determination to make that rifle work. Furthermore, I came here after I started reloading in 2000, I started paying attention to those things like “grains” and “Point Blank Range” and stuff like that. It didn’t change my deer hunting all that much, at least not at first. With the way the cedar thickets grow, we’re still mostly talking short shots, but now we’re doing with much greater precision (for whatever good that does.)

The Rem 742 died from a bad case of the chatters back in 2004. As I mentioned earlier in the other thread, my son still hunts with my Win 670. I think the last doe he shot with was somewhere just outside of 5 yard's distance when he lit her up. Again, this is perfectly acceptable range for a 4 MOA rifle. Once I started reloading, I found I could get it shooting down close to 1 MOA. Angus has the camp record of shooting a deer with it at 252 yards a few years ago. My personal best is still down around 175 yards.

Most of what I know about 1 MOA rifles and reloading comes from here and shooters.com. When I started reloading, I’ll tell you that it was like a whole ‘nother world.

This is almost an exact description of my uncle. Remington 7400 30-06, see thru scope mounts with a bushnell $29 blister pack scope. I was there when he sighted it in, the target was a milk jug filled with water at about 40 yds offhand, when he finally hit it he stopped shooting and said "good enough!". A box of ammo was good for two deer, you could always tell if it was him shooting because they followed the same pattern. Five shots in rapid succession followed by about a 10 second pause and five more in rapid succession. He always made fun of me shooting handloads because I was cheap and didn't want to spend money on "the good stuff".

Good Grief Sahman,

Give it a rest. No one said 4 MOA never happened !!!


Jerry

I had a Rem 742 30-06 in HS and College. My tune up for deer season was shooting Armadillos at 50 yards offhand. If no Armadillos were around we had those plastic gallon milk jugs. Center mass at 100 yards off a rest. Never shot groups back then.

I like what he wrote because it is refreshing.

I hunt with revolvers many times. 4 MOA is probably better then I can hold an iron-sighted revolver even when I rest both arms full length, and I have a thick pad under my shooting hand. Yet, I have always killed my game (deer, antelope, bear, elk and buffalo) with my revolvers and I have never even needed to fire twice with any revolver I ever killed a big game animal with, and only 1 time I fired 2 shots with a 45 automatic.
So when I read and reread and reread all the time about 1/2 MOA and 1/4 MOA and even less at times, and how that is so much better, I grin and shake my head. It's not a matter of how accurate the gun is near as much as it's about how accurate the man is and how well he can hunt.
Shaman said he learned to hunt as an archer. That means his 4 MOA rifle was just fine. I'd bet he can't hold a 4 MOA group at 100 yards with his bow and arrows, but somehow that didn't stop him from using them.

Kudos to you Shaman.

There is nothing wrong with super accurate rifles. So that's not the point I am trying to make here. I shot all my center fires today to confirm zeros and in some cases re-zero --- after I had used the rifles to test ammo I am not going to use for this years hunts. I have several that shoot sub-MOA and a few that shoot WAY Sub-MOA. But in the hands of a shooter that can hold 2 MOA any 1/8 MOA rifle gives him about 2 MOA. And a man that can shoot 2 MOA on demand with out a bench rest is a very good shot.

It's always 98% the shooter and 2% what he shoots.

Lot's of truth in your post Shaman - good for you for posting it.

I have a friend who gets his deer and elk every year, his sight-in method consists of setting our one those 5 gallon plastic buckets - he takes a shot or two at it and calls it good enough. Like he says the kill zone on big game is about the same size as the bucket so if I can hit the bucket I can kill a deer and elk.

