Blessed

You wake up an hour before dawn to the screaming sound of your alarm clock and once again contemplate whether you actually enjoy hunting or if you’d rather just stay in your warm bed. You tell yourself you’ll just lay there for five more minutes which turn into twenty, then thirty and before you know it you are rushing around the hunting cabin stuffing a piece of toast down your throat with one hand and zipping up your hunting jacket with the other.

You step outside the door and the brisk morning air hits your face, making you long for the warmth of the fireplace you just left. With glove covered hands you load up your rifle and sling it over your shoulder, walking over to join your family and friends as they discuss hunting strategies.

Now, I don’t know about your hunting buddies, but I have been blessed to share the same faith in our savior Jesus Christ with mine. Along with the usual good-natured ribbing and the sharing of jokes, before we part ways, we always take time to pray with and for each other.

We all close our eyes and my father’s familiar voice would cut through the morning quiet, “Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time we have together. We are truly so blessed to have this opportunity and I ask that you would keep us all safe and that we would have successful hunts. In your name we pray, amen.”

We all would part ways and head off into separate directions, I would head off to my ‘sweet spot’ where I had been hunting that week and had seen some beautiful whitetail bucks. Today was my day, I was giddy with excitement and the long walk didn’t seem all that bad. I looked around me, the air was cold and refreshing as I breathed deeply and filled my lungs with it. As I walked, grasshoppers and crickets hopped out of the way and I could hear the occasional tweet of a bird or chirp of a squirrel in a tree above me.

As the sun slowly made its way into the sky the earth was enveloped in its light and warmth, I stopped in my tracks and watched as it continued to rise. Standing there in the heart of God’s creation, seeing a sight that very few people are fortunate enough to witness, I realize how blessed I truly am. For me, hunting isn’t always about harvesting a beautiful animal, although that is a major factor, sometimes it’s just about getting out of the noise of your daily life, witnessing God’s creation and just simply spending time with Him.

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

Written by,
Audrey Liddle
Hunter’s For Christ Pro Staff

Romans 8:28

Two words: buck fever.

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there.

Your hands shake, your breathing is fast, your mind is racing, and your heart feels like it is going to jump out of your throat. There he is, your dream buck standing 40 yards away from you, perfectly broadside. He came out of nowhere, you didn’t even hear him coming, you’re just lucky you looked up from carving your name in the base of a tree before he moved out of sight completely.

But was it really luck?

It was about thirty minutes before nightfall; I had been sitting in the same spot for hours and had seen absolutely nothing, I was growing more impatient by the second. ‘C’mon God, can I at least see one deer? Just something to look at?’ I was thinking to myself. This was the perfect hunting spot; I was sitting behind and to the left of a tree and could see clearly for about 70 yards all the way around me and I had seen nothing. My Marlin 30-30 lever action sat across my lap, and I had half-way given up so I began quietly putting my gear back into my hunting backpack. I grabbed my knife and started to carve my name in the base of the tree, A-U-D-R-

Wait, was that a branch that cracked?

I looked up and there he stood. He held up the huge mass of antlers on top of his head proudly with his thick, strong neck. I slowly grabbed my rifle and braced up against the tree.

Dang it, he saw me.

He stomped his front foot, snorted loudly, and trotted off. My stomach dropped to the ground, he was gone. That was by far the most amazing animal I had ever seen and he got away. I followed him through the scope of my rifle as he trotted off, I was hopeful that maybe he would stop and I could get a shot at him. To my utter amazement, he circled around and came back. The huge buck stopped about 50 yards off and turned his head to look at me again.

It was probably only a matter of seconds, but it felt like hours to me. I was shaking so bad that I could hardly see out of my scope. I was screaming at myself, THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE! DON’T MESS THIS UP! Which I’m sure was only adding to the pressure that I felt and making me shake even more. He stomped his foot, he was getting ready to leave and I knew that was going to be the last time I would ever see him.

