The Hunter's Alaska

by Roy F. Chandler

  As you can see, the trajectory appears to flatten. We did our zeroing at 200 yards, getting the two inches high just right, but if only a 100 yard range was available, or for checking our rifles in the field, we settled for the +1-1/2" at 100 yards.

  I used the same zeroing with my .300 Weatherby Magnum and obtained +1-1/8" at 100 yards, +2" at 200 yards, and -1-1/2" at 300 yards.

  I suppose it is necessary to warn that trajectories can change with individual loadings and even with different rifles. You must check out your own, but your results will be close to those shown here.

  We should never forget that at reasonable ranges our bullet's expansion will be more certain, its hitting power greater, and its penetration more sure than at extreme ranges. All are good reasons for staying at less than 300 yards.

  Range estimating in Alaska can be extremely difficult. Part of the difficulty lies in the vast expanses being observed. When the air is more clear than most in the lower forty-eight ever see, details normally unobserved can stand out, and the game can appear closer than it is. The very size of the animals encountered in Alaska is also disturbing. Those used to estimating ranges to a whitetail or an antelope going 150 pounds may find their calculations thrown when checking out an 800-pound moose.

  Generally, however, it is the natural features that give Alaska Range estimating a twist. A grove of distant trees I was once glassing suddenly sprouted the world's most enormous caribou. I had been conscientiously searching beneath the branches of the distant spruce looking for a betraying flash of light from an antler when suddenly there arose an animal so huge it towered three or four times tree height. Following an instant of blank astonishment, I belatedly realized I had been glassing a forest in miniature. I had been examining mature spruce that stood only three feet or less in height. The trees stood alone, probably a fourth of the distance away than I had believed them to be.

  A similar incident occurred when three of us glassed a raccoon for some time before noticing its tail. We thought it was a far distant bear. Such gross misjudgments are embarrassing to admit, especially so for allegedly experienced hunters, but in Alaska, they happen.

  Poor estimating can occur on the long or short side. In the 1950s Art Rausch gave me a rule for shooting that I have passed on to many hunters who found it useful—although some were at first skeptical.

  The rule is simply this:

  For your first shot, never hold over an animal. If you believe the range to be extremely long hold close to the top of the spine, but never hold above an animal's back, or something of that nature. Always see hair in your scope.

  Using this rule means that you will never shoot over your target. If you were right and the range really is extremely long, your bullet will strike short of the target—it may even raise a puff of dust or a spatter of rock. If you miss, you KNOW that your bullet went too low.

  Too often, I have seen hunters shoot and shoot until the game wandered out of sight. They could not understand why they missed as they had kept raising their aiming point higher and higher to compensate for the long range. The fact that they had gone over an animal's back with the first shot and increased their margin of error each time they held higher escaped them in the heat of action. (I have sometimes suspected that in the excitement of the moment of truth a lot of hunters' IQs drop to about fifty, anyway.)

  Some fifty years after I first made a dummy of myself trying to estimate range in Alaska I still follow the rule. Always see hair in your reticle.

  Notice that I wrote reticle in the above interpretation of the rule. That was no accident. The choice is a lead-in to discussion of sights for Alaskan hunting.

  Using his latest experimental rifle, the author (above) demonstrates the correct offhand hold for hunters. The cheek is welded to the stock with the head nearly upright without significant forward thrusting (limit stock crawl). The right hand grips with the thumb around the stock, never alongside the trigger finger. The right elbow is raised naturally without exaggeration (as is often taught in competitive marksmanship). The left hand is well out on the forearm, and the hand grips the stock to control its movement. (Gripping with the front hand also helps control recoil.) The left elbow is not below the rifle; it is a bit off to the left—which makes a stronger position for following moving animals. The body is not turned completely sideward. The left foot should be well to the left of a line to your target. Think of a boxer's stance. The body has a slight forward lean, which can be increased to intensify concentration and balance. This is not Known Distance target shooting remember. Our shooting is one shot, possibly a couple of more, in rapid succession. To properly increase forward lean, have a wider than usual foot placement (further apart), bend the left knee strongly and bend at the waist—just a little. I learned the technique from a German Jaeger who shot game with uncanny certainty. Try it; you might make a discovery.

