Category: Optics and Scopes

Turkey Time!

Let me be perfectly clear: I am not an expert turkey hunter! No way am I going to give you calling tips or turkey hunting tips. I bumble along, and fortunately we have a lot of turkeys to hunt these days.

Strutting Turkey in the field
With the head tucked down this is a normal presentation when a gobbler is strutting, but this is a poor shot; better to wait a few seconds until the head and neck are extended!

So, important admissions made, I’m pretty good at shooting turkeys if and when I get a chance. Over the years—and I can go back about 50 years—I’ve hunted all the varieties, and I’ve hunted turkeys in a lot of places. My opinions have shifted over time, and may shift again. In part this is because, as turkey hunting has exploded, our turkey guns and turkey loads keep getting better.

Today I am convinced of three things: To anchor turkeys consistently you need good chokes, you need good shells, and sights are a really great idea.
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Scope Mounting

First of all, please note that I didn’t use the title “scope mounting made easy.” I don’t find this chore easy! It is, however, essential to get it right.

Rifle accuracy is a slippery concept; with an unfamiliar or new rifle, you don’t really know what kinds of groupings are possible, or what loads will work best to get the grouping you want. On the other hand, when accuracy is noticeably worse than expected or if a rifle inexplicably shifts zero or won’t come into zero, troubleshooting becomes a process of elimination. A bad scope isn’t impossible, nor is uneven bedding, nor a bad barrel, but the first thing I check are the scope mounts, and they are often the culprit.

Detachable mounts have come a long way in recent years. This is a Leupold detachable, allowing me to have both an Aimpoint red-dot sight and a scope pre-zeroed for this .375. Detachables are usually more complex, and assembly must be correct to attain repeatability.

I am mechanically challenged. Changing a tire taxes my abilities, and mounting a scope approaches my limits. I hate messing with all those tiny little screws; I admit, I tend to break screws and strip screwheads. Although these little mistakes keep my local gunsmith in business, I do manage to do it myself most of the time.

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Outfit Yourself for Deer Hunting Season

It’s late autumn now, so your deer season might be over. My deer hunting is coming up soon—next week I’m going to the thick brush of Quebec’s Anticosti Island, a place I’ve long wanted to see. Then, after Thanksgiving, comes “my” deer hunt, the 12-day rifle season on my Kansas farm. I decided which rifle to use in Anticosti a long time ago, but I’m still pondering exactly what I’m going to use in Kansas.

This is a rare luxury. I love my job, but I have to produce what my editors want. This often means that I have an obligation to use a particular new rifle or cartridge on a hunt instead of one of my old favorites. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s fun to try out some of the new whiz-bangs. On the other hand, there’s a down side: constantly switching rifles, cartridges, and optics is probably not a great key to hunting success! Never forget the old adage “beware the one-gun man.”

Hunting with 7x57 cartridge
A Kansas buck taken with a custom Todd Ramirez 7×57. For medium-range work the 7×57 is Boddington’s all-time favorite cartridge.

I’m not complaining, mind you—I know I’m fortunate. I get to spend a lot of time at the range and in the field for a living. All that time has shown me that choosing a sound deer rifle and sticking with it critical, perhaps especially so for the multitude of hunters who are limited in both practice time and days afield!

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Matching the Scope to the Rifle

A couple of weeks ago I was at the range and I felt really silly. I was shooting a Marlin lever-action “guide gun”—very tricked up, but still a .45-70, and I had a big variable scope on it, 30mm tube with large objective. Before you judge, I had a reason for doing this: the rifle seemed to be accurate, so I put a powerful variable on it and turned it all the way up so I could see how well it grouped. I would never hunt with that much glass on such a rifle. Range work done, I took the big scope off, mounted an Aimpoint red-dot sight, and took it pig hunting.

 

Photo Courtesy of Craig Boddington
This Marlin “guide gun” has a very good ghost ring aperture sight, but as middle age advances all open sights are getting harder to see. As an alternative I mounted an Aimpoint red-dot sight, a truly excellent type of sight for shots out to perhaps 150 yards.

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Extending Your Range Limits in Practice and in the Field

Range Limits: Longer Than Ever, But Still Not Unlimited
(Craig Boddington)

 

In recent years I’ve done more long-range shooting than ever before. Ringing steel with relative ease at a thousand yards is not only fun, but also a huge confidence builder.

Years ago I did a lot of prairie dog shooting, which provides a fantastic opportunity for field practice. The target is tiny, and it doesn’t take much wind to blow the bullet clear off the mound, let alone off the varmint. And since prairie dog country is rarely calm, this is a great way to learn to read wind. If you can consistently hit prairie dogs at a couple hundred yards, big-game animals will pose little challenge at considerably longer distances.

Wyoming prairie dogJPG
In years gone by Boddington did a lot of prairie dog shooting. The target is small and the high plains are usually windy; he rates shooting small varmints in open country as some of the very best training for field shooting at distance.

 

I view range practice similarly. In a range setting, if you can ring steel consistently at 800, 900, or 1000 yards you will gain a lot of invaluable confidence in yourself and your equipment. Shooting targets at extreme range prepares you for field shooting at longer ranges, and shooting at actual distances is the only way to accomplish this. “Extending your range envelope” is a phrase I like. However, I don’t believe ringing steel at long range enables one to ethically shoot at game at similar distances.

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