Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 761
I went to the range yesterday late morning. Great, nobody was there.
I began walking out to set up my target at 300 yards, just for the exercise. I could have driven out or used the quad provided by the range, which goes out to 1,000 yards, but I chose to walk.
Typically, I fire three shots, walk back and forth, fire three more, check my target, make four trips, fire a dozen shots and am done.
That is 7,200 feet or 1.3 miles half going up a light grade. I walk fast, trot and go over two big target backstop berms at 100 then 200 yards.
I never got to shoot yesterday. The sun was high, and everywhere in grass there were hundreds of shiny reflections. I got my exercise squatting and bending over picking up maybe 500 once fired premium FC 308 brass. There was a law enforcement training shoot that morning.
At 77 years of age, like most of you I began buying, selling, trading rifles in my mid-teens. In over 60 years of doing that, I have had over 50 center fire long guns. Usually in odd esoteric or traditional calibers; 7x57’s, 270’s 6.5x55 Swede, several 35 Whelen's, 257 Roberts, 250 Savage, two 338 Win mags, the list goes on.
Along the way I have had five 308s more than any other chambering. I regret selling the Savage 99 featherweight sometimes, but did it kick. For some yeas i had a National Match M1A. Now I have a sub-MOA Sako 75 Finnlight in 308. It has occurred to me that I have never needed any other caliber for all my life’s big game hunting. Granted I just love to stalk. Crawl like a lion in the tall grass and slither like a snake.
Hunting is stalking for me. I have double knee Car-hart field pants for a reason.
About 12 years ago I met an old hunter who has had only one rifle for all his big game hunting. A birch stocked Remington model 788 in 308. Mounted on it was an El Paso, Weaver fixed 4x scope.
I called him “Mr. Rust”.
We were both hunting Inyo Deer, in Inyo County, where the mountains go over 14,000 feet, with lots of peaks in the 12,000 foot plus range.
The big horn sheep got wiped out long ago and the mule deer moved into this rocky ever so steep bouncy environment. These deer got more stocky, more solid looking like wild sheep, quite handsome.
This is eerie country, so high and dry like Peru. I love it there. So easy to feel like I am more part of the sky than the earth.
The Bristlecone pines there, are the oldest life form on earth, over 5000 years old. They seem to have secrets. The mountain mahogany groves can be over 1,300 years old, and are where the biggest, mature bucks live.
To get here requires coming in through desert Nevada. Beaver and their dams don’t seem to fit there, but they are there. Mr. Rust lived somewhere out in that extreme dryness.
His variety of rust was not the eastern road salt rusted, rotted out car version. It was where sand and wind wears the paint off things, exposes bare shiny metal that gets a light film of rust on everything, like his 4x4 Truck, camper shell and his one-horse trailer. Even his mustang was russet reddish in color. Salty horse sweat oozes into saddle leather. His rifle had rust spots, but the bore was sweet.
Mr. Rusts’ hands, neck and face looked reddish, wrinkled and like bristle-cone pine and a perfect candidate for skin cancer.
He had a small portable corral for his horse. Of course, rusty too. He drove his horse trailer beyond a point where he showed any concern for it’s wellbeing.
He left it right by a small but ever so rocky, clean stream. He set up the mini corral, left his horse in the corral then,,,bang,, bang,,, bang, drove over the rocks and parked on a high point looking at so much more high country that it hurt your necking looking up.
The deer could see absolutely everything below. Stalks seemed like a life’s journey
I was camped a bit below Mr. Rust.
About an hour before dark, I went up to say hello. He was using some ancient cheap spotting scope. He had glassed a decent buck.
In the morning, I was perched on a promontory point and with my binoculars, I watched the “Mr. Rust goes hunting show.”
He did some glassing, then went down for his horse. Rode up to his truck and camper. He did some more glassing, then mounted up and disappeared.
About 40 minutes later he shows right out in the open on a steep mountain side, walking right alongside his horses’ neck and head, of course on the side away from the mountain where the deer were.
He is in no rush, if his horse wants to graze a bit, he lets him, but Mr. Rust is using his binoculars holding them right on the bottom his horse's neck.
At some point he passes a big bristle cone pine near some boulders. He gets his rifle out, lets his horse walk on, then uses the rock as a rest and shoots.
His horse did not even stop eating.
Mr. Rust rides his horse up some steep ground, which means nothing to a mustang. Mr. Rust disappears behind a big boulder with his horse.
Maybe a half hour later he is walking his horse down with a buck tied to the saddle.
By midafternoon Mr. Rust is gone.
The only things that showed he was ever there was some piles of horse poop where his portable corral was.
Way, way off. High up in the immense sky, I can see buzzards circling over where the gut pile was.
