Choosing a brush gun for blacktail

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Smasher

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Hey all, so hunting blacktail in thick timber requires a gun that’s easy to handle in tight spaces. Shorter rifles or compact shotguns are ideal cause they allow quick movement through heavy brush without sacrificing power. Make sure your gun is reliable, easy to clean and suited to quick follow-up shots and also lightweight optics or iron sights can also improve accuracy in dense cover. If you got recommendation on brush gun setups that have worked best for you in thick timber, share them here!
 
Blacktail in thick timber? Ain't no brush gun needed! Just tie a bigger shovel to your barrel and swing for the fences..real hunters just use whatever's already in the back seat
 
A brush gun is just what we call 'the good ol' truck rifle' when we're trying to sound fancy! But seriously, that's great hunting advice, use what works, even if it's the big shovel method
 
Lever actions are the true kings of the brush! They're fast and a .30-30 round will drop em quick in the woods. You just can't beat how easy they are to move around.
 
I just picked up a Henry Big Boy in 45 Colt. With anything Cowboy Loads or bigger, should be a good brush gun for small deer. I chose that over a 44 mag Rossi because of the stronger action. That way it will pair well with my OM Blackhawk for bear protection. Shoots 1" @ 20 yards=pretty good when you consider that one bullet hole is 1/2 an inch in diameter!
 
Invited to what became my last ever deer hunt, I had sold all my "big game rifles." I still owned a beater, low value (manufactured 1970) Mdl 94. 30-30, naturally. The receiver is made of mystery metal and it rattles when you shake it. But with a Williams peep sight, it's surprisingly accurate with my various handloads as well as factory rounds. I had sighted in Hornady's then-new Leverevotion rounds, so took them along.

I set up on a stump near our camp in the west side of Skamania county, which is as brushy an area as one can imagine. The others in my group imagined themselves as great woods stalkers and were carrying scoped rifles all the way from 270 Wn to 300 WM. Of course it wasn't long before a nice two pointer was slipping by my spot.
One shot from the old guy and his antique. The young'uns were.kind enough to gut and hang the only deer shot that opening morning....
 
I read in Cartridges of the World that the old 44-40 shot more deer and more men (good and bad!) than any other cartridge! Probably not true any more and maybe not at that time!
 
Then, according to the scribes, it was supplanted by the 30-30. In my opinion, that's a record that will last. Not because the 30 WCF is as popular as it used to be, but because of the proliferation of new calibers. Everyone has their favorite cartridge and no two are the same. In addition, several states back east ban calibers with shoulders, thus preventing the use of the 30-30.
 
VancMike said:
Then, according to the scribes, it was supplanted by the 30-30. In my opinion, that's a record that will last. Not because the 30 WCF is as popular as it used to be, but because of the proliferation of new calibers. Everyone has their favorite cartridge and no two are the same. In addition, several states back east ban calibers with shoulders, thus preventing the use of the 30-30.
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Fads come & Fads go!!!!!! Mine, when I still hunted, was a 45-70 (Marlin 1895, Winchester 1886, 1886 in 45-90). But, as a guide in Central Cali and going after wounded hogs in brush, I wanted more stopping power. Often used a 12 gauge pump. But those were different circumstances and different times (When I was young and foolish!)
 
30WCF is the proper caliber for Winchester lever actions.
30-30 was Marlin's name for the cartridges they made for the 30WCF.
Winchester sued Marlin, and they had to change the name due to the lawsuit.

Winchester did not use 30-30 until after the Japs bought Winchester.
Yet before they sold Marlin to Remington and has gone downhill since then.
 
My vintage 1970 '94 has a receiver made of sintered steel. In 1964, Winchester went to that method as cost savings, as it was more cost effective than replacing the original tooling. As a side benefit, it actually is more accurate, with tighter tolerances than pre-64 production. The big issue is that sintered steel doesn't take to bluing, with splotchy and uneven results. Mine is a kind of grey-blue; don't know what process Winchester used.

The point is, if a Mdl 94 manufactured 1964-89 comes.up on your used gun rack, it's probably a great hunting rifle. Just don't pay pre-64 prices!
 
I gave my nice mine, she had my 1949, her 1947, and a 1971 that she beats the stuffins out of.
All 1894s
 
BearBio said:
I just picked up a Henry Big Boy in 45 Colt. With anything Cowboy Loads or bigger, should be a good brush gun for small deer. I chose that over a 44 mag Rossi because of the stronger action. That way it will pair well with my OM Blackhawk for bear protection. Shoots 1" @ 20 yards=pretty good when you consider that one bullet hole is 1/2 an inch in diameter!
Click to expand...
Just last week, I was rooting around in my reloading room and found a nice scope. No markings and it looked like a fixed-power 4x. I decided to mount it on the Henry. Took the rings off and the lens shade popped off, Lo and behold: there under the rings it was marked Weaver K2.5 with the old El Paso address! Mounted that and I imagine it would be what my tired old eyes needed! (This was posted elsewhere also!)
 
