Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Light weight bolt action rifles...

Do you carry your belly in your hands? How about the stuff in your pack?
Your rifle is the only item which you carry in your hands while hunting and stuff carried in your hands is supported by your muscles. 8oz in your hands is likely the equivalent of 15lbs in your pack.

Agree with battue and nsaqam. When still hunting the rifle is in my hands.

I'll take that bet. YOU are the only one overweight. NOT

I agree. Light rig has nothing to with gut size.

Travis

It does, if you're talking energy expenditure for a day of hunting. Absolutely. A lighter me gets around the hills, trails and mountains way easier and with less effort than a heavier me.

Toting around 8oz less rifle helps too, if that's what you want to do, but add another 20lbs to your pack and walk all day then tell me which makes you more tired. 8oz more rifle or 20lbs more in your pack.

To be honest, I've searched for lighter boots because it takes energy to move those boots all day. Up, down, around, over. Think about it, it takes more energy to move something all day (your feet and legs) then to carry something which is static most of the time.

When still hunting I prefer the rifle in my hands. Of course, the mt sides I hunt generally have a max range of 100 through "holes" and most shots are ~75 yards, so things are kinda tight. It could be done with a slung rifle, but I prefer to carry it. I usually carry it in my left arm, arm bent at 90 degrees, rifle sitting sideways.....my right hand holds bino's with the right elbow resting on the stock for support, right index finger holds edge of cap bill to steady. A 6.5lb rifle is nice when doing this.

HA!

To quote deflave, "GFY"

Funny, I seem to lose and find the same 20 lbs over and over again. I gotta do something about that.

Why would I put 20lbs of extra schit in my pack? I'm not following your logic.

Buy some Keens. They're plenty light.

A lighter rifle, is a lighter rifle. In shape or not.


Travis

Please note the NOT and 2 grins.

Yep but I gain it in Winter & lose it in Summer.

+1 also as nsagam points out. If the gun is on your shoulder the deer is saying GFY as it takes off Even when the gun is in your hands you may not get a shot off in some of the cedar swamps and laurel thickets

It isn't that hard to follow Travis. If I am 20 lbs lighter in the future, it's 20 lbs my body isn't carrying around anymore. So I am equating it to you putting an extra 20 lbs of chit in your bag now and walking around all day. Then tell me if you are more or less tired than if you hadn't hiked around with that 20 extra lbs.

Wife and I moved from Oklahoma to San Luis Valley, Colorado, (6500') in 1960 so that fall/ winter was my first elk hunt. Hunting rifles then were either model 70 Winchesters, whatever Remington had to offer or a "sporterized" (usually butcherized) Mauser or Springfield and they were all heavyweights, compared to what we have to choose from nowadays. 30-06, of course, was the caliber of choice but some of my gang shot .270s which, back then, worked just as well as the .06. Or at least we thought so. 130 grain Silvertips in the .270s and 150 grain Remington Core-Lokts in the .06s. I think everybody I hunted with used Weaver 4X scopes and backpacks hadn't been invented yet, at least nobody I knew had one. .300 Winchester magnums hadn't made the scene yet either but when they did in 1963, nobody I hunted with got all het up to own one. What we had was plenty good. And once in a while, somebody would show up with a .300 Savage but they came up a little short in the range department so they never became real popular around there. None of us made a game out of seeing how far away from an elk we could get before opening fire but instead we did our best to get as close as possible. Pretty sorry shooters back then.

Our favorite camp site was a dry camp well above timberline and our tent or tents were canvas wall tents and one of them, a 14 X 16 had an oil heater that we used to warm the place up and to warm up some of the food our wives cooked ahead of time.

When we left camp to go hunt, we always went down hill so all of our plunder had to be carried uphill, by hand and back. A hind quarter off a big bull elk or even a small cow got pretty heavy by the time we made it back to headquarters. And we thought it was fun! Back then, a cow tag was coveted and had to be applied for. Bull license was purchased "over the counter."

Leave out from camp in the morning with a peanut butter sandwich in one pocket and an old army canteen of water strapped on which might have turned to hard water by the time you wanted a drink. Not a problem if we had snow but once in a while that didn't happen. Made for hard hunting.

Ahh, them were the days!

No, it sounds pretty awesome to me.