This all goes back to my post from about a week ago, and a comment I received:

1. Why not?
   Because a shot past 150 yards in my 35plus years has only happened less than the digits on but one hand. I’ve hunted the open spaces with other rifles but the deer have been killed in the woods and thickets. I was hunting in a thicket where I could see only about 35-40yds

In so many ways, I could not agree more. You’re right, and I did not want to see your point buried in the comments. However, I underwent an epiphany a while back, and it really changed my mind regarding deer rifles. Let me explain. For context, understand that I have a “thing” about deer rifles. I spent the better part of 20 years searching for “IT.” IT was the ultimate whitetail gun. This process coincided with several other things. In the space of a few years:

• I started writing for the Outdoors
• I started reloading
• I stopped being a 1 gun deer hunter
• I found I liked working on old beat-up rifles and turning them into working venison converters
• I got the farm, and this gave me an ideal testbed.

By the time I started this weblog, I was several years into the process.  Overall, I spent about 25 years on the quest.  I’m in my Sixties now, and I am on the back side of it all.  What I have found out is:

• There is no “IT.”  There is no ultimate deer rifle.  There are only a wide variety of situations and any deer rifle is only so good as it relates to those situations.
• Deer are remarkably easy to kill. Just about anything you pick will work.
• Hunting with what you feel like makes more sense than trying to for some best rig.

In 2019, I inherited my best friend’s Ruger Model 44 in 44 Remington Magnum.  Supposedly, this was the ideal short-range deer-getter.  I really had great expectations for that rifle.  If you followed my posts about it, starting in June of that year and for the next 18 months, you’ll know that after turning in a good performance, the Model 44 succumbed to a major mechanical failure, one for which there is no good fix.  I had to retire the Model 44 last summer, and I bought another rifle in its place, a Thompson Center Compass in 7mm-08.  The two rifles were about as different as night and day, but there was a reason for picking that rifle, and it is the process of getting that rifle rigged for deer season that I had my epiphany.

The Epiphany

Because of my fascination for deer rifles, I have had various projects in the oven for every deer season since before I started this weblog.  My approach has been to take one of the various venues at the farm and try to find the best rifle for hunting there.  Conversely, I have had some really nice rifles fall into my lap, and I have tried them out at various ranges and conditions and noted how they worked. 

The biggest factor in fitting a rifle to a given venue has been range. The greatest determinant of that is surrounding cover, and that goes along with whether an elevated treestand is involved.  When I was younger, I also did a lot more still hunting. However, age has taken its toll. I do a lot less ground-pounding than I did.

Given all that, I tended to take the rifles with the shortest effective ranges and relegate them to deep woods, elevated stands, and various forms of ground schlepping.  I generally reserved the higher-powered rifles for open venues. 

So, Shaman.  Why did you replace a 44 Mag semi-auto carbine with a  7mm-08 bolt gun?

That’s a very good question.  Here’s how I looked at it:

1.  7mm08 Rem had been on my wishlist for over a decade and gradually percolated to the top.
2. I felt I needed to put another rifle in the inventory and decided that, due to cost and availability, it was easier and cheaper to buy a TC Compass at a rock-bottom price and be assured that I could make a decent inside-100yard deer rifle out of it on short notice. I could work on stretching out its range later.
3. I remembered what I had said at various times about 30-06: “If you like what a 30-06 does on a deer at 100 yards, you’ll love what it does inside 20 yards.”

Indeed, I started out on this quest with a Remington 742 in 30-06 I bought in 1982, firing 180 grainers from my bow stands.  Yikes!  Do you want to talk devastation?  In fact, this kind of short-range performance sort of spoiled me.  Part of my long-standing distaste for 30-30 probably comes from trying to compare it to the carnage I wrought with the 742 early in my career– this and the fact that my hunting career stretches back to the other side of the Ohio where I hunted several seasons with a 12 GA and slugs. At short range, from the ground or a stand, there is nothing better.

Last season, I took the 7mm-08 out and shot a doe at 120 yards. It was as though I nailed it to the ground.  As I was mulling over that experience it came to me:  I had gotten so much into the habit of taking shorter-range rifles out to the stands, that I had completely forgotten that higher-powered rifles do even better jobs at close range. There really is no reason not to take the more powerful rifle out unless you are doing it for other reasons.

Again, let me say that anyone who is happy with a 30-30 WIN lever gun is not wrong.

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