Heirloom Deer Rifle: Continued Memories and Hunts

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The deer mounts complemented one another. Larry’s 10-pointer hung above his favorite chair in a left-facing pose that looked toward Mary’s 8-pointer.

The 8 was her one and only buck, and it hung above the couch, where she sat, facing slightly to the right. The bucks were taken from the same box blind with the same rifle during the same week.

Mary had always known how to shoot, but hadn’t been deer hunting one time in her life. She was near 70, and had been married to Larry 50 years, before she declared that she wanted to go and shoot a buck of her own. Larry was happy to take her on the condition that she could shoot any buck she wanted, so long as it wasn’t the particular 10-pointer that he’d been chasing himself since bow season.

In deer hunting, such plans rarely work out. Usually the neighbor shoots the 10-pointer, or it gets hit by a car, and everyone goes home disgusted. But for Mary and Larry Adams, it worked out perfectly. He killed the 10-pointer the second day of season, and then handed his rifle to her. She got her big 8 the next evening, and the happy couple put them on the wall for everyone to admire. (Hot take: "Why Hunting Whitetails From The Ground is a Good Idea.")

A Loving Void

Cancer took Larry five years later, and for a little while, Mary was left behind. Michelle, my wife and their youngest daughter, would invite her to go out deer hunting but she had no interest in that anymore, not without Larry. Gradually, she had no interest in leaving the house. She’d look over at his chair, which sat empty, and see the shadow of his 10-pointer.

Mary passed away last summer, died in the same bed at home where Larry had. Anse, our son, sat next to her, the second time in three years he’d had to watch one of his grandparents die. She went to sleep with a smile on her face, even if it seemed all of the smiles had been taken from ours. The doctor said that she had cancer, too, but anyone with sense could see that a broken heart also had a lot to do with it.

The deer mounts stayed above the favorite chairs for a while, still and silent, like the dishes in the cabinets and the guns in the safe. We walked inside the house that had bustled with smiles and love not long ago, and I expected to hear Mary offer up a cup of coffee, or for Larry to look at Anse and say, “That boy is growing like a weed.”

But there was only the hum of the air conditioner kicking in on occasion, and reminders of moments frozen in time. There were hand-written figures on the back of an envelope, numbers crunched from the month’s bills. In the safe were three green and yellow boxes of .270 Core-Lokts, marked $8.96 a piece. That same box of ammo costs $42 today. Larry’s guns were all there, oiled and well-kept, just as he’d left him. (Taxidermy tips: "Alternative Ways to Memorialize Your Hunt Trophies Besides Mounts.")

Functional Heirloom Rifles

He named some of his guns. The Ted Williams .30-06 that he left to me was “Old Stomper.” And his favorite 870 turkey gun, which Michelle still carries, is “Old Trusty.” But the gun I always associated with him the most was his favorite deer rifle, a Remington Model 700 BDL in .270 Win. It’s a gun reminiscent of another time, with a glossy walnut stock, polished blued steel, hinged floorplate and open sights. Larry’s scope was a Bushnell Sportview 4-12x40 with see-through rings. It was his go-to rifle and a nice one at that; something befitting of a serious trophy whitetail hunter of his day. He’d splurged on it using factory worker’s wages.

If the .270 had a name, I never heard it and neither did Michelle. Regardless, it was the gun that he used to shoot several genuinely huge bucks, including the 10-point on the wall above his favorite chair, the other 10-point that hung above the television, and the massive 8-point with the kicker off its G2—Michelle’s favorite buck—that he killed down by the cane brake.

Larry shot a number of predators with that rifle as well. He had a bobcat mounted on the mantle that he’d killed with it, and who knows how many coyotes he’d taken with it over the years. In fact, if Larry had a flaw in his big buck hunting program, it was that he would fire down on any coyote he saw without hesitation. Opening morning of deer season be damned. Michelle is the same way now. She can’t leave a predator alone.

Years ago, the two of them would jump at the chance to go predator calling together, and once the three of us even made a road trip to the Texas Hill Country, where Larry bagged his first gray fox. Big bucks and wild turkey gobblers were his favorite, but Larry loved hunting anything with sharp teeth and pretty fur, too.

.270 Winchester

The .270 had sat there in the safe, next to those worn boxes of Core-Lokts, for all those years. Perhaps the last shots fired out of it were at the two bucks, Larry’s 10 and Mary’s 8, up on the wall. I told Michelle there are only so many really nice old rifles in the world, and we should bring that .270 out of retirement. She’s a superstitious woman, same as her folks were and same as many people of Appalachian descent are. The rifle would benefit from a few modern upgrades, which I was happy to make (see sidebar), but for the most part we wanted it to remain just as it had always been. I assumed it would become Michelle’s go-to deer rifle.

