Of Thutty Thutties and Shower Curtains

So with the deal in the bag with the 7mm-08, I headed down to the farm to get PLAN B going, namely the 30-30’s.

Marlin 336 in 30-30 WIN

I’ve got two. One is the Marlin 336 that I’ve had since 2002. Even though I stopped hunting with it, I’ve kept shooting it and developing loads for it. What can I say? It is still a fun gun. The other is a Savage 340 that I picked up a few years ago with the idea of giving it to the Mooselette when she is old enough to hunt deer.

I set off Saturday AM for the farm loaded with both rifles and 7 boxes of ammo. Somewhere in all that, I was going to find a working deer load.

The three best candidates:

150 gr Hornady RN over LVR — probably my first choice for the 336
160 gr Hornady FTX over LVR — probably #2

170 gr Hornady RN over H4895 — #1 choice for the Savage 340

The rest were various combinations of these bullets and powders. After 2 hours of shooting, I found an old favorite was still shooting better than any other: Winchester 150 Grain PowerPoint over LeverEvolution. I’d tried this mix several years ago. The Winchesters out-performed even the Hornady FTX for accuracy in my Marlin 336. Now were I shooting at distances longer than 100 yards, that might be a different story. However, I walked away with a solid 2 inch group and 2380 fps. showing on the chronograph– not stellar, but workable.

Winchester Bullets 30-30 Winchester (308 Diameter) 150 grain

The Savage 340 is still a bit of a cypher. 150 grain bullets don’t group well. 170 grain Hornadys do, but at velocities way below what I was hoping for. I’ll keep that rifle on the rack this season and give it some serious work next summer or so. I’ll figure out a load for it before Mooselette comes online.

. . . Meanwhile, I got word that the TC Compass shipped from the pawnshop. That was good news.

Skirts and Shower Curtains

I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday putting up skirts on the treestands and blinds. The newest version that I’m working with is more like a shower curtain.

I get them from SportsmansGuide.com when they’re on sale (they’re not right now and they’re not even in stock, but they will be)

I’ve tried various types of skirts over the years. These solve a bunch of issues. They are opaque. Deer can see through the burlap ones, especially if you are backlit. Ditto for the die-cut blinds. However, the latter were unsuitable because they hardly lasted a season.

What I installed at Hollywood is a fair compromise. I use burlap, and back it with 3 foot-wide landscape fabric. It is sturdy, cheap, and it opaque.

zOdwz_MMxTOWn-iIOUmbdhkbib8haidiwmEGcASJ12UpX92IB-001

This will be the fourth season for this blind. The burlap is holding up really well, but I only leave it up for October and November.

I talked to the Hay Dude. He got everything mowed on Friday and is going to have it all baled by midweek. He mentioned a line of scrapes already beginning to form along Vine Street on either side of The Hand. I went out and located both. The one has a nice little licking branch over it. I put up a camera just before I left for town. We will see who has been working it. In between Saturday and Sunday I saw action.

I pulled the camera from the salt lick near Campground as I was putting up the skirt on the stand. The eye candy was remarkably good for this late in the season– September had about the same cast of characters as August with little diminishment in overall activity. It is late in the season for them to be hitting the salt.

This post has already been read 257 times!