Dad’s Rifle – A Family Heirloom

By Bob Lane

In many hunting families, guns are handed down from generation to generation. When a family member no longer desires to, is unable to hunt, or is deceased, the rifles, pistols, and shotguns are often passed on to the hunting offspring or grandchildren of the former hunter. The sentimental value and memories attached to the firearms often far outweigh the monetary value of the guns themselves.

My earliest hunting experiences consisted of tagging along with my father when I was around 5 years old. I’d sneak slowly behind him, emulating his stopping and scanning, until we got to an old stump that he liked to sit on at the edge of a swale that bordered Grant Brook. That jumbo sized base had once held what must have been a magnificent Hemlock tree. It had been harvested by the local paper company long before I had been thought of, perhaps before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, fourteen years prior to my appearance in the little town of Millinocket, Maine.

There was room on that old stump for three men and a boy, and once we got to it we’d sit on there until dark, watching the thickets that bordered the swamp. Dad would lay his old 8 MM Mauser across his knees, and I’d look on intently, looking forward to the fireworks the that was a sure bet when that “Big Old Baster” of a buck that Dad had been talking about, came huffing up from the swamp.

That Mauser was a bogtrotter’s dream. It was light enough to be carried all day through blow downs, thickets, swamps and every other Hell hole the Maine woods could throw up, and Dad hunted them all with that rifle in hand. Whenever I laid eyes on it, I pictured him prowling the perimeter of some swamp, or sitting in a stand of hardwoods as the sun rose and back-lit his breath on a blistering cold morning in November, while he “waited ‘em out” as he liked to say.

Dad shot a lot of deer with that old rifle. A lot more than I’ll ever shoot, and probably more than most people will ever see. He had it outfitted with a receiver sight that he removed the aperture from. It had the original, famed, German Mauser action. The stock had a very thin forearm, a low comb, and a slight cheek piece. In his hands it was a tack driver. I remember him shooting a huge buck one early fall morning with that rifle when I was just a kid. We were sneaking along the edge of the West Branch of the Penobscot River through an old burn when he turned to me and said “Don’t’ move”. I froze and watched as he pulled up, fitted the stock to his cheek, closed one eye, and settled in, taking his time for the shot as he was want to do. The scene was majestic. The newly risen sun cast a purple hue over Mt. Katahdin and softly illuminated the conifers and hardwoods that stretched from the cedar and alder lined edge of the river, to the base of the eminent peak.

Dad squeezed the trigger, and the Mauser roared, followed by the sound of slamming steel as he worked the bolt to drive another round into the chamber with the rifle still at his cheek. All was quiet again while he looked up over the barrel. He turned to me and said “Let’s go” I never saw that deer and didn’t believe he had either, until we got to it, dead in its tracks, 256 paces away.

Over the years the barrel on that rifle began to wear and the bullets were tumbling in flight. Dad finally retired it and returned it to his uncle Henry, who was the actual owner of it. He replaced that beloved gun with the first new firearm he had ever owned, a Model 100, 308 Winchester semi-automatic. Dad went on to kill many a lot more deer over the next 35 years, with that .308, enjoying many more hunts and several trips to Ungava Bay to hunt Caribou. It soon became as much a part of him as had the old Mauser.

My father bought me my first rifle in 1967, a Model 70, 270 Winchester. I became attached to that .270 in much the same way he bonded with his. I shot my first deer in 1968 with it. Over the last forty years I’ve killed moose, deer, coyotes, and caribou, and have taken the heads off more than a few partridge using that treasured piece. I’ve maintained it meticulously as Dad taught me to do. Despite a couple of hard, wet Alaskan hunts, and a few Maine snowstorms that froze the bolt action, it still looks close to new, shoots a quarter sized group at 200 yards, and probably tighter in the hands of real marksman. I would no sooner part with that rifle than I would my right arm.

As I got older, I preferred to hunt solo. I would leave home long before daylight, my rucksack filled with food, matches, a flashlight and a good hank of dragging rope, just in case. As with Dad, I didn’t care whether it rained, shined, or snowed. The colder and grayer it was, the better I liked it. Even in their forlorn state of leafless trees, the fall woods are always beautiful to me. On those days my rifle and I were one with nature. Lunch time in late November, a ritual that Dad and I shared early on, consisted of hot tea boiled in a coffee can with a coat hanger for a handle, and a steak fried in a cast iron skillet over an open fire, my Model 70 laying handsomely across a log, always within arms reach.

There’s a sense of independence and spirit that comes from
being in the wilds with a favorite rifle, hunting for game in minimalist style, and completely on one’s own in nature. It goes back to our ancestors who hunted for their food with clubs and spears. They pitted themselves against the land and the elements with nothing more than their skill and ingenuity.

