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Al Brown | Tracking the Seasons
Now's the time to hone weapon of choice
With Wisconsin's 2011 regular nine-day gun deer hunt less than 14 days away, we are left with only one full weekend to check the accuracy of your dependable old smoke pole.
Add to that the new rules in southern Wisconsin's Chronic Wasting Disease Earn-A-Buck units, which allow us to tag a buck before tipping over an antlerless deer.
In short, if you're a diehard buck hunter who likes a little tracking snow the day before the season opens, the worst thing you can do is miss that first shot.
From that moment on, every buck in the woods knows he has a bullseye on his chest, and he won't let you forget it by parading around out in the open, so make that first shot count.
After that buck is tagged, the next deer you register must be antlerless - any deer without antlers or any deer with both antlers less than three inches long.
That said, is your deer gun a nail driver, or is hitting somewhere on a paper plate at 100 yards still good enough?
It's not a trick question. But it's surprising how many hunters are reluctant to offer up a knowing answer. Possibly because the answer is not with the gun, but rather their own shortcomings?
Now that center-fire rifles, .22 caliber and larger, are legal for hunting deer in most of Wisconsin, just hitting a paper plate at a hundred yards should no longer be acceptable.
In fact, for deer hunting with a rifle, a hunter should be expected to at least keep his shots printing somewhere within a 6 inch circle at 100 yards.
Truth be known, most of today's hunters using a smooth-bore shotgun fitted with a reasonably good scope can keep their shots within a 6-inch circle at 100 yards.
Others, using the same scope over a rifled shotgun barrel and shooting sabot rather than Foster-style slugs should tighten their shot group to about 3 inches at 100 yards.
In years past, I used the same smooth-bore 12-gauge for hunting everything from rabbits and geese to turkeys and deer just by changing the choke tubes and shooting Foster style slugs.
All I ever did was change the screw-in chokes to match my needs. An improved cylinder for rabbits, modified for geese, extra full for turkeys and a rifled choke for Foster style deer slugs.
Whenever I hunted deer with that gun, I always used a scope. The problem was it always took 10 to 15 rounds to re-sight it after remounting the scope and switching back to the rifled screw-in choke tube.
The results were deadly and far less costly than buying a rifled slug barrel.
Nowadays, to keep the costs of ammo down, I do my sighting-in at 25 yards rather than the traditional 100 yards.
If you have one shotgun you keep set up just for deer hunting, chances are you'll "check the sights" using no more than 3 or 4 shots.
Now that we can use a rifle to hunt deer in most of the state, including nearly all of southern Wisconsin, keeping one gun just for deer hunting is much easier.
In my case, both my shotgun and my deer rifle are Remington semi-automatics. It's a case of familiarity building confidence.
Chambered for the 30-06 Springfield cartridge, the 150-grain bullet is more than adequate for stopping Wisconsin's whitetail deer.
When zeroed in at 25 yards, the trajectory (bullet path above and below the line of sight) is estimated to be +1 (plus one) inch high at 50 yards, +2 ¼ inches at 100 and 150 yards, +1 ¼ inches at 200 yards, -1 ½ inches (below the line of sight) at 250 yards and 6 inches low at 300 yards.
Subject to the gun's barrel length and bullet weight, these trajectory numbers will be pretty close for most deer rifles out to 200 yards. After that, gravity plays a more significant role, subject to bullet weight.
Unless you are using a bipod, that's more accuracy than any of us really need here in southern Wisconsin's farm country.
Also, different bullet brands produce different results, so do your zeroing with the exact same ammunition you intend to hunt with.
The regular gun deer hunt opens Saturday, Nov. 19. If you haven't already test fired your gun, plan to be at the range before the crowds arrive. Once the season is open, you may find a note on your gunsmith's door reading: Closed. Gone hunting.
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