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

I could slum this one!

I forgot I owned that book. IIRC, it was a good read. Will have to read that again.

I've come to think of Francis Sells as being the west coast version of Larry Koller.

Yep! Good analogy.

Bearrr264 had an extensive correspondence with him back in the mid-1980s regarding his 257 Tomcat wildcat cartridge in the Marlin 336. I read some of his letters to Dave and they all made good points.

This is my version of a lightweight, light-recoiling rifle for an old man. Howa Mini 6.5 Grendel in a Pendleton stock with a Trijicon Credo HX 1-6.

Need to talk to Wayne York about a Mannlicher version…..

If 'm walking the thick stuff I got a first gen Ruger .44 Carbine shooting 240 gr JSP at a bit over 1800 fps. Short, fast , light , and accurate , nothing else needed.

Nice rifle 721. It would look good with an ebony forend tip.

My close range thumper is a 7600 in 35Whelen shooting 225 SGK at 2725fps. I had a 7400 carbine in the same but felt the longer barrel swung better. It’s topped with a Zeiss DL 2x8 with illumination. Bench warmers for close in duty are a Mini-30 and LaRue PredatAR in .308.

I remember reading a Ken Waters article ( "Pet Loads") about the 6.5x54 M-S 1903. Accuracy wasn't great with great with "normally available" jacketed bullets which had 0.266" diameter (3 moa?) Waters slugged his 1903 M-S test rifle, and got a groove diameter of 0.268" ( 0 .002" larger than anticipated) . He order some 160 grain round nose jacketed bullets that were 0.268" diameter (Barnes original? ). His accuracy improved immediately to - I believe- ~1.5 inches at 100 yards. fwiw.

Great thread with some nice pictures. I always love it when GW posts! I've shot deer in the thick stuff with a few different rifles - mostly a 7600 carbine in 30 06, though. I think, the most important considerations are stock fit, type of sight/scope and practice. You can make most rifles work well if when you see that deer and throw the gun to your shoulder it is as if the post or crosshair is just suddenly where it needs to be with no break in the continuity of your concentration on that vital zone. It's more of an upland bird kind of thing. Weight up front is probably nice for settling the gun but is balanced against the speed of a lighter barrel (do you like 26" or 28" barrels for grouse?). To my mind what makes Sell's gun a brush gun is that very cool aperture sight. I never heard of that one. Nice big ghost ring - perfect. I wonder what kind of post he used.

Well there it is - "Square gold bead" thanks william iorg. I've never heard of that either, a square bead. Sell was definitely a loony. I wonder why a square bead. Now I'll be thinking about that all night.

I've found that my M 70 fwt in 280 works just as well at spitting distance as it does at 400 yds.

Screw that, I could abscond with it when he looks the other way.

Nice rifle.

Lots to be said for a fat square Sourdough gold front sight. Think about it - why do all handgun sights, target/hunting/self defense/etc., present a fat square post front sight to the eye, when once upon a time such front sights on target pistols and a lot of utility handguns were round beads?

Yup. Pistol or rifle, square contributes more to accuracy potential than round and gives up nothing in speed.
Personal choice aside of course.

obviously nothing long and heavy.

Beyond that the sky is the limit and what works for you is what works for you.

I don't put much faith in others choices. They aren't me. I"m not them.

Use what makes you happy.

Up close low power optics with large eye box and field of view. That way you can shoot optics like irons basically yet you have a bit of X to thread a bullet, see stuff that irons and eyes don't allow you to see and so on.

There is no brush busting caliber. The ONLY way you get DRT 100% of the time is with CNS shots. So that tosses out caliber issues of this or that is better.

We have always preferred exit wounds. So we will pick the right projectile. We prefer least amount of meat damage, same thing there, the right projectile.

How you deliver it is totally up to you.

Frankly if I was talking 30 yards and in I'd find almost no reason to ever carry anything other than one of the Glock 20s in the pile. And with RMR those are good with us on deer to 75 pretty easy. That doesn't mean its for anyone else, it simply would be the easy choice for us. Around the house the go to for 300 yards and in has been for many years the AR15. light. Accurate. Totally reliable. Plenty big in 223. quick follow up shots on pigs or coyotes or 2 legged if need be.

I read his piece in Pet Loads, which prompted me to try the now-discontinued Hornady .268 Carcano bullets. The experience wasn’t quite so productive. One issue was was with the neck diameter of the loaded cartridge. All of my cases are recently manufactured Norma, which have thick neck walls, probably thicker than the stuff that Ken Waters used and almost certainly more than cases made in the early 1900s. When seating the .268 bullet, the neck diameter was right at the min chamber spec for the 6.5x54. In my rifle, some cartridges would chamber, others would not. While neck turning was an option, rifle’s throat was also less than ideal for the combination. The blunt profile of the Hornady RN combined with he larger bullet diameter required very deep seating. Not only did the loaded cartridges look awful, they also wouldn’t feed worth a hoot from the finicky Shoenauer magazine.

So I quickly abandoned the effort. Just never felt it worthwhile as acceptable accuracy can be found with .264 bullets, particularly the Hawk 160s.

A 44 mag in a Rossi Model 92 works pretty darn good for deer or elk at spitting distance

My solution for a close in brush rifle was a custom 99 Savage in 450 Bushmaster with a 16" barrel. Ticks all the boxes for me and has performed 100%. With Bear Creek Ballistics high BC bullets, and working up to the optimum load for the rifle, it is easily a 250 yard rifle that shoots 1 MOA.