After a day of shooting sporting clays at the Waterloo Gun and Bocci Club in Stockton, I was relaxing with a cold drink before the CWA Celebration of the Harvest Dinner. As with all conservation group dinners, I was approached by an attractive young lady with raffle tickets for an assortment of firearms and prizes. By the end of the night, I had won a Howa 1500 Ranchland rifle in .223 Remington.

I was unfamiliar with the Howa Company and this model of rifle.  After some searching I found the Legacy Sports Website . 

About the Rifle

From conversations with folks knowlegeable on firearms, I learned that the Howa Company has a long history of quality manufacturing since 1907.   They have the distinction of  having made the barrels and actions for several well known rifle brands including Weatherby and Smith & Wesson. 

This rifle is positioned  as the “truck gun” for those of us in the country who get fleeting chances at the wily predators who prey on our livestock.  Every thing from the compact 20 inch barrel to the Hogue rubber overmolded stock, is built to withstand the rigors of life outside of the gun safe in less than perfect weather.   

But  don’t think for a minute that accuracy has been sacrificed in the name of durability.  The Howa Brand is well known for its out of the box accuracy and many times can produce sub 1 inch groups at 100 yards.  Features such as the free floating hammer forged barrel, a forged steel, flat bottomed receiver; large recoil lug and  fiberglass reinforced,  pillar bedded stock,  dual locking lugs, M-16 style extractor and one piece forged bolt has made the Howa barreled actions a favorite with custom gun builders and accuracy enthusiasts.

I particularly enjoyed the smooth bolt action, the 5 round magazine with hinged floorplate, and Decelerator butt pad that anchored the gun firmly in my shoulder. 

The package comes with a Nikko-Stirling 3-10 x42 scope is anodized in tan to match.  The windage and elevation knobs are knurled for adjustment by hand with quiet but definate “clicks” for quick in-the-field adjustments. 

The Rifle and Scope Package retails at an MSRP of $599.  Quite a reasonable price for the features and function.  

My Impressions

Now I have always said I only needed one centerfire rifle;  something in a .30 caliber that would handle all the big game in North America.   But now that my .300 Win Mag costs me $2.75 per shot,  I see that I will shoot more with a sub-quarter bore rifle.  More shooting means better accuracy on big hairy things that demand my marksmanship. Plus this rifle will serve as a way to introduce my children to centerfire rifles without the recoil associated with big game calibers. 

I attached a Harris Bipod to the rifle and took it out to the back pasture where I had a target with 2 – 6 inch black Shoot-N-C self adhesive bullseyes on a piece of cardboard.

After about 10 shots I had it on target at 50 yards, and moved back to 100.  A few more shots and I was making pretty tight groups.  The trigger pull was heavier and with a touch of creep, but not bad.  The scope was clear with a duplex style recticle that was equally sharp at 3x or 10x. 

Ammunition

I found 75 gr. match hollow points from Hornady keyholed even at close range.  The 1 in 12″ twist rate rifling  lends itself better to rounds with a 50-60 grain bullet.

The  Black Hills Remanufactured Ammo with 52 gr. moly coated  match hollow points seemed to do well for me ( at$0.6398 per round at Cabela’s).

60 grain Polymer tipped TAP ammo from Hornady impacted 2 inches lower at 100 yards but grouped well.  At 2x the cost of the Black Hills though, ($1.44 per cartridge at the local gun shop, $1.14 per cartridge from Cabelas) I will conserve this round.  In the future I plan to try other loads including the 60 grain, and 55 grain moly coated hollow point and V-Max in the Black Hills line up.

I don’t claim to be a marksman, and I am sure with some trigger time I can tighten up my form to shoot this rifle to its capabilities.  In the future, I’ll try different ammunition combinations, but I think if I were to have a coyote at 200 yds or less, I could make a killing shot.  Now I just need to make that situation happen.

Come April, I intend to put the Howa up against the ground squirrels of Modoc County.  With abundant targets, and adequete preparation this should be what the rifle was suited for.  I am certainly looking forward to my future with this new rifle. 

While I was in the higher elevations of Mendocino County looking for blacktail bucks, Brenda was just a few miles from me on her family ranch.  She had no problem arrowing this nice 3×3 blacktail buck that will score very well in Pope and Young.

  She shares her passion for hunting with her daughter who also connected on a deer last week, and husband Butch who has a whopper of a caribou from earlier this year.  As of my last conversation with Butch he had not arrowed a deer yet in the late season.  Looks like the Carley Girls can get it done!  Maybe I should take lessons from them?

The next morning I determined that spotting from high up was not going to work as it was clouded in and the wind was fierce.  Rain began falling and turned to snow before I’d left the main road.  I dropped down to our lower access spot at 400 feet and waited in ambush for deer from the private land.  When the rain turned to snow at THAT elevation, I knew this was a serious storm, and I hustled back to the truck.  The climb out of the canyon was one of the more stressful events of my life.  The snow covered the narrow one lane dirt road, the fast falling flakes and low clouds obscured where the edge of the road dropped off thousands of feet below.  I crawled the seven and a half miles back to my camp and the snow had become eight inches deep in two hours and was still piling up.

