ORIGINAL: stevenrayspeck
I have been hunting with my dad for many years and i have seen him take several deer through the years, but when i tell my friends about the shots he makes they don't believe me. The reason being that all his deer accept for 2 have been taken
between 350 and 450 yards. Almost all of them where taken when the deer was on a dead run. All of them where shot in the neck and they all dropped dead in thier tracks. On top of this he has always shot freehanded. So my question is, is it really that far and that amazing of a shot using his trusty old 243 rifle with a 9 power scope and 100 grain shells. I only wish i was as good of shot as he is.
I worked in the local gun shop one fall in Las Vegas, New Mexico. An old gentleman of Spansih background came into the shop one day with an old Model 94 Winchester RIFLE with a 26" barrel, and asked us to sight it in for him. The barrel threads were so worn that you could grasp the rifle around the receiver, and shake the barrel so that the muzzle flopped up and down around 4"! The stock looked like something someone had whittledout of a cedar fence post (maybe they had!). Most of the blue was gone, and the whole thing was "armory bright", with no finish of any kind on the wood of the stock or forearm.
We offered him $10.00 for it on a trade for a new M94 carbine (which at that time was selling for around $82.50), but hesaid NO! It had beenhis father's rifle. So we took the thing, builtup the barrel tennon with arc welding, re-threaded it, and reassembled therifle with correct headspace, and tried to sight it in. This provved impossible, as the bore was "dark". This means you could look down the bore, and see NOTHING!! A .308" bullet would enter the muzzle past the ogive! BUT, there must have been SOME rifling still in it, since it shot dinnerplate size patterns at 100 yards. So we set the rear sight toplace the dinner-plate group somewhere near the top of the front sight bead, and gave the gun back to the guy. He was just tickled to death to have his gun restored, then told us how he'd killed a big mulie buck last hunting season with that rifle-at 800 yards!! ( He didn't say if it was running or standing still, but I'll bet it was running!!)
Now how's THAT for marksmanship??