  The sling? Although some suggest otherwise, I see the rifle sling as nothing more than a carrying strap. Of course, I learned how to use a sling in the US Army (whether we liked it or not), and in competitive marksmanship you need a sling, but in the field, hunting big game? Not in my opinion. Forget the sling.

  This is the experimental rifle just mentioned, a Swiss Army Schmidt Rubin, model 31, straight-pull sniper rifle modified into a hunting rifle. The rifle was barreled to the .358 Winchester, a cartridge that is an absolute hammer out to about two hundred yards. The scope is 2 x 7X with a custom Premier Reticle tapered crosshair. The stock is English walnut with 24 lines per inch checkering. The straight pull action is very fast, but there are difficulties in sporterizing the Schmidt Rubin. The huge ring on the cocking piece is less than attractive, and the magazine release seen on the side is a military monster. I like the gun and enjoyed developing it, but the cost was excessive (including having my name engraved and gold inlaid on the receiver ring), and I do not recommend anyone else taking on the task.

  Hunting alone (photo taken with a timer) in the mountains west of Mount Sanford—many decades ago. I shot nothing on this trip, but it was adventurous, and I saw an exceptional moose, better than any I had shot, but the camera was in my pack and the bull did not hang around. I could have shot him and backpacked the antlers, but we did not do that kind of wasteful thing.

  The Rifleman's Rifle®

  The Pre-1964 Winchester Model 70

  If we never had a big game hunting rifle other than the pre-64 Model 70, Alaskan hunters would still be well served. The example pictured above is a stock, off-the-shelf rifle of the mid-1950s. There is no composite stock, no exaggerated stock shapes, no "snappy" plastic inserts or fore end tip, not even a thick, recoil-reducing butt pad. If you desired free floating, you had to do it yourself, but this, the most basic of rifles, never faltered. It came in every practical caliber, it was never sensitive, the trigger was excellent, the rifle held zero, and it shot like a laser. When a hunter held a model 70, he was confident that he handled the best. Excepting a telescopic sight, anything added merely gilded the lily. Nice, maybe, but not essential.

  The model 70 really was The Rifleman's Rifle, and all of us hunting at that time knew it.

  Winchester's disastrous decision to build a cheaper rifle doomed the justly famous Model 70 to decades of mediocrity. From 1964 until recent years, The Rifleman's Rifle had died, and there was no reason to choose a Winchester before dozens of other offerings by companies from across the world. Winchester's huge share of the bolt-action market dropped precipitously, and it should have. These days, it is almost rare to encounter a Winchester Model 70 in the field. Cheapening the Model 70 was almost unpatriotic, and we hunters would have voted to hang the bottom-line marketeers responsible.

  Of course, the controlled feed action is back in the Model 70, and Winchester is again producing a dam good rifle, but no hunting rifle will ever gain the mystique, or enjoy the prestige possessed by the pre-64. That was one hell of a good rifle and, if you harbor doubts, go to any gun show and check the prices on those forty-year old masterpiece
s.

  5 - Proper Sights for Alaskan Hunting

  If you were going to hunt primarily brown or grizzly bear in thick brush your very heavy caliber rifle should not have a scope. That tight in, you want an extremely short barrel, fast following shots, and nothing to catch on brush. That kind of hunting is discussed when we get to the great bears. For the rest of Alaskan hunting, only a telescope sight fills the bill.

  I have hunted moose, bear, wolves, sheep, caribou and goats with iron sights, but that is not the most effective way. Only in thick brush against dangerous game can iron sights be better than a decent scope. What I use against "bear in the brush" is described later on. Forget the iron sights. I no longer purchase hunting rifles with them attached.

  Scope application for Alaskan hunting can be short in description. Choose a fine variable power scope of something like 1-1/2X to 9X—or as close to those figures as they make. Use the strongest mount made. Fasten it and the scope on as low as the objective lens and the bolt handle will allow and as tightly as you can wind the screws.