At that point, all thoughts of hunting were dispelled from my mind.  I was in “survival mode”.  I hastily threw my camp gear in the truck and dug through the snow to extract my tent pegs and wadded the tent in the truck box before I four wheeled off of the 5500 ft ridge.  My tracks from that morning were already filled in as I crawled the 17 miles down off the ridge.  Once I had dropped a thousand feet I began breathing a little easier and even snapped a photo or two when the snowfall let up.

Concluding Thoughts…

I left this hunt feeling defeated by the quarry, the weather, and my own physical limitations.  I never got a shot or within range of a legal buck.  I got my ass kicked.  Not a good feeling. But much of this trip was good.  Let me detail the good parts:

•  My hunting partner Rich Howarth.  Rich was a trooper to go into unfamiliar territory after a tough quarry.  His cooking was one of the best things we had on the whole time.  His Chicken Gumbo, and Bear Stew was superb, and made for a great evening.  He is an excellent hunting companion and campmate.  His deer spotting abilities were an asset on the hunt, and his positive attitude was there when I was feeling down.  It was a couple of lonely days when he wasn’t there.
•  Camp.  The Cabela’s Alaknak II tent did well in the snow.  I will never forget the sound of snow sliding off the roof.  The borrowed tent stove made drying out after a wet day much easier.  I need to buy one of my own.  I think I am developing a camp scheme that is becoming more efficient than my past endeavors.  There is stillimprovement possible and next time I will endeavor to plan meals better by pre-cooking what I can, and making a menu.
•  My clothing.  After 17 years of hunting equipment purchases, I think I’ve acquired a collection of layers that are well suited to the wide variety of weather we encountered on the trip. 
  • Under Armour Cold Gear base layers helped keep me warm, as well as wicked sweat better without the chilling that other products produced.  Yes, I did sweat under my rain gear.  But I would have been in a dire situation if I didn’t have the UA.
  • The Microtex pants and shirt performed great as in past years.  You just can’t beat them.
  • The Rivers West Jacket from Sage Creek Outfitters did great in the rain wind and snow.  It will be a staple for late season hunts from now on.
  • The Sitka Gear Mountain Shirt was a multi situation layer.  I wore it every day as one of three layers sometime through out the day. 
•  Physical conditioning.  Even though I was limited on this hunt with a nasty cold, and later lower back spasms, I was able to cover more ground than I would have a year ago.  I thank the trail running training I did in the off season for that.  I would like to be able to climb hills easier though.  Had I been in better shape in this area, I might have been more willing to drop the 3000 feet down to the very bottoms of the thick canyons. 
• Fueling.  Rich was very good about setting an example of eating every 2 hours.  I think that helped keep my energy levels up throughout the day.  I need to work on remembering to not let my blood sugar drop to the point of exhaustion on an all day hunt, similar to a fueling strategy for a long trail race.

The next morning I was at a new vantage point.  The snow only remained in the shaded areas, as I glassed the opposite hillside. Shortly after daylight I spotted a buck moving across the hill in my direction.  I watched him as he moved through the distant draws and moved twice to follow his movements into the brushy draws.  At one point he was 230 yard from me across a gully.   He dropped into the gully and never emerged.  As I stepped forward to look deeper into the thicket, three different creases led out in different directions.  I spent the remainder of the morning looking for him and only busted a doe and fawn in the thick cover.  The buck had just VANISHED.  

 The rest of the day was uneventful except for a long hike down a brushy ridge that just served to tire me more.  I went back to where I had spotted the buck that morning as the wind began to pick up once more and blew through out the night.  I was somewhat snug in my tents as I stoked the fire, and listened to the howl of the trees in the wind.  It was a restless night as the wind kept up all night

Well it was  plenty cold the next morning and the fresh snow from the night before showed evidence of deer movement throughout the night as we hiked to our rock to glass, hoping the brisk weather would have the deer out soaking up the sun and trying to warm up.  No such luck.  We covered 3 ridges and never saw a live deer, even though we cut tracks all across the top of the ridges.  I followed Rich to the highway and saw him off and returned to camp after checking some lower lying ridges that another hunter had recommended. 

I have to admit my spirits were at their lowest point so far in the hunt as I faced a lonely cold night alone.  As I hiked back to the truck I saw the “fingernail moon” (as my three year old daughter refers to it) in the western sky with the remnants of the red sunset. I snapped a photo and it brightened my outlook for the next day

We moved over a few ridges that morning to glass new country. During the night, the cold wind picked up and the gusts about blew us off the hill. We decided to drop into the timber and hunt through the trees in the hopes of catching a buck in his bed. We hunted through the morning and the rain started about 10 pm. We heard deer below us, and even bumped a few. But the ground was still to dry and noisy for effectively slipping through the woods. We arrived at the vehicles at noon as the rain began in earnest.