Of course, quite a few of those classic old guns kick like rented mules, and Larry’s .270 is no exception. After sighting the rifle in myself, I gave it to Michelle, who settled down for a few practice shots on the range. She had a bad case of the flinch and trigger-yanks when we started dating, and she says that old hardwood-stocked deer rifles like her daddy’s .270 were just the type of thing that caused it. She fired the rifle a few times, but bowed out of hunting with it. With deer season approaching, she wanted to stick with her suppressed 6.5 Creedmoor, something she’s comfortable with.

So, I decided to carry the rifle myself. My first hunt with it was on a foggy morning in Tennessee, a few days before Thanksgiving. The rut was kicking, and I was slipping down a logging road just before daybreak, toward a cutover where I hoped to catch a big buck tending one of the many does that I knew were in the area. It was a good plan, except I walked up on a big doe that spotted me at the same time, and she commenced stamping and stomping.

Larry and I never saw exactly eye-to-eye on the subject of doe shooting. He’d grown up during a time when there were no whitetails to hunt at all, and believed that does should be mostly left alone. I grew up during the early days of QDMA, and have always had abundant deer to hunt—and have always enjoyed filling my doe tags. I dropped that one with a single bullet, and shot a second one on the other side of the farm a few days later for good measure. I could almost see Larry, shaking his head but smiling, and saying, “Boy, sometimes I don’t know what to make of you.”

Lucky Streak

My lucky streak continued with the .270 down in Texas. I shot a couple coyotes with it and a big sow hog, all dropped with single, well-placed shots. I have lots of good rifles in my safe, but this one was rapidly becoming a favorite.

Still, some part of the story was missing. Michelle and I have been dating since we were 16, and I’ve long considered myself part of the family. But I was married in. Call it superstition, but I believed the gun needed to be used by blood kin. Michelle had tried it but didn’t like it. But Anse, the kid who many say is a dead ringer for Larry Adams himself, had not. And Anse, like his mama and grandaddy before him, loves calling predators.

He and I were cruising a ranch road after our morning sit in the deer stand, enroute to pick up Michelle and head in for breakfast. The .270 rode in the front seat next to me, like a middle-aged boxer in prime fighting shape and fresh out of retirement. Anse had mentioned several times that he wanted to get a Texas bobcat one of these days, and then we looked out the window and saw one, standing next to a mesquite bush in the broad 10 a.m. daylight. The cat darted immediately out of sight, but there was a live oak ahead, just large enough to hide the truck, and a perfect wind in our face.

“I bet we can call that cat up,” I said, grabbing the BOG rest and my predator call from the back seat. “But Pawpaw’s gun is the only one I have.” Anse had watched Michelle shoot the .270 back at home, and knew how it recoiled.

“I’ll be way too excited to feel the kick if that bobcat comes in,” he whispered. I nodded and smiled. We slipped through the Texas brush toward the mesquite, and I closed the bolt on a fresh Core-Lokt. I showed Anse where the safety was on the rifle, and he snugged the forend into the Death Grip and settled the stock against his shoulder. I knelt behind him and started pleading on the call, making the sounds of a dying rabbit that had always caused the boy’s granddaddy to tense up, smile and get ready, because you just never knew what could appear from out of the brush, especially down in Texas.

I heard Anse whisper something, saw his left hand adjusting the scope’s magnification dial, and the rifle barrel move slightly. The bobcat appeared, 60 yards away, and it dropped instantly at the shot. The kid, blood kin to Larry and Mary Adams, slung the .270 over his shoulder and admired his cat, a trophy fit for the wall.

I smiled and texted Michelle, feeling just a bit superstitious.

Updating An Old Rifle

Best I can tell, Larry’s .270 was manufactured in 1976. It shot good just the way it was, but a few easy upgrades had it performing as well as anything in my gun safe. Although the old Bushnell scope had done its part, years of hard hunting had allowed some moisture to creep in. I removed the see-through rings and replaced them with a set of new Weaver bases and 30mm rings, into which I mounted a Leupold VX-3HD 4.5-14x40. That scope is ideal for whitetail hunting but, with a CDS turret, also provides long-range utility.

The old factory trigger, at just over 7 pounds, left much to be desired, but a new Timney fixed that. There are a number of options for a Model 700, and I installed an Elite Hunter with a 3-pound factory setting. The process took about 15 minutes, thanks to Timney’s instructional YouTube video, and it made an incredible difference.

Some modern ammo was the next order of business, and since Larry shot Big Green almost exclusively, I couldn’t in good conscience go with anything else. I ordered a few boxes of 130-grain Core-Lokt Tipped for the .270, and soon had it shooting slightly sub-MOA groups at 100 yards, living up to the Model 700’s reputation for legendary accuracy. Perhaps experimentation with additional loads could do even better. But there was no arguing with the results in the field. This rifle is out of retirement, and my guess is it’ll be a working gun for years to come.

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