  When I went to Alaska in the middle 1950s, good telescopic sights were just being offered. There were any number of excellent fixed power scopes, and the top of the line variable power scope for that era was the Bausch and Lomb 2-1/2X to 4X. It was an excellent scope, but you sometimes wished for a bit more variation in power, and the scope's adjustments were in the mount—a system that was rarely satisfactory and has long been abandoned.

  The only other variable power scope that I can recall was the Weaver KV 2-3/4X to 5X. I had one. It was a bummer. The scope changed zero with power adjustments, and it lost zero during firing, and no, it was not the scope mount moving around.

  In 1957 Bausch & Lomb introduced their 2-1/2 to 8X Balvar 8. What a high price, $99.50 in Alaska. What a scope! A tapered cross hair reticle and super clear optics. I brought one of the first arriving in Fairbanks. One problem, however. The Balvar 8, like its cousin the 2-1/2X to 4X had its adjustment in the mount. In the field, the system rarely held the perfect zero a serious hunter demanded. I tried a Williams mount and that did better, but still … it pays to stick with the "screw it down tight" rule.

  This is Mark Kelley's sporterized Springfield 1903.

  The stock is probably from a Bishop semi-finished blank that Mark completed. The girder recoil pad was popular in the 1950s. The important point here is that the rifle mounts a Balvar 8 scope with the adjustments in the spring-loaded Bausch & Lomb mount—as described above. A great all-around hunting scope. A so-so mounting system.

  The scope power I missed most in those earlier variable power days was 1-1/2X. When I took (or had to hold on) an animal very close in (less than seventy-five yards), I often wished that I could eliminate all of the magnification and have only crosshair placement to worry over. Such scopes are now offered, and anyone who believes he might find himself in too-close proximity to game (a big bear, for example) should consider a variable power scope that goes all the way down.

  During the days of the men whom I consider to be the great hunting writers, Jack O'Conner, Elmer Keith, Townsend Whelen, Ted Trueblood, Russell Annabel, et al, the experienced advice was always to choose a fixed low fixed-power scope because variable powers were unnecessarily bulky and were often undependable. For the time, the advice was sound, but products improve, and now an Alaskan hunter should choose a good variable. Excessive size and weight have been eliminated and variable scopes no longer falter in tough going.

  I doubt that an Alaskan hunter shooting at intelligent ranges ever needs 9 or more magnification. He certainly does not if he observes the 300 yard rule. Laying 9X magnification on a sheep at 300 yards brings the animal in as if he were at thirty-three yards. Good heavens, do we need that?

  Another point. Magnification over 9X requires use of a parallax adjustment. Why bother with that apparatus inside your scope when the high magnification is unnecessary?

  For my own rifles I like a compact 1-3/4X to 5X scope. Remember, at my self-imposed limit of 300 yards, a 5X makes the game look as if it were at 60 yards range.

  But, suppose a hunter is one of those wild guys who plunk away at animals five to six hundred yards away? Assuming we cannot just convince him to work closer or forget the shot, we can still realize that at, say, 550 yards a 9X places the game image at 56 yards, and even my little scope on 5X would bring him in to 110 yards. That is still close enough.

  The experienced sheep and goat hunters that I know who use fixed power scopes seem divided between those sticking to an all-game power of 4X and those who use dedicated sheep and goat rifles with 6X scopes. Four to six power scopes are excellent choices for the high country.

  I also have a few friends who dropped down to 2-1/2X dozens of years ago and use that power with complete satisfaction on all game. A point to these details is that double-digit scope powers are almost never the best. My observation is that the more experienced the hunter, the lower his scope power is likely to be.

  We should keep in mind that the lower your magnification, the steadier your hold will appear. Unless you have a very solid rest, at higher magnifications you will have trouble keeping your crosshairs on your animal.

  Magnification in telescopic sights of more than 9X require a parallax adjustment mechanism. A few scopes still use twisting of the objective lens to adjust parallax. The latest trend is to have a third adjustment knob on the tube of the scope that can be easily reached with the left hand. The best solution for hunters is to keep power below ten and not have to worry about parallax.

