“Only Accurate Rifles…”

It was Colonel Townsend Whelen who famously said “Only accurate rifles are interesting.”

I’ll add that for a trophy mule deer hunter, an accurate rifle isn’t only interesting but essential!  Don’t fall into the “good enough” trap so many rifleman do. You will spend years looking for the buck of your dreams and you better have every variable in your favor when you finally squeeze the trigger.  

While the math might tell you that a rifle shooting 2-inch groups at 100 yards is good enough to kill a big deer at 500, that is under ideal conditons.  What the math doesn’t account for is adrenaline (big deer are exciting!), no benchrest, steep angles, wind (who really goes to the range when the wind is blowing 20 mph?), poor lighting, fatigue, and a target that moves unpredictably.  

For over 25 years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours making sure my deer rifles shoot as accurately as possible, preferably an inch or less with low standard deviation (click here for an article I wrote on standard deviation).  I can say that the efffort has been well worth it.  If my memory serves me well, since 1996, I’ve shot at 25 good bucks (with a rifle) and killed 22 of them for an 88% success rate. Of the three bucks I missed, all were under very tough conditions such as moving animal, beyond 400 yards, or only seconds to prepare.  I can confidently say my misses had nothing to do with an inaccurate rifle simply because I won’t hunt with one!

That is why I was excited when Cooper Firearms of Montana offered up a Model 52 Excalibur Rifle for my upcoming mule deer hunt.  Cooper offers an incredible 1/2 MOA guarantee on all their rifles.  Problem was, I was smack dab in the middle of my guiding season.  Checking the calendar, I saw I only had two days to develop a handload, sight the rifle, and establish trajectory to 600 yards.  I told Cooper that if I didn’t have time to get the gun tuned exactly, it would be next year before I’d be able to hunt with it.  They weren’t concerned and sent the gun.  Here are the results in video:

Pretty much a no-brainer that I’ll be taking that rifle on this upcoming hunt.

Cooper Firerams’ website is in a remodel stage, so not everything is there.  If you’d like to get a (really nice) catalog or chat with Steve at Cooper Firearms, fire him an email at [email protected] or give him a call at 406-777-0373.  You can also follow Cooper on Facebook here

Only a few more days until I take you in the backcountry.  Be sure and subscribe at top right of page “Subscribe to blog” just under Fitness/Other links if you’re not already a Rok Blog subscriber.  By the way, have a thankful Thanksgiving.