Day 4 - Monday
After an unsuccessful morning the highlight of the day --- and the whole trip --- is deer hunting in the afternoon. We park near the private land during late lunch. I see something move under a bush. A bird hopping around? Through binocs --- I see antlers! I can see the head of the deer but not the whole animal. We formulate a plan whereby I circle around to approach the buck with a better shooting lane. Wind is fierce and perpendicular to my approach. Somehow the buck senses me, and bounds off. I head in the general direction deciding to plant myself. I find a good overlook on a draw along a deer trail up the slope, with several shooting lanes. I wait for a long time.

Toby walks through the property north of my position. Pretty soon he's scared up some does and a buck--- my buck. He rockets past the draw to the south end of the property. I'm sitting there and three does come out and start heading right up the deer trail I'm sititng next to. They're heading at full tilt right at me. I can hear the pounding of their hooves, closing the distance, they're coming right at me! Just as thoughts of being trampled by does flickers across my brain, they stop, maybe 10 yards away. I'm stock still, watching. They're looking, not sure if they see me. They move a little behind the tiny tree between us. Minutes pass, finally they decide to move a different direction and walk away.

After a time I decide to head to a different spot. I find a new area to sit, behind a rock, lots of good shooting lanes, but not much time left in the day. I take a gamble and head back to the field, near where I first spotted my buck. I slowly stalk my way through the pinions, very carefully looking, moving slow, trying to be as quiet as possible. Finally I'm at the edge of the trees and... holy crap, there's the buck, out in the field, grazing. He hears something in my direction as I crush a twig despite my careful footsteps, but he is unconcerned. The adrenaline pumps, heartbeat races. Pounding. Toby radios he is heading back, shooting time is nearly over. I radio back, shaky voice and hands, “hold your position” (Joe and Toby no doubt chuckling at me vibrating with buck fever). I scoot up to a better spot. Hand on a cactus. Butt on a cactus. Forget the pain. Buck's right there, get closer!

Can't shoot prone, too much of a slope in the ground, have to do a sitting shot. Take aim, crosshairs zipping around like a crazed moth near a porch light. Deep breaths, try to be calm. Point of aim is a little better, but the deer keeps moving away, sun keeps dropping, need to hurry this up. Close enough. I squeeze. >boom< >riinngggggggg< in my ear. Miss! Miss?? The milliseconds that follow tick by like minutes a decision teeters in my mind... and falls on the side of stupid. I take another shot while the animal is running. Then another.

Defeat. Humiliation. Three misses, nowhere close. What was I thinking? I feel like an idiot. I'm pissed now. Toby arrives, I have to admit to missing and being a fool. As I'm looking for any sign of a hit, Toby yells “look!” I'm clueless. “LOOK!” Finally I look left... at a half dozen does bounding at full trot right near me, they jump the fence. Trailed by a really big four point buck. We inspect the area to be sure I didn't make any hits, and we head home.

Amy has left a voicemail for me to let me know she went to the doctor --- the baby is ok, heartbeat ok, everything looks great. That puts it all in perspective. I meet some friends in town. By the time I have delicious filet mignon and a margarita in me, I feel a lot less angry about missing and taking impossible shots. The real kicker is the distance wasn't that great, only a hundred yards or so. It looked farther. I'm no less frustrated, just not in a terrible mood and not beating myself up about it quite so much.

When you goof up like this, you get snapped awake and there's a certain clarity and humility. I don't feel good about this outcome. I don't feel proud about rushing the shot, I know I need to learn to calm the adrenaline. Focus on the task, focus on the point of aim, forget the significance of the moment. I have to practice field positions. No shots at running animals. There's just no reason and little chance of success.

I have a LOT of work to do in the off season.

Day 1 - Friday
I should preface all this to say that my wife and I are expecting! The first time around things didn't go well so we're both fighting constant worry this time around. Long story short, a few questionable checkups were followed by an “everything ok.”

Anyways, on to hunting. I was pretty late getting into Buena Vista as I'd gone to the range to try and zero in the Swedish Mauser. Well, that was just silly of me. I rolled into town noticing the paucity of fauna compared to last year. After finding no one home at the cabins, I figured I'd explore a little. Before long I spotted the gang by the side of the road... staring at a small elk herd. Just a bit farther was a field with maybe a dozen realy nice bucks. All of them on private land. The weather is even warmer than last year. Downright balmy.

Day 2 - Saturday
Opening day. Early morning, coffee, muted and abbreviated conversation, packing up, dressing in orange, heading out in the dark. We hike out to a southern point and plant ourselves, admiring the shooting stars, satellites and the pinpricks of light from distant suns dusted across the heavens. No noise except the occasional car, no bugles. The light slowly rises over the peaks to the east, light illuminating hundreds of elk-shaped bushes but not a single bush-shaped elk. This isn't like last year. No antelope. No deer. Nothing out there. Nothing. We spent time searching for deer in a couple of our usual spots but turn up not a single thing. Late that afternoon, Joe takes a shot. We hear it across the property on which we're permitted to hunt and hustle over to find he's made a very rare miss.

Day 3 - Sunday
Same drill in the morning. Not a single herd spotted anywhere except the small elk herd on private land. Rumors drift our way claiming the property owner is feeding the elk. Later on we hear she is filming hunters that stop to look, and even chasing after them in her car, filming. Just rumors or true, I don't know. What I do know is that feeding elk sounds like a favor but if you learn more about wildlife conservation you realize it isn't. We spend more time looking for deer and we're unable to locate any bucks. Someone takes a buck out of the area we hunt elk. Rare occurrence.