Some hunters experience a spiritual connection to the wilds and the game they pursue. We’ve all read of the spirituality of American Indians around hunting, and their respect for the animals they killed for food. Some of them believed that game would present itself to the hunter, and he would be successful if he conducted him self magnanimously in his affairs prior to the hunt. Upon killing an animal the hunter would thank it, and the whatever deity was in charge at the time.

In the last two hundred years hunting has evolved in stages from being a means to obtain food, to socially recognized sport, although today that acceptance is questionable at best in some circles. Hunting allows us to recreate and simplify ourselves, albeit briefly, to a more primordial state, and escape from an unbearable society that provides us with far more than we need in terms of creature comforts, and endless gadgets that fulfill nothing more than chic status quo.

In today’s hollow culture we can watch countless pieces of televised refuse, engage in text messaging and multiple social networking websites where people can broadcast their idiocy to the world. We can talk on a cell phone and simultaneously gaze upon the screen of automotive GPS systems as we careen down modern roads, barely cognizant of, and often caring less, about the several tons of lethal machinery being driven at irresponsible speeds. All this for the sake of a conversation and a diversion, that are secondary at best, to the responsibility at hand, and more often than not, as useless as teats on a sneaker.

Hunting equipment and methods have seen great change over the years as well, complete with loads of accessories that are of the same questionable practicality of the above mentioned junk, that for the most part, isn’t worth the power to blow it to Hell. Hunters in particular are bombarded with an inordinate amount of gadgets, and new, must have rifles in a variety of new calibers reminiscent of the Wildcat era. Self styled experts pontificate the need to have one for each species of game that is to be hunted.

I’ve always been able to hunt with only one firearm at a time, and try as I might, I just bring one of those new, purple, multi holed stock, laser sighted, short magnums up to my left shoulder, and simultaneously hoist my Model 70 up to my right, take aim and fire. So I’ve just had to settle on one rifle that would do it all, much like Dad did with his beloved Mauser and the Model 100.

Dad’s hunting days are over now due to the onset of Alzheimer’s. He still talks about his days in the Maine woods The other day he told me that he’d been seeing saw a lot of deer tracks “Up on the edge of the river”. I told him that I knew the spot and he answered in his usual style, “We’ll sneak in there some morning and you might get a crack at that big buck that’s got ‘er all tore up near the big bog”. I told him “We’d “hit ‘er”, at the first snow.

I recently inherited Dad’s guns. It is a small but practical collection, his Model 100, .308, and a .22 revolver that he carried into the woods with him year round. I shot the Hell out of that pistol as a kid, and I made my first kill with it when I was nine years old. Dad pointed out a rabbit sitting on a log while we were deer hunting one cold, dark November day, and asked me if I wanted to shoot it. He handed the revolver over to me and I took my first, of what was to become a long string of wild game in the following years. I carried that cottontail all day until we got back to the car. I think he was as excited as I was. In later years that handgun was part of my trapping wangan. I will always have a special affinity with that pistol.

There is also a .22 magnum and .410 over and under that I shot my first partridge with, and an old 12 gauge Remington Wingmaster in mint condition.

The .308 needed some work. It hadn’t been fired or cleaned in awhile, and the gas port, which is no longer made, and scarcer than a virgin, was gone. Fortunately a gunsmith friend of mine had one and I was in business. Dad had a Bushnell scope on the rifle. That particular scope model is longer in production as well. It has a luminescent red dot in the crosshairs that comes on with the flip of a switch which he swore by.

I hunted with that rifle all fall. It felt strange out in the autumn woods not toting my .270. However, carrying that .308 made it seemed like Dad was there with me, just like in the old days when we hunted together. I hoped some of his prowess as the marksman and the great hunter he was, would rub off on me.

In November I shot a nice 10 point buck with that rifle. The animal presented itself broadside to me. I instinctively pulled up in the same deliberate manner that Dad did when I watched him shoot that big buck many years ago one morning, on the West Branch of the Penobscot River. I took my time and settled in for the shot, just like he had taught me when I was coming up as a kid. I can still hear him telling me “If that rifle is dead on and you’ve got brown in the crosshairs, you’ve got him.” He’s been right every year.

This year’s deer was of my best bucks, certainly one that Dad would have been proud to take, like many of the trophies that he’s shot in his day. I recently hung a framed photo of it, complete with me and his rifle, on the wall of his room at the nursing home where he now resides. When he saw the photo he said “That’s a good one.” When I said “I shot it with your rifle”, he smiled.

It was good year for us both. Dad still has the capacity to appreciate the things he loves, and I’m happy to still be a part of them, albeit as limited as they may be, compared to our days in the woods together, year ago.

The .308 has been meticulously cleaned, oiled and put back in the hard case that Dad bought for it many years ago. I’ll hunt with it again next fall, at the end of the season I’ll clean, polish and put it away with special reverence out of respect for its real owner. That Winchester, which will always be “Dad’s rifle, is now as much a part of me as he is.