“God help me get ahold myself.” I whispered out loud and my hands stopped shaking, my breathing steadied, and my mind cleared. I aimed at his vitals and squeezed off the trigger.

That was one of those moments where anything could have changed the outcome. I could have shrugged off the sound of that branch cracking as a squirrel or just my imagination, I could have moved too quickly scared him off for good, or I could have quit hunting and left minutes before he even came. So was it really luck?

I have a very hard time attributing my success to good luck; doesn’t it say in God’s word that in all things God works for the good of those who love him?

In hunting, just like in life, we cannot give up. Because when nothing seems like it is going right, something good is just about to come around the corner. In my case, it was a 200 pound, 10-point whitetail buck that is now hanging above my fireplace.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

Written by,
Audrey Liddle
Hunter’s For Christ Pro-Staff

The Cold Trail

What happens when the trail goes cold? This year on a hunt I had an opportunity to shoot at a buck at 45 yards, so I took the shot. I took the shoot, because I had put in a lot of practice before hand, and I am very comfortable and confident shooting at this range. Last year I shot a nice buck at 56 yards and it was a perfect heart shot. So shooting at this range is no problem for me. “So what happen this time?” “What went wrong?”

I was hunting Black Tail deer in the thick timbers of California in the A Zone. I was walking on a game trail because in California we hunt in the summer, and all of the leaves around me were dry and made a lot of noise if stepped on. I took my usual course of action as I began my hunt. I would walk ten yards, stop, look, listen, and then repeat.

It was about a quarter mile into my hunt when I heard a subtle crackling noise down the hill. It is at this point when all hunters have to decide what they’re going to do. Should they wait to see what’s making that noise or keep moving forward? What could it be? Could it be a pesky squirrel, a bird, or is it that trophy buck you’ve been dreaming about? There is only one way to find out so I sat down and waited.

At this point in my hunt I didn’t have anywhere to hide so I sat with my back against a tree. As the sound got closer and louder it didn’t take long for me to realize that it wasn’t a squirrel. After about thirty minutes of waiting, it appeared. It was a huge 3×3 buck with four-inch eye guards. It was just out of reach and in the timbers. I couldn’t move at all without alarming the deer so I continued to patiently wait. This massive buck was coming directly toward me when out of nowhere he turned and started walking to the left and away from me. It was so thick where I was that I didn’t have many options nor did I have any good shooting lanes to shoot from. The Buck stopped behind a shrub and started scraping the backside of it. When it stopped, I had just enough time to range find it at forty-five yards. I knew that if he continued in the same direction he had been going I would be unable to take another shot if I didn’t take it now. There was an opening in the shrub that looked good enough to slip an arrow through so I pulled back my Elite Z28, took a breath, put my pin right behind the front shoulder and slowly pulled my release. SMACK!!! I drilled it. The Buck jumped up in the air, mule kicked both back legs then ran off. I saw that the hit was a little high but I was confident that it was a lethal shot. Now, more waiting began. I waited for about an hour then went to see the area of impact. I didn’t see anything, no blood, no arrow, nothing. Immediately all of my confidence came crashing down. When I didn’t see any blood my next thought was to go to the point where I saw the buck disappear into the brush. Again, I found nothing. There was not a single sign that I even hit this deer.

After walking up and down the steep ravine, through the brush and in poison oak, I still didn’t see any signs. After an hour or so of looking for this deer I finally saw four six-inch diameter pools of blood. The blood was thick and bright red. My first thought was that I shot the heart. I realized, however, that there was no way that was possible because the wound I saw was too high to be a heart shot. However, my find of blood helped me believe and hope that the buck was nearby. Two hours later I still had nothing. There wasn’t any blood to trail. In fact, the trail went cold. I didn’t know what else to do so I called it quits. I went home, ate some lunch, grabbed my hunting dog and went back out. After searching for several more hours I still came up empty. Even my dog wasn’t catching a scent.