Sometimes we overthink things - and that's a fact.

drover

Enjoyed thet....
I was pretty much that same guy...hit a pie plate at 100 yds and go kill chit....but I did have a bolt action Springfield with a crappy old scope...killed a ton of deer tho....
After many years of the typical reloader cycle, I feel I have come full circle....I went from starting out with a 30-06 to the magnum craze to small fast stuff like 220 swift and 6-284.. I scored a sako in 30-06 that I replaced the pad with a thicker one and was amazed how well the rifle fit and aimed....after hunting with it a few years i became one of my favorites..it's never missed...not even a follow up shot...
Then I picked up a custom husky in 06 here on the fire with a longer than normal stock...I went vintage with that one..mounted a Lyman 2.5 post on it...killed a nice buck at 150 yds last year...off hand...I was amazed how the post just rested on the heart and I touched it off and flop...
Neither one of those rifles have been accuracy tuned with hand loads...although they bothe will shoot an inch with my standard 06 load...
My son is a crack shot with a rifle...I have had him shooting since he was very young..he is 32 now...when he was about 18 he had bought a pre 64 few in 06 and was deer hunting with it...using my standard 06 loads I shoot in everything...I was blocking a timber he and his cousin was walking out...I had watche 2 coyotes from about 1/2 mile away with binoculars..when the boys came out the coyotes took off. He shot them both ..first one at 200 paces trotting second on at 250 at turbo run....before the next season he started his own reloading and was trying to work a load for that rifle and could only get about 1 1/2 out of it....he can't bring himself to hunt with it .he lost confidence in it....sad really...but he will come around....a rifle that you can hit a running coyote with at 250 yds will certenly work for deer and elk...

As usual, Shaman, good post.
As you know, most of my guns are "hand-me-down " guns. They have been shot a lot, killed a lot of stuff, and to the best of my knowledge, have never been scored like some folks here do. I don't even know what a ladder test IS.
I've never worked up a load, counted bullet grains, or knew the name of the powder in the cartridge. It was what was on sale, and it killed stuff just fine.
I have never bedded an action, or inlet a stock, or felt the need of the Holy Grail of triggers. You learn the gun, shoot it, and sight it in. If you can hit a football at 100yds, it will kill deer.

Shaman,
It seems like you revealed from your hunting records which was the best phase of the moon to hunt.

Now, I'm unable to find it and wondering if you would tell us again?
Thanks

Mind you, this is just one deer camp with less than 20 years worth of records. However, here is the article:

Mining the Deer Log

1st quarter is first, followed by 2nd quarter

So Shaman, what you're saying is that you had better than a 4 MOA rifle; you just couldn't shoot better than 4 MOA.

In the case of the 742, it was a solid 4 MOA rifle. I put several scopes on it over the years. Only one of them rattled, and only a little bit. I killed a bunch of deer with it, but they were all fairly close. By 2001, I was reloading, and my 165 grain handloads were considerably better than minute-of-pie-plate at 100 yards. That year, I shot a buck and a doe. My stand was on a fairly steep hill, and both deer showed up on the uphill side. I was shooting straight out at less than 15 yards and both deer managed to run towards the ladder before succumbing. This is an ideal situation for a 4 MOA rifle to shine. Why mess with perfection?

The WIN 670 was a 1-2 MOA rifle in disguise. If you're in the situation I found myself, it's a little like trying to watch a porn channel without the decoder box. All the parts are there, they're just scattered on the screen. Nothing is like it is in the magazines. Changing factory loads never did anything but move the pattern around on the paper. What made that rifle shine was a beginning load of H4895 under Hornady 165 IL SP's. I've since found that 150 grain Rem Corelokt PSP's work just as well. That's what my son shoots. However, I bought the rifle in 1989 and didn't start reloading until 2000. There was more than a decade there where that rifle shot nothing but groundhogs.

The difference between this rifle and the Rem 742 in actual practice was that instead of climbing a tree and shooting them at 15 yards, I could now sit in my blind and enjoy the luxury of waiting until that exact moment when they approach closest to that one magical place in the pasture 150 yards out with a little fold in the landscape. This is where I can drop them, roll the truck up, and load them in the back without lifting them up to the tailgate.

