Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What was your first deer rifle??

My first deer rifle was 35 rem. lever action with peep sites. Shot 3 bucks my first 3 years. My dad's first gun as my grandfather's old 30-30. He was 12 or 13 and got his first buck with it and was a 10 pointer.
What was your first deer rifle? And did you get a deer your first year?

788 Remington in 6mm Rem. with a 3x9 Bushnell scope

Good Shooting,
HBB

30-40 Krag. got passed down to the youngest son finally. He doesn't even hunt and married a woman who won't even allow him to keep it in his house! I have tried to beg, buy or trade him for it and he won't do either. It sits in a closet at my mother's house gathering dust.

Marlin 336 30-30 with open sights. Killed my first deer, an 8 point, my second year hunting by myself at 14. Stupidly traded away when I was 17 or 18.

Ruger MKII .338 Win Mag. It was the first centerfire rifle I ever owned, but I didn't get it until I was 22. I deer hunted from 10-12 with a 20ga and moved on to a 12ga from there.

My first deer rifle was a M 94 30-30. Didn't kill a deer with it. First centerfire I bought was a Savage 99 in 308, and killed my biggest deer with it, a year after I bought it- over 35 years ago!

I started hunting small game as soon as I could walk. I didn't have a choice, my Dad made me go. Mostly I remember falling down after tripping on stuff the like of which didn't grow in our yard. My obsession with deer hunting didn't come until I was about 14 or so. Here in east Texas (30 something years ago) you only had two guns (if you were lucky), a .22 rifle and a shotgun. If I remember correctly, I hunted deer with a .20 gauge shotgun for 2-3 years (unsuccessfully) before winning a 30-30 Marlin in a fishing tournament. A year or two later I shot a doe and was astounded to see her run off after what I was a sure shot at 30 yards or less. In my youthful ignorance, I never realized a large game animal could run away after a lethal shot, apparently unharmed. . I found the deer the next day, shot perfectly, but only because I hunted the same area. A lesson that hurt me deeply. I am still incensed with deer hunting and have killed scores. I have owned many deer rifles and, in hindsight, can say that none are more effective than my first. It is knowledge in "the game" and experience that make a hunter successful.

444Marlin,4x Leupold. That thing kicked the crap out of me and killed at least 20 deer before I got out of high school.

1920s-vintage M94SRC in 32 Special that I bought in the mid-60s. Still have it, still kills deer deader'n hell. Seldom hunt with it now though. Sumbitch turned into some sorta valuable heirloom somewhere along the way, so it's semi-retired.

Lever gun of choice the past few years, is an old Marlin 336SC in 35 Rem. that I picked up cheap and put a Williams "peep" on.

That thing has the sweetest trigger of any lever rifle I've ever fired and is far more accurate than anything that stumpy should oughta be.
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.257 Roberts, custom-built on a 722, with a short stock- it was the "kids' gun" and I was the fifth kid. I'm not certain, but it's quite possible that we all got our first deer with this rifle.
I missed on my first attempt but I don't have to count it because I was a month short of legal but Dad let me hunt anyway. Since I was the last child, and the shortest, it became "my" gun and has accounted for quite a passel of deer and pigs.
It wasn't until '98, when a monster mulie ran after being hit, scaring me about losing 'un muy grande burro', that I considered anything else.

Rem 243, it got stolen before I could score my first deer.

Learned how to handload on that caliber. Love'd it ever since.

Winchester M70 30:06 I shot my first deer in 1973 at age 19 and haven't missed a season since.

Model 88 Win., .243.

First was a M92 Winchester in 44-40 that belonged to an uncle. Loaned to me for the duration until I could (litterly) shovel enough chicken s**t, clerk in a store on week ends, (made $4.50 cents for working from 7am to 8pm) and pull enough watermelons to buy my own deer rifle.

Never killed a deer with it. Deer were few and far between here in the late 40s early 50s. Went any way occasionly saw tracks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


BCR

Mauser 98 8x57 (Polish mfg). Heavy thing that I hauled around without seeing a deer. Cost me $17.50 at the downtown Eatons store in Toronto. I still have the price tag around somehwere but the gun is long gone.

I'm from Cincinnati, and Ohio and neighboring Indiana are shotgun states. My first deer rifle was a Remington Model 1100 TB Trap with a deer barrel and rifle sights. It put Remington Sluggers into a 4" circle at 50 yards with the holes touching. It's still one of my favorites. The only time I have wished I'd had something different was back in 90. A monster of an 8 pointer came out of the woods and walked across a pasture at 120 yards. All I could do was watch. Generally speaking, if you're primarily a bow hunter, the limitations of a slug gun are not a problem. In the dense woods of SE Ohio, if I saw a deer, it was dead.

My first real deer "rifle" was a Remington 742 in 30-06. It comes up just like the 1100. I didn't have a chance to use it on deer the first couple of seasons-- had no place to hunt in Kentucky. I'd bought it for boar hunting in Tennessee.
When I finally got a chance to hunt Kentucky, I took it out on opening day of season and bagged my first one. You've all heard my story of the big deer stampede.

A Rem. 22 lr. Did not kill my first deer with it though. That was with a 6 mm that belonged to an uncle. I'm not sure of the make or model as that was a few years past.


BP...

A model 94 Winchester in .30-30. Never killed a deer with it because deer went missing from here in the late 60's. That rifle was built in about 67 or 68, and it was a real piece of junk. Stamped pieces instead of machined pieces. It used to let a round out under the lifter mechanism and effectively make the rifle a 6.5 pound club.

I did kill a couple moose with it before I got so frustrated and sold it to someone who just "had to have it." If I had kept it another season, I would likely have bent the barrel around a good sized tree.

Settled on a Tikka 30-06, and it has fit for many years.

35 Marlin lever-action. Wish I had kept that rifle.

M94 30-30. My first deer rifle I bought was a Rem 760 30-06.