Been eyeing a Winchester (Miroku) short rifle in .357 for a while now. Figure it’s good for the coyotes that snoop around here for the deer that seem to think this is their second home.
Not sure if that’s enough for one of the bucks around here, but then again I’d have to give away most of the meat as we don’t own a deep freeze.
 
We hunt through dense trees and brush. Count me in with my Marlin lever 45-70 with iron sights. Off the shelf ammo is crazy expensive now but I still have a good supply of Hornady jacketed HP, powder, primers and lots of new cases. It's is plenty adequate for anything around here.
 
I bought a rifle last year in 400 Legend that I consider a brush gun. Ruger American Gen 2 Ranch. A 16 inch barrel bolt action. It comes with a 5 round clip. You can get a 4 round flush mount or 10 round clips as well. They are AR style clips. I’m getting 1-1 1/2 inch groups at 100 yards. Mine favors the 190 gn Winchester and 210 gn Core locks. The gun runs $600-$650.
 
Smasher said:
Hey all, so hunting blacktail in thick timber requires a gun that’s easy to handle in tight spaces. Shorter rifles or compact shotguns are ideal cause they allow quick movement through heavy brush without sacrificing power. Make sure your gun is reliable, easy to clean and suited to quick follow-up shots and also lightweight optics or iron sights can also improve accuracy in dense cover. If you got recommendation on brush gun setups that have worked best for you in thick timber, share them here!
Click to expand...
I have 2 M1-Carbines - one that my Grandfather gave me in 1966 at 16-yrs. of age, and the other one that my brother gave to me when he moved his family to Massachusetts about 8-years ago. My Grandfather ran a ranch that started at 2,000 acres and finished at 3,000 acres, for some absentee owners. They would typically visit the ranch for a couple of weeks each year and that was it, so I always though of it as "Grandpa's Ranch". The Ranch was in the Central Coast area of California, east of the coastal mountain range (it got HOT in the summer!). We'd hunt on the ranch for deer and at the nearby Black Mountain est of the ranch. Ranch had a few brush-fields but was mostly Oak trees, pasture, oat-hay and alfalfa fields, and the North 80 was a cornfield.

The mountains on all sides were mostly heavy brush with potreros often near the tops. These were open areas with oak trees and wild oats where the deer liked to bed down. Mostly the hunting was on steep brush-filled canyons. Bad news was that Yucca plants liked to grow under the brush. Yucca plants look like skinny aloe-vera plants but the tips of their leaves come to hard, sharp points! If you blindly pushed your way through brush, you'd invariably get stuck in the legs with them, which was NO fun! Before I got my M1-Carbine I would use Grandpa's 250-3000, lever-action rifle. It wasn't a particularly heavy rifle, but it was no light weight.

After Grandpa gave me his M1-Carbine, that's what I hunted with At his ranch and the brush covered mountains, most shots were within 100-yards. Occasionally I would make a 200-yard shot, which worked great, but I never would take the 300-yard shot. That little rifle would accurately hit anything repeatedly at 300-yards but it's energy was all but expended at that range and the chance for a wounding shot was far higher than a killing shot. And the last thing I wanted to do was trudge through the brush and the countryside trying to track down a wounded deer. At 200-yards, no problem.

That little M1-Carbine is a very light rifle and very easy to maneuver in tight spaces. I typically used 110gr. soft-nose ammo for hunting and had a source way back then for hard ball M1-carbine ammo for about 50¢ more than a box of 22-long rifle. So I constantly used it with that hard ball ammo for ground squirrels at the ranch, except for hunting season. It's very light and has very little recoil (more than a .22LR, but much less than a .308); it's very light; very accurate; and has plenty of punch to kill deer out to 200-yards. I did some reloading on them and figured it was about 30¢ a round as long as I didn't have to replace the brass. That was about 6 or 7-years ago. You can sometimes find M1-Carbine ammo for less than that with factory loads. The peep sight seems to automatically center the forward sight and it is in a sliding range mount. If you zero it at 100-yards and need to make a 200-yard shot, you just push the peep up the ramp to the next detente. Same thing for the 300-yard mark although that is really like lobbing a high arching pass in basketball. It will reliably get there, but not much left at that distance. Everything within 200-yards though is dead meat.

It's a sweet little gun and great when weaving through brush!


M1-Carbine.JPG
 

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