I must have missed some sort of mud-flinging on another thread but I found shamans post funny. And true. I grew up hunting in Pa in the 1970s. The Amish Machine Gun reigned supreme (Remmie 760). I'd swag about 50% had see through mounts and some kind of high end Bushnell affixed to the receiver. There was still a bunch of mil surplus 7by57 running around in various stages of 'sporterization'. Even a fair share of 30-30/32 win levers. Somehow those guys killed a [bleep] of deer.

I was spoiled. My first deer rifle was a Rem 600 Mohawk in 243. It had a top end Tasco on top but no see through sights. We cut the stock down and the rifle fit me pretty well. Well enough to kill a deer my first several years. It was 'stupid accurate' at a solid 1.25 inch gun with my hand loads. Yep, we hand loaded to save money but did learn how to tune loads to the rifle.

The distances shaman mention are spot on. My first deer was 75 paces across a little opening. One 100 gr Hornady high shoulder shot was all it took. I've shot alot of deer that filled a 4x scope with brown fur. Shooting one almost straight down is a bit harder than it would seem.

I still have that old Mohawk. It's been the family kid-gun since about 1982 or so. It has killed several truckloads of deer. It needs a new barrel but I cant bring myself to do it. Same with my next rifle Ruger tanger 77 in 280. Still have that one too. It struggles to hold a 2" group but has killed more than few critters. I cant bring myself to re-barrel that one either. Both rifles are semi-retired. I pick them up often and think about the memories that come with them.

Never found a 4 MOA gun, I'm jealous. Had a pistol that came close once, sorry I sold it.

Shaman, what made you put glass on a 4 MOA rifle?

I like that.

Just for grins, I went into PointBlank this AM and ran some calculations.

Q: What happens when you take a Rem 742 in 30-06, mount a scope with see-thru rings and load it with 180 grainers and zero it dead-on at 50 yards?