The next day I thought I would go back one more time to see if maybe, given that it had been over 90 degrees outside, I would at the least smell something that would help me find him. I went back to the point of impact to see if I could find my arrow, believing that if I could find my arrow I would know a lot more. “Would there be blood on the arrow, meat, bubbles from lungs, or anything at all?” After just five minutes of searching, I found my arrow. It was between the impact zone and the last place I saw the deer run through the brush. Somehow I had missed it during my search. There it was, my arrow, soaked in blood. Just when I was about to give up, I had found hope again.

Unfortunately, after two days of looking, I still had no deer. The question I kept asking myself was, “Could this deer have survived my shot?” I spoke to several of my hunting friends about what had happened and showed them my arrow and pictures of the blood. And the answer I kept getting, based on these two pieces of evidence, was that the deer had to be dead somewhere. “So why couldn’t I find it?”

The reality of hunting is that, even with practice and experience, you don’t always make the best shot. Whether it is your nerves getting to you, buck fever, or in my case a branch that gets in the way, or you just make a bad shot, sometimes it happens. At the end of the day all you can do is practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more. As a hunter our goal, when getting ready to take a shot at a buck, should always be to take an ethical shot.

A few weeks after my hunt, I found the buck I shot at. It was across the street on someone else’s property, still ALIVE and doing well. You could barely see where the deer had been shot. After doing some online research to determine what it meant to see bright red blood after a shot like mine, I found that it is an indication of either a heart shot or a shot to an area with a lot of blood vessels such as the rump, or in my case, the brisket.

All of the practice in the world can’t prepare you for when your heart starts pumping out of your chest, and your body starts to shake. I always tell my wife when those things stop I’ll stop hunting. Some things are out of our control and some things aren’t. The one thing you can control is whether or not you take an ethical shot. Keep this in mind before you pull the trigger.
Happy hunting and may your trail never go cold.

Written by Kevin Ratliff

Cartridge Reloading Part III

If our church had a confessional I would be in there a couple of times a year repenting of spending too much money on different bullets. I have three kinds for my 270, 4 for my 221 Fireball, 3 for the 223 Remington, 4 for the 204 ruger, 2 for the 22 hornet, and on and on and on, but only one type for the 17 hornet. It’s new, give me some time for that one. I am always trying something new, always experimenting with new bullet that has just been released or another type that I found on sale for cheap, or because of current laws bullets cannot contain any lead for hunting purposes. Sometimes the experiments ended in success, sometimes not so much. Sometimes the bullets get along with the rifle, sometimes they don’t, and I freely admit that if a certain bullet doesn’t show accuracy potential after a couple of tries I move on to something else and may come back to it at a later date if I don’t like the results of other testing.
Take the 17 hornet that I just got. For whatever reason 17 caliber bullets are hard to come by at the time of this writing, possibly because spring time is varmint time and reloaders are gearing up for spring and summer biodegradable pop up target shooting. With that being the case, Hornady Vmax were all I could find and that’s ok , Hornady makes fantastic bullets. There were plenty of 20 and 25 grainers to be had but I was only interested in the 20 grainers or something lighter.
The 17 hornet came out around 2011 I believe and I drooled over it a bit but never had the money to get one. I was finally able to do that and immediately researched load data and had two powder types and three primer types to start with , but only one bullet.
I did buy some factory ammo to break the barrel in with to save time with load testing and because new brass was scarce at the time. Load testing and new barrels don’t always go together well, and you might just pass on a good, accurate load that wasn’t grouping well because of a new barrel. After breaking it in, I tried some reloads that I had made, and the slower velocity loads shot about an inch and a half group at one hundred yards. I am not a speed demon when it comes to bullet feet per second but the faster the bullets were driven the tighter the groups got but I still wasn’t happy with the grouping, just under an inch at one hundred. What to try next? Try a different primer with the powders I had on hand and change the overall cartridge length. The rifle is a savage model 25 that uses a detachable magazine, so I new I wasn’t going to get much on overall length. If it doesn’t fit in the magazine you can only load one round at a time , and I could live with that but didn’t really want to so other primers gave me more hope.
So going from Remington primers to federal and a slight overall length , again at the higher velocities shrunk the groups to under three quarters inch, making me feel a little better about the cartridge. I’m not done with testing , I still want to try other powders and bullets but this shows you what you can do to wring out a little more accuracy. God bless.

