What happened? What finally got me off my quest to hunt and harvest an animal with every high-powered rifle I own in the safe when I am close to doing so?
The French MAS has a wonderful, ugly appearance. It shoots a serviceable, 30 caliber cartridge that is on par with our own well-used and oft written about .308 Winchester cartridge. And it has what for many years I would have considered great, open sights. The aperture sight it is equipped with serves extremely well on the range, but I've yet to shoot a wild animal on the rifle range in broad daylight.
But that's not how it was when I came to be sitting in a covering corner of pines along the side of a wide, wheat field at the fish farm--it had been a dark and stormy day, and knowing, that with open sights, my hunt would be over well before legal shooting hours, I went and carried the 1950's weapon anyway hoping to fulfill my quest and freezer. After all, gainfully employed these days, I only get to hunt during the week if it rains, rain being the only thing that can stop a modern framing crew dead in its tracks.
To the non hunter, a quick word about "The Rut". It's the one time of year that deer get to pass around their genetic material. And, brother, pass it around they do--have you noticed how many deer there are around here? The bad news, for the bucks, is that it takes alot* of begging and damned chasing to convince a hottie that you're worthy.
So, as I sat down in this natural blind on the edge of this field, eager to take an animal with this 1950's rifle, The Rut was in full "swing". And sure enough, close to Remington Hour, a doe trots out of the woods a couple of hundred yards away and doesn't quite make it to the other side before two young, four-pointer bucks come out of the same spot and proceed to cross the field after her, chasing her.
So far during this season's rut, this has been a familiar theme: How to shoot a big meaty doe when she's being harassed and chased by eager bucks. And so, once again, I saw my opportunity to harvest scared away by, what clicked in my mind that late afternoon, two bullies. I was chapped, I mean, I have a daughter, and the thought of her in college being chased by dumb freshman bucks with their noses to the ground just behind her might have been too much.
I remember being glad I saw deer, my pick of a spot had been a good choice, but I remember being disappointed too. And when one of the two bucks, all puffed up and ready to rut, stepped back out of the woods less than 60 yards away, it was all too much.
In an instant, the rush, the call to arm came over me. This four pointer looked for his quarry, and I at him. That instant, for some reason, some little boy urge, some quick and cocky impulse to kill had me. I can't really explain it. It was that thrill of seeing game, and seeing it as a target, an immobile target/living thing that I could take quickly and cleanly. Or so I thought.
I couldn't stop me, so pure and awful was this urge. At the fish farm, the decree by the land-owner is "Don't stop shooting the deer until I tell you to stop, and I ain't likely to tell you to stop," but the gentleman's agreement with his son and my buddy J.B. is "Let's let 'em get bigger." Shamefully, now, I followed the former.
The buck was quartering towards me, that is to say, he wasn't presenting the classic broadside shot which, at least in my mind, I'm usually famous for waiting for. No, he was walking from right to left angled towards me. No problem for me, I'll aim low, a little on the right "brisket" and it'll pop out after tearing through the off-side lung. I'll just put the front post I painted white about ten years ago on his chest and...
The rear aperture and the front sight completely hid the animal in the overcast afternoon lighting. I'm sure I could have picked out the "sweet spot" if the sun had been straight up in the sky on a cloudless day. But this day I had to raise my cheek off the gun to find the deer over the top of the rifle, then scrunch down into battery to try and find him in the sights over and over again. The head bobbing should have sounded a bell, should have snapped me out of my haste, but it didn't.
When I thought I had him. I squeezed.
The shot sets him down on his haunches, and he raises the on-side leg in a tuck, right where I had wanted the bullet to hit it looks to me. Just after the shot, I'd racked the bolt and reloaded--something we all do after a shot--and watched this buck over my rifle as he painfully pulled himself back up to all fours! Yes, I'd reloaded, but then had to do something I rarely ever had to do before. I had to shoot him again.
Now he's a moving target though, and I'm still saddled by the "combat" sights of a war rifle. I do the best I can and shoot for center mass of course. Bang! and a MISS! Now I'm starting to get sick inside...now I get it, I shouldn't have even shot him. Bang! And he drops this time. And I reload. It's over.
Out of anger at myself I lean the gun against the nearest tree and rip my poncho off, and my coat; I'm so hot and physically sick that I need to cool off. Of course, I'm also shaking now. I'm just relieved it's over and happy I can get him before dark and that I don't have to track him...I'm embarrassed that I missed and wonder what someone would have thought miles away hearing me shoot and shoot and shoot...
Then the buck raises his head.
He looked at me as I was wadding my poncho up and stuffing it into, well, the stuff sack. He sees me, and I know he knows. It's just at that moment the tiny amount of relief I was feeling washes away; he knows I did it. I sit down and hide behind the tree from his eyes. I can't see him see me, and I don't want him to try and run off from my presence, I want him to bleed, to die.
I've shot him enough, I don't want to anymore. I probably should have, but I just sit there. I sit and peek, waiting for his head to go back down, and it does a time or two, but it always pops back up. I draw a bead on him more than once, but I just can't pull the trigger on him. Until he rises again.
He get's back up and heads for the woods, and since it's even darker now, I fumble through the sights worse than before trying to lock in on this deer before he disappears into the woods. He presents that classic broadside and when I shoot, again, the bullet rolls him over, and the hooves kick, and it really is over. I heard the muffled cough and I stand up, and without looking back, a carry my crap back to the truck.
I have no excuse. I wanted to shoot a deer with this rifle, and I did. Angry at the bucks for chasing off a good shootable doe, did I want to punish him? A little boy with a gun?
It seemed fitting that the night sky opened up again on me as I hoisted him up on the truck mounted gambrel system I made. The pouring rain a punishment for my hubris as I skinned and quartered this deer by the light of a head lamp. Each ham placed in an open cooler. With the skin pulled back, I could see the "job" I had done. The first shot would have indeed been lethal, in a few days perhaps. The second shot, a poorly placed "gut shot" that certainly would have been lethal that night, and the third connecting shot, had it been the first shot...well, there'd be pictures here and words of me slapping myself on the back on a job well done.
The cooler didn't have a drain plug, and when I was done, I had to tip it to drain the rain water, and in doing so, as if to add one more insult to the buck, I accidentally let the meat slide out onto the wet grass. Impossible to hold almost, I scooped it up, covered with grass and grit and loaded it up.
And so, this challenge, this goal to use every rifle in my arsenal to take at least one game animal each might have slipped away. I would say, in no way was my performance the rifle's fault, I just should have stuck with the plan I had had last year which was limit those hunts to morning hunts when the sun climbs higher and higher, always brighter and brighter. The MAS was made to be carried by young men, young foot soldiers with crisp, clear vision and not 45 year old dumbass carpenters.
It'd be hard to put into words what the whole "point to hunting" is to me, but suffice it say, I only want quick, clean, "humane" kills and nothing like the above train wreck I had. It's not fair to the deer, and it's not good for my soul. The only thing I can say is that at the very least, I knuckled down and did what I had to do, and I didn't lose that buck.
I ain't ready to quit hunting, but that shook me pretty good. Shook me up so that the next time afield I carried a rock steady standby that is scoped with some of the best glass money can buy. That is my Custom Casey M700 in 6.5X55mm topped with a Vari-X III Leupold in 2.5x-8x. That's the rifle that I shot the coyote at 167 yards with before sunrise that morning...and even that exposed an internal conflict, but that's another story.
p.s. Backstory on the MAS
And Part two about the French MAS
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