Home Built Rifle Takes Second Deer

[tinkerfive]

Monday was our opening day of modern firearms deer season.

 

Sunday evening it started raining, temps in the 30's

Still raining Monday morning till about 10:00.

The sun comes out and you start to think that the day won't turn out to be too bad after all.

Then about 11:00 when the trees had just about stopped dripping, the sleet started.

The sleet only lasted a few min. at at time but it would alternate sleet and sun up till aprox. 1:00

Around 1:00 one of my hunting partners calls on the radio to see if anyone has seen anything.

The answer is no for all 4 of us in our party.

Then around 1:15 I catch sight of a nice size buck crossing in front of me rather deep in the brush and in

a hurry. There was one spot that I could have had a clear shot if only I'd had another 1/2 second to prepare

for the buck to be in the spot. I never had another clear shot at it.

No sooner than the buck cleared the area a heavy snow blew in that only lasted about 15 min.

When the sun came out something made me look in the direction of the sun behind me and low and behold,

about 80 to 90 yards and around 170* from where my stand is facing; are about 4 doe.

 

There is no way I can make the shot over my right shoulder from a seated position so I stand up and fighting

my safety strap to get into a shooting position.

Now I'm hunting in a hardwood forest where the shoot-able gaps between the trees only give you about a 1 foot

wide slice of the deer visible.

The only one that I could line up on at that moment was only giving me her head to shoot at.

I shot and missed. The noise made them mill around but not run.

If because of being up against the tree, I don't know but; apparently I short cycled the bolt

BECAUSE

I lined up on another doe and the gun only went "TINK" when I pulled the trigger.

I thought that maybe it had failed to strip a new round from the mag and I had dry fired on an empty chamber.

So now I'm taking the time to watch the bolt as I open it and there is the empty case from the missed

head shot. So I continue to pull the bolt back forcefully to make sure I eject the spent case and I watch

to be sure I strip a live round from the mag.

The deer still haven't run yet so I find another 1 foot wide slice of a doe to shoot at then

with the second shot ( third trigger pull ) my home built gun does its' job and I get the only

deer in our party.

 

Tinker

[ken98k]

Tell us about the rifle. What was it?

[tinkerfive]

Tell us about the rifle. What was it?

It was the 7.62X39 I built last year from a Remington 30-06 barrel on a Turk 03 action,

stocked in an E-bay rip off that was in about 5 pieces and now has lots of glue and epoxy

after I repaired it.

 

It makes for a nice little field gun. With that stock, I don't mind too much if I bump into a tree with it.

I'm hunting in an area where there isn't a shot over 125 yards so the little 7.62X39 is plenty effective

at those ranges. I'm impressed with the knock down power. I'm using HP ammo and getting more devastating

wounds than from a 30-06 with soft points. If I could find ammo in soft point for the 7.62X39 I think that

I might prefer that, because I'm loosing more meat with the HP Vs. the SP.

One thing for sure, both of the deer dropped right where they were shot.

 

T.

[lemski4]

Way to go! I used my 7.62x39 small ring rifle this year and dropped 2 does opening morning with no problem. I was using 150 grain round nose 30-30 type bullets, was all I had on hand at the time of load development, but did get a box of hornady sp 150 grain bullets but haven't tried to work up a load in the rifle yet. Both does went 10-15 yards and dropped dead.