A lifelong gun "nut" builds a custom gun and with it, a stronger relationship with his favorite hunting partner.
The South Texas sun had already set, when the last traces of sunlight trickling through the live oaks illuminated some movement on the ridge. A look through the binocular confirmed my suspicion. I noted the heavy body, thick neck, and sauntering, burdensome gait of a mature Hill Country buck. My hopes, after what had been an uneventful evening with my wife in our homemade deer stand, were rekindled. But would the coming darkness conceal the old boy and protect him yet again? No doubt, night had served him well in the past, and he was using it again this evening to his advantage.
Perhaps it was the December chill, or maybe old age had grown into complacency, but this evening the buck made a terrible mistake. He had left his warm bed in the cedar thicket a little too early to feed, and we were watching. Onward he came, with that purposeful, confident stride big bucks get with age. He was not in a rush, but not wasting time, either. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t even examined his antlers yet, but everything about this deer had already told me all I needed to know.
The buck steadily closed the distance, ticking down from about 160 yards, and my wife, Renae, readied her rifle on the blind’s window edge. Waiting for the perfect shooting angle, I finally took the opportunity to size up the deer’s head gear. Even from 140 yards, I could see long and heavy main beams bearing three tines on each side plus a brow tine. He was everything a hunter dreams about, a big, perfect 10-point!
After a few minutes the buck came broadside, and I heard the safety on the old Mauser slip quietly into the fire position. “Take him when you’re ready, honey,” I whispered, but before the final syllable fell from my tongue, Renae dropped the hammer, and the crack of the rifle placed a period on my statement as the bullet put the dandy old buck on the ground.
This story is one I tell with great pride. It’s a story about family, fellowship, a firearm, and memories that will span eternity. As an American and a spouse, these things will forever hold a special fondness in my heart. But you have heard only the latest installment of the story. Allow me, if you will, to take you back to the beginning of this tale and the entrance of one its participants.
My wife’s rifle, or the “Swede,” as we call it, is a rifle that holds its own special place in our little story. Like many Texas boys, I grew up enamored with guns. It starts with a little plastic six-gun set or anything we can fashion into a vague resemblance of one (many an evil outlaw met his end in my backyard to my quick hands and those “guns,” I can assure you). It grows, then, from play time into soda can target practice with air rifles and expands to culminate some Christmas morning, with a young man’s first truly treasured possession, a .22 rifle.
For some guys it ends there, but not so for me, not by a long shot (pardon the pun). No, I began consuming article after article and book after book about rifles. One special type of firearm intrigued me most, the custom rifle. What really fascinates me about custom guns is that no two are alike and that the options are limitless. But the real point here is that a custom gun is a firearm made to fit you and your needs exactly. In a world of assembly lines and mass-produced items ready in a microwaved, drive-through minute, custom guns remain unique and special.
Later in life, with a little coin in my pocket and some gunsmith knowledge in my head, the dream of a custom gun was within my grasp. My wife had a new-found interest in hunting with me, and she was without her own rifle. Hmmm, what to do … . I found the answer in the mentoring of good friend and master gunsmith Fred Fuller. With his help I set out to achieve two dreams at once—hunting with my wife and building my very first custom rifle.
Our first issue to tackle was what caliber to choose. I knew my wife well enough to know that recoil and her shoulder did not get along at all. (I think more people, especially men, fall into this group than will admit.) I noticed at previous range sessions that, as bore size got larger, so did her groupings at 100 yards. After much thought, I settled on something a little bit different, the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser. Those who know this caliber will tell you that it is famous for a few things. Number one is its accuracy. It is, quite literally, an Olympic gold medal winner many times over. Number two is its light recoil and muzzle report, and third is its field-proven effectiveness on game. Do not let its smallish bore size (.264) fool you, for it has quite the reputation for killing game out of proportion to its dimensions, most notably lots of moose, red deer, and wild boar in Europe.
In keeping with the cartridge’s moniker, we chose an old, but high-quality VZ-24 Mauser action and totally restored it. I mated it up to a heavy sporter barrel from Shilen and dropped the works into a fine piece of hand-finished and checkered walnut. We threw in a new bolt handle, Timney trigger, and a good optic, and we had the recipe for one heck of a rifle.
The rifle was designed purposefully to be heavy. This would help negate the already low recoil and aid in stability, and weight is not a bad thing for my wife, as nearly all of her hunting with me is done sitting still under an oak tree or in a deer stand. Truly, this gun was meant to have one purpose, and that is to nudge you in the shoulder while accurately placing 140-grain bullets into the shoulders of game.
It does so exceedingly well. On good days it will drive numerous bullet styles into a neat little cluster at 100 yards. On great days you will need a high-powered spotting scope to see the paper between the holes, if there is any. So far, all the game the “Swede” has been aimed at has expired quickly and with a single shot. All the bullets have exited, and if an animal moved from the impact site, none have gone farther than 50 steps. This includes the buck at the beginning of this story, which, by the way, ended up netting 145 inches and field dressed 125 pounds. That’s a big, free roaming, Hill Country deer, and he took a nosedive into the Bandera County dirt about 10 steps after the 120-grain Barnes TSX disconnected his heart from the rest of him.
You will notice that I said the tale of that buck and my wife was the latest installment in this story, but it is surely not the last. I hope many more successful hunts will end with a photo of us and that rifle. Come to think of it, she was 51⁄2 months pregnant with our son in that last photo. Perhaps he’ll need a light-kicking accurate deer rifle someday, too.
What can I say, guys? Do you have a wife that hasn’t yet joined you in the field? If so, tell her how much you would enjoy her company and the memories, and, if I may borrow the line, “If you build it, they will come.” Get out there and build some memories together. It’s probably overdue. God bless and good hunting.