MR
I began walking out to set up my target at 300 yards, just for the exercise. I could have driven out or used the quad provided by the range, which goes out to 1,000 yards, but I chose to walk.
Typically, I fire three shots, walk back and forth, fire three more, check my target, make four trips, fire a dozen shots and am done.
That is 7,200 feet or 1.3 miles half going up a light grade. I walk fast, trot and go over two big target backstop berms at 100 then 200 yards.
I never got to shoot yesterday. The sun was high, and everywhere in grass there were hundreds of shiny reflections. I got my exercise squatting and bending over picking up maybe 500 once fired premium FC 308 brass. There was a law enforcement training shoot that morning.
At 77 years of age, like most of you I began buying, selling, trading rifles in my mid-teens. In over 60 years of doing that, I have had over 50 center fire long guns. Usually in odd esoteric or traditional calibers; 7x57’s, 270’s 6.5x55 Swede, several 35 Whelen's, 257 Roberts, 250 Savage, two 338 Win mags, the list goes on.
Along the way I have had five 308s more than any other chambering. I regret selling the Savage 99 featherweight sometimes, but did it kick. For some yeas i had a National Match M1A. Now I have a sub-MOA Sako 75 Finnlight in 308. It has occurred to me that I have never needed any other caliber for all my life’s big game hunting. Granted I just love to stalk. Crawl like a lion in the tall grass and slither like a snake.
Hunting is stalking for me. I have double knee Car-hart field pants for a reason.
About 12 years ago I met an old hunter who has had only one rifle for all his big game hunting. A birch stocked Remington model 788 in 308. Mounted on it was an El Paso, Weaver fixed 4x scope.
I called him “Mr. Rust”.
We were both hunting Inyo Deer, in Inyo County, where the mountains go over 14,000 feet, with lots of peaks in the 12,000 foot plus range.
The big horn sheep got wiped out long ago and the mule deer moved into this rocky ever so steep bouncy environment. These deer got more stocky, more solid looking like wild sheep, quite handsome.
This is eerie country, so high and dry like Peru. I love it there. So easy to feel like I am more part of the sky than the earth.
The Bristlecone pines there, are the oldest life form on earth, over 5000 years old. They seem to have secrets. The mountain mahogany groves can be over 1,300 years old, and are where the biggest, mature bucks live.
To get here requires coming in through desert Nevada. Beaver and their dams don’t seem to fit there, but they are there. Mr. Rust lived somewhere out in that extreme dryness.
His variety of rust was not the eastern road salt rusted, rotted out car version. It was where sand and wind wears the paint off things, exposes bare shiny metal that gets a light film of rust on everything, like his 4x4 Truck, camper shell and his one-horse trailer. Even his mustang was russet reddish in color. Salty horse sweat oozes into saddle leather. His rifle had rust spots, but the bore was sweet.
Mr. Rusts’ hands, neck and face looked reddish, wrinkled and like bristle-cone pine and a perfect candidate for skin cancer.
He had a small portable corral for his horse. Of course, rusty too. He drove his horse trailer beyond a point where he showed any concern for it’s wellbeing.
He left it right by a small but ever so rocky, clean stream. He set up the mini corral, left his horse in the corral then,,,bang,, bang,,, bang, drove over the rocks and parked on a high point looking at so much more high country that it hurt your necking looking up.
The deer could see absolutely everything below. Stalks seemed like a life’s journey
I was camped a bit below Mr. Rust.
About an hour before dark, I went up to say hello. He was using some ancient cheap spotting scope. He had glassed a decent buck.
In the morning, I was perched on a promontory point and with my binoculars, I watched the “Mr. Rust goes hunting show.”
He did some glassing, then went down for his horse. Rode up to his truck and camper. He did some more glassing, then mounted up and disappeared.
About 40 minutes later he shows right out in the open on a steep mountain side, walking right alongside his horses’ neck and head, of course on the side away from the mountain where the deer were.
He is in no rush, if his horse wants to graze a bit, he lets him, but Mr. Rust is using his binoculars holding them right on the bottom his horse's neck.
At some point he passes a big bristle cone pine near some boulders. He gets his rifle out, lets his horse walk on, then uses the rock as a rest and shoots.
His horse did not even stop eating.
Mr. Rust rides his horse up some steep ground, which means nothing to a mustang. Mr. Rust disappears behind a big boulder with his horse.
Maybe a half hour later he is walking his horse down with a buck tied to the saddle.
By midafternoon Mr. Rust is gone.
The only things that showed he was ever there was some piles of horse poop where his portable corral was.
Way, way off. High up in the immense sky, I can see buzzards circling over where the gut pile was.
MR