  What to avoid in scopes and their mounting takes more space than describing what is good.

  High-mounted scopes with those see-through mounts (so that you can use iron sights under the scope) are BAD. Unless you have a freaky looking high-rise stock comb, your cheek cannot rest solidly on the stock comb and still have the eye looking naturally through your scope's ocular lens. If a stock comb is high enough to provide a proper stock-to-cheek weld, the shooter trying to use the see-through iron sights must jam his face against the stock. See-through mounts are also less strong "engineering-wise" than low and tight scope mounts. I have more experience than I like to admit with such rigs. I have owned, built, and used rifles with high, see-through mounts. At the end of Chapter 1, there is a photograph that shows me with a .375 H&H Magnum so equipped. Note also the high, rollover comb on the stock. Ludicrous. Embarrassing.

  Unfortunately, someone will say, "I mount high so I can use my iron sights in an emergency."

  Emergency? That reasoning might have been acceptable forty years ago (but I doubted it even then).

  Once, many decades ago, both mounts and scopes were shaky propositions that fogged and moved around, and it made sense to have iron sight backup. That need birthed swing-aside and quick detachable mounts. None were truly satisfactory, but the idea refuses to die and the foolish still sometimes succumb to such nifty sounding schemes. The idea of "quick detachable" has always amused me. No one I ever met in the hunting fields or on the mountains carried an extra scope that was zeroed and ready to go on his rifle.

  Emergency? If you want an emergency, go afield with iron sights. I cannot recall a scope damaging accident that would not have knocked an iron receiver sight just as screwy. Iron sights can be really hard to keep in zero.

  Hunters sometimes doubt that because no one can see well enough with iron sights to really zero them in the first place. The human eye cannot see exact zero at 100 yards. Iron-sighters are lucky to get three-inch groups at 100 yards. In the field, their sights get knocked askew, but they often never realize it and cannot hold tight enough to genuinely check. Scope users try to group within an inch at 100 yards. Most settle for a little more than that. Correctly tightened down, their scopes will stay in place, stay in zero, and take a ferocious beating.

  I have a recommendation on tightening down scope mounts. Mount screws (bolts) are the weakest points in scope mounting. The best move you can make to secure your scope to your rifle is to have your friendl
y gunsmith open your receiver's threaded scope mount bolt holes from 6x48 to 8x40. Enlarge the holes in the scope mounts to match, and use 8x40 screws (bolts) touched with Loctite to hold the mount on.

  A number 8 bolt has almost twice the strength of a 6 bolt. Iron Brigade Armory, Sniper Rifles (that really are the best in the world) are modified in that manner because it works. Military sniper rifles routinely absorb beatings that would demolish most hunting rifles. Thicker mounting bolts do make a difference, and we hunters should do our best to emulate a sniper rifle's inherent strength and durability. I must add that we cannot completely match sniper rifle unbreakability because few of us will be willing to pack the extra weight of a top-level sniper rifle.

  IBA sniper rifles, by the way, use only one-piece scope mounts. In the past we have referred to such mounts as Redfield Jr.-type mounts, but IBA manufactures its own mounts that are light-years ahead of the old Redfield Juniors. One-piece mounts in general are sturdier than two-piece setups.

  I wish to mention a superior scope mounting system called a Picatinny rail that hunters wishing to swap scopes on a rifle might consider. The idea is to have a one-piece scope mount with a laterally grooved bar on top (the Picatinny rail) to which your scope rings are clamped. Extra scopes will have their rings already attached and will be zeroed for use on the Picatinny rail. Scope swapping is only a matter of loosening the installed rings and tightening on the replacement scope's rings.

  The idea of such a device would be for a single-gun hunter who might prefer a 3X x 9X scope for mountain hunting who could switch to a fixed power 2-1/2X or a 1-1/2X to 5X variable power scope for the flatland (shorter range) bears, moose, and caribou. The little known Picatinny rails were not popular because they added weight to a rifle. Iron Brigade Armory (Telephone: (910) 455-3834) has recently developed titanium Picatinny rails that are lighter and stronger than conventional mounts. The Picatinny can be a sensible choice.