Written by, Rick Tonkin

Cartridge Reloading Part II

Let’s go straight into you have your press, dies, lube pad and lubricant and new or used brass for your rifle. One of the first things to be done, and it can be done in front of the TV if desired, is to clean the inside NECK of each case to cut down on the rough dragging that takes place when you extract the case from the sizing die. For about ten dollars Winchester a tool for cleaning pistol barrels. The handle is hollow to store the cleaning brushes and usually does a fine job. Other companies make set ups that come with dry powdered lubricants that brush and coat the inside of the neck for the sizing process. This will go a long way in stopping the dragging sound you might experience when sizing.

I do recommend that you set up the sizing dies according to the manufacturers directions , some times the and she’ll holder need to touch and sometimes there needs to be a small gap. Then with the case lubed you resize and remove the spent primer in one action. If there is still dragging going on removing the case you may need to ad a little sizing lube on the inside of the case with a Q tip. If you are using new cases I recommend they be sized to remove any dents in the neck and to bring them to proper dimensions. Yes I have had problems with new cases not wanting to chamber in rifles and have had to pull the bullets and run them through sizing dies just to get them to chamber. Usually pushing the shoulder back a few thousands was what was needed and all was well.

If you are blessed with a vibrating tumbler this is when I clean the brass. Sizing lube can get into empty casings and turn your reloads into duds, and clean brass enters and exits the rifle chamber smoother than dirty brass does, and they just look better, too. Using crushed walnut media to polish cases works well for the cleaning process, but the kernels can get stuck in the flash hole and needs to be removed before the new primer is set in so as not to block the ignition of the powder. A 1/16 center punch or small finish nail works fine for that. Then inspect the cases for any remaining media before setting primers.

Reloading presses are usually set up to prime cases and you can go that route or use one of the hand priming tools out there which is what I prefer. Setting primers in a couple of hundred cases is more comfortable on a couch for me than sitting at a bench. Handling primers may cause them to not detonate because of oils from your fingers and hand priming tools cut way down on that problem, you don’t handle the primers nearly as much this way. Some if not all reloading manuals will have you load all cases with powder before seating bullets so you can visually inspect them for under or over loaded cases. This was standard practice before electronic powder dispensers were invented and Manuel dispensers available. And that’s fine unless you are accident prone like I am and have a gift of knocking things over.

The last ten years or so I have been using the electric dispensers and have learned that I can seat the bullet and even writing the information on the case before the dispenser is finished with the next charge. And by writing on the case I mean if you are working on load development for a firearm it is a great way to keep track of bullet / powder / primer combinations for accurate testing. Just get a sharpie fine point and write on the side of the case what the load consists of.

I almost always start at the maximum overall length set by Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, S.A.A.M.I and the reason for this is that you need to make sure the loaded cartridge will fit into the magazine of the rifle you are loading for. You should be able to find the cartridge length in any of the reloading guides on the information page of each cartridge you are loading for. If you are not happy with the accuracy of your load and think your rifle can do better, you can always try seating the bullet closer to the lands, making the cartridge longer. I will get into that at a later time but if it perks your interest, go to you tube and watch some of the videos there and get a better idea of what is being done. And remember it may lot be the length of the cartridge but sometimes guns just favor different powder or bullets or primers over others. But then again changing cartridge length is cheaper than buying more components.

Written by, Rick Tonkin