Another picture of the mountains from Heckendorf State Wildlife Area while hunting. Note the total lack of elk in this picture. Which is why I had time to take the picture in the first place...

Phase 1

As much as I love the sporterized M1917 US Enfield I'm borrowing, it is a bit heavy to heft around in the woods looking for deer.

Enter my 102 year old Carl Gustafs Swedish Mauser which I bought a number of years ago. Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I had a gunsmith check it out long ago.

Little did I know then that these guns are considered by many to be the finest of the military Mauser rifles due to wonderful craftsmanship and excellent accuracy both with the rifle and the round.

Mine is not numbers matching, has a beat stock, chopped barrel, and sporterized bolt handle so I have no qualms about sporterizing it.

Recoil is light, ballistics are excellent to 200 yards and the action on mine works far more smoothly than any rifle I've yet encountered, new or old. I really dig this gun. I've shot it more than a few times, only to learn that I don't get along with iron sights.

So how do you turn an old, non-numbers-matching, partly sporterized military surplus rifle into a proper deer gun?

Shorten it, stock it, scope it, sling it.

Shorten it

Normally you'd have to have the long barrel cut down to a more manageable size and then have it crowned. This is work for a gunsmith. Before I got it, someone had already chopped the 29" barrel to a more sporting 22". So basically I get to skip this step making it possible to try to finish the project in a couple weeks.

Stock it

I left the stock as-is for deer season. The gun seemed to shoot relatively consistently and it looked cool with the full stock, kind of like a Mannlicher-Schönauer sporter.

Scope it

Since I can't aim worth a darn using iron sights, a scope was a must. Although the bolt handle has been skillfully modified to accommodate a standard scope, there's no time to have a gunsmith to install the mount.

Mount

Instead I bought a B-Square scout mount from Midway USA that puts the scope above the rear sight leaf, pretty far forward. This will turn the rifle into a poor imitation of Cooper's Scout Rifle concept using a forward mounted scope of low power (around 2x)




I'm extremely unhappy with the B-Square mount. The mounting screws were too short, and an odd size, so I had to use longer 4-40 screws and fabricate an aluminum plate of 1/16" thickness to replace the original. I carefully fit this plate to eliminate side play in the sight leaf but had to use sheets of brass to shim it further.

The supplied rings were crap, didn't fit, and stripped out. Real weaver rings with steel in the right places fixed that.

Finally, the scope sits pretty high.

Scout Scope

With a scout mount, you need a scout scope -- or pistol scope. A scope with intermediate eye relief (IER). Normal rifle scopes have about 3-5" of eye relief whereas a scout mount on the Swede calls for something like 12-17". Burris and Leupold make purpose-built scout scopes for rifles, however they are too rich for my blood.

More up my alley is the Weaver Classic 2X28 pistol scope in gloss black I have on the way. The specs suggest the eye relief should work and field of view at 100 yards is reasonable. The idea is to acquire the target with both eyes open, the scope allowing for enhanced targeting. Supposedly this results in quicker aiming.



The scope in the picture is an old Redfield Bear Cub 4X to illustrate what the rifle will look like eventually.

Sling it

I had a military sling on the rifle but opted for an inexpensive leather sporting sling that will be a little more comfortable for carrying but not heavy or bulky like the thick padded slings that cost more. Post season, after cutting down the stock, I'll install a swivel stud up front and continue to use the original rear swivel.

Results

Cost so far is $20 for rings, $50 for the scope mount, $130 for the scope and $20 for the sling.

Only problem was, I was sitting on pins and needles hoping the scope would arrive on Thursday as promised. Thankfully it did. I hit the range the next morning and here's what happened.

The M1917 .300 Win Mag was sighted in pretty well (the three holes above the bullseye) printing a 2" max spread at 100 yards, but the Swede (holes are highlighted) was shooting rather erratically during sight in. By the time I shot the last 4 rounds, the barrel was pretty hot and the group was way larger than I felt comfortable with: 3.75" max spread. Ouch. So the Mauser didn't make this year's hunt.

For phase two, I'm chopping the forearm, floating the barrel, and solidifying the scope mount. This will probably help, but the barrel is pretty worn out.

If it still won't shoot, then phase three involves a Bold trigger with side safety, standard scope mount, a new 6.5x55SE A&B barrel I bought years ago, and a nice stock.

Update - 5/22/09

Here's an update on the Swede as of 5/22/09. I put some work into it several months ago after the hunting season.



To address the erratic grouping, I focused on the play in the scope mount due to the rear leaf. Using some brass shim material, I wedged the rear leaf in place. The scope is now completely solid with zero play side to side.

I pulled off the non-matching, beat up stock and chopped down the forearm and installed a swivel stud, shaped the end of it to a nice contour, and installed a proper sporting sling. I also increased the clearance around the barrel in case that was a problem.

Update - 8/18/2010

Between the scope mount shimming and barrel floating, I hoped the gun would shoot true but a trip to the range told a different story. Grouping was once again fairly erratic.

Shooting on a bench makes it tough to narrow down the problem definitively. So I purchased a shooting rest and see if that helps me narrow down the cause.

I have my primary rifle at Colorado School of Trades right now getting some upgrades and that's about all I can afford to get done this season so the Swede will have to wait it out once again.