Load Data
~~~~~~~~~

Name: .308 Cal, Remington Corelokt PSPCL, 180 grn
Ballistic Coeff: 0.425
Bullet Weight: 180
Velocity: 2600
Target Distance: 50
Scope Height: 2.000
Temperature: 70
Altitude: 500

Ballistic Data
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Range Elevation Velocity Energy ETA Drop Max Y 10mph Wind Deflect
0 yds -2.00 in 2600 fps 2702 fpe 0.000 sec 0.00 in -2.00 in 0.00 in
25 yds -0.84 in 2550 fps 2599 fpe 0.029 sec 0.16 in -0.76 in 0.04 in
50 yds -0.00 in 2501 fps 2499 fpe 0.059 sec 0.65 in -0.63 in 0.15 in
75 yds 0.49 in 2452 fps 2402 fpe 0.089 sec 1.49 in -0.42 in 0.40 in
100 yds 0.62 in 2403 fps 2308 fpe 0.120 sec 2.69 in -0.11 in 0.73 in
125 yds 0.37 in 2356 fps 2218 fpe 0.151 sec 4.26 in 0.31 in 1.20 in
150 yds -0.28 in 2308 fps 2130 fpe 0.183 sec 6.24 in 0.83 in 1.80 in
175 yds -1.34 in 2262 fps 2044 fpe 0.216 sec 8.62 in 1.47 in 2.53 in
200 yds -2.83 in 2216 fps 1962 fpe 0.250 sec 11.44 in 2.24 in 3.38 in
225 yds -4.76 in 2170 fps 1882 fpe 0.284 sec 14.70 in 3.13 in 4.35 in
250 yds -7.16 in 2125 fps 1804 fpe 0.319 sec 18.42 in 4.16 in 5.43 in
275 yds -10.01 in 2080 fps 1729 fpe 0.355 sec 22.61 in 5.32 in 6.62 in
300 yds -13.35 in 2036 fps 1657 fpe 0.391 sec 27.27 in 6.64 in 7.93 in


What I find fascinating is that you're only .62 inches high at 100 yards. With a 4 MOA rifle, you'd think you were dead-on. At 250 yards, you're only a sconce over 7 inches low. Now, think of that: you're in the woods, and through a miracle, you see the buck of a lifetime out in a field at some unknown distance. If you aim at the top of his back and let loose, you've got half a chance of hitting him. What's more, if he's way too far out, say over 300 yards, the bullet is going to pass under his body. I'm not recommending any of this. I'm just saying that this how you look at things with a 4 MOA rifle. The truth of it is that, unless you support the shot against a tree or a fencepost, that 300-yard shot is going to be coming nowhere near that buck and at 300 yards, that 4 MOA rifle is shooting a pattern that's bigger than the buck's chest. I was never faced with exactly that situation. However, I did pass on a nice buck once that I judged to be 90 yards out and I was carrying my Rem 1100 that I knew was only good out to 50 yards. I stepped off the actual distance on my way out. It was more like 150 yards. I'm still patting myself on the back for that show of restraint.

I experimented with the WIN 670 back in 2004. I was coming out at last light and saw a herd of doe on a hillside at some distance that I now know to be over 400 yards. I was handloading by then. I knew the rifle was good to 1-2 MOA, and I knew there was no way in hell I was going to hit anything. I braced myself against a big tree and took a shot at the closest doe with the crosshairs centered on her chest. I was able to pick out the bullet, a good 7 feet low, puffing up dirt well down the hill. I got to empty the mag before the deer realized something was up and took off.

Take up clay shooting with it would be my suggestion.

And lots of guys shot lots of deer that way every year. Truckloads of them.

-Jake

I have noticed that a lot of the guys who have 4 MOA rifles spend time at the range after missing a deer on opening morning. Ironic to see them trying to figure out why they missed. Usually the blister pack scope was off by a foot or more and was usually loose in the mounts. Never figured how that how that happened, It was fine at the end of the season and hadn't been shot since.

I knew a guy who had a new deer rifle every season. After his current deer rifle failed him (it was never him that failed) he sold the rifle at a loss and bought something else. Then he would spend the spring and summer telling you about the merits of his new rifle. When deer season arrived, he would fail again and repeat this same process. It was very comedic.

Oh! That's easy. My eyes are bad. I was probably okay shooting irons back then, but a scope made things easier. The first scope I had on the REM 742, the one it came with was a 1.5-4.5X30 Bushnell Banner. I still have it, but I mounted on a Ruger 10/22 30 some years ago. The second scope was a $29 Simmons 3-9X30 that I moved to my Savage 99 for over a decade. Both the Rem 742 and the Savage 99 had Weaver Swivel Mounts so that I could go to the irons if necessary. I was never a big fan of see-thru mounts.

When I started to get more into this whole accuracy thing from reading 24hourcampfire.com, I realized the Swivel Mounts might not be such a hot idea. I swapped out the swivel mounts and the Simmons scope on the Savage 99 just a few years ago. With a Leupold STD mount and an $80 Bushnell scope, that Savage 99 that never was much to speak of accuracy wise suddenly perked up. It's now down to 1-2 MOA range. Whodathunk?

To answer in a more general sense: if you have a 4 MOA rifle, you do everything you can to appear to be on top of things. You need plausible deniability. Your friends are going to rag on you if you miss the big one and you are just shooting over irons. If you have an honest 4 MOA deer rifle, you mount a 30mm scope. If you have a 6-8 MOA rifle, you mount a 40 or 50 mm scope and you get something that you can crank down to 20X so everything looks really, really blurry. That way, when your friends look through it, they see nothing, and they think you're a god for being able to hit anything. When you go hunting, you crank it to 3X so you can actually see.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Amazon is a great place to find scopes for a 4 MOA deer rifle. You want to get one made with a deceitively familiar name. Borris, Lerpold, Bushnelli, and Nickor are ideal for this kind of situation.

Funny thing. I decided to use up all the rejects from load development for my .308. About 25 rounds, all poorly accurate, velocities varying 2-300 FPS, POI all over the place. Rather than pull the bullets I took them out and shot them at my steel gong at 200 yards. Funny thing is I hit the gong most every time, just like I do with my ultaconsistent 3/4 moa hand loads.