We surmised the bucks would be deeper in the canyons so we drove down to a lower access point some 1500 feet lower. The wind and rain picked up in intensity, as we arrived at the trailhead. Right away we spotted a spike buck that let us get to 60 yards in the wide open before he trotted off into the manzanita. We skirted the edges of the trees and brush as we dropped further in the canyon. Our afternoon hike took us another 2000 feet lower in just a mile and a half.

We turned around with 2 hours of light left, and used nearly an hour and a half of it to climb back out of the hole. We spotted the same spike, and two does and fawns on the way back to the truck. They were headed to the small piece of private land where a fork horn buck fed with another couple of does. Our shivering vigil in the saddle the does came through was uneventful except for the thermoregulatory challenge of being sweat soaked from a strenuous climb and rain and wind beaten on the outside.

We crawled into the truck, fired up the heater and began the four mile climb up to the main road. At the higher elevation, the rain turned to snow and we put the truck in 4×4 for the last 4 miles to get back to camp. It was a slow drive with the flakes being blown across the road and the wipers trying to keep up with the flurries.

What awaited us at camp was three inches of wet snow and a collapsed dome tent. Rich suddenly had to leave the next day. (He had mentioned that earlier in the week, but it became a joke in regards to the timing) After some pictures and cussing, we straightened it up. At that point the snow has stopped and it just got cold. Rich would hunt with me the next morning before he headed home.

The next morning we were back on our rock to catch that buck we had seen the night before, but he didn’t read the script, and never showed up.  We spent the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon putting boots to the ground and still hunting down into the timbered canyons that dropped off of the open ridges.  We spooked some deer, but never had any shot opportunities.  Once we hit the creek, the steep vertical walls made hiking up and out a physical challenge that had us seriously wondering “do we WANT to kill a buck down here?  We finished up the evening glassing the backside of the ridge we had spotted the buck on the night before.

 The only action we had that evening was a little buck some bear hunters had kicked out of a thicket above us, and a one of the hunters who walked past us twice, before he spotted us.  We both silently giggled at his appearance as he was carrying two rifles.  When he glimpsed us he remarked “NO BEAR, NO PIG!” loudly in broken English. 

Clearly our evening ambush was a bust.  Another long walk back to the truck in the dark by head lamp was followed by a hot meal before we turned in.

We awoke before daylight and drove in the dark to a jumping off point a few miles from camp. Trying to find our way to our intended glassing point in the dark proved to be tough though and we ended up 3 finger ridges from our intended point. We lucked out that the previous morning’s fog was gone. We still were able to look over some country and saw some does and fawns. I elected to hike down a ridge where I found my first REAL Blacktail scrape.

At the same time Rich had spotted a real good 4×4 buck with eye guards. “A real wall hanger” he said. He was with about eight does across the draw about 300 yards away. When Rich tried to rattle to coax him in his direction the buck bolted in the opposite direction. Rich was unable to relocate him the rest of the morning.

We met up at noon after I climbed out of the hole I had hiked into. We both were pretty drained, but optimistic since 1) Rich had seen a buck; and 2) I had found a scrape, proof that the rut was on or at least picking up. We spent that evening glassing from the rock we had intended to be at that morning. At five minutes after shooting light, a buck fed out 400 yards away but all we could do was watch as he fed on the small open patch. Two does fed one finger over as well. Besides it being too late, the wind was wrong for a stalk. We hiked out of there back up the hill in the dark with our headlamps on.

My odyssey began with two weekends of getting to know the area I would be hunting. (see the Scouting trip part 1 and Part 2 columns earlier). From these trips I was hopeful that after a two week break from hunting, the rut was going to kick in and we would be seeing bucks out cruising for does during the day. There were plenty of rifle hunters telling stories about the “one that got away”.

The trip began with a five hour drive right after work Friday night. I had loaded everything I would need in old “Mighty Whitey” , the 2001 GMC crew cab pickup. That included the 12×12 Alaknak II, a borrowed tent woodstove and 4 coolers. The coolers were designated “Frozen Food”, “Cold Food” “Drinks and Ice”, and “Cool food”. I had enough to feed four people for nine days or more. Of course I had hunting clothes and gear as well. I arrived in camp at 11:00 pm to a foggy, misty drippy site where Rich, my hunting partner had already erected a dome tent. Without unpacking more than my sleeping bag and pad, we sacked out and listened to the drips hitting the roof of the tent.

Day 1 , Saturday

We hunted right out of camp on Saturday morning. We still hunted and did some rattling through the scrub oak that lined the side of the hills. I caught a quick glimpse of a buck slipping away one ridge over, but we were not able to verify if it was a buck or not. I’m betting it was. We hunted until noon, then returned to set up camp.

By 3 pm camp was set. Rich’s dome tent was the cooking station, and my 12×12 tent with woodstove was the sleeping quarters and dining area. We slipped out for an uneventful evening hunt and to make a plan for the next morning. We had not anticipated the Quail hunters in the area would be so prevalent, and the echoes of gunshots reverberated through out the countryside. We also saw some bear hunters in the area.

For the next 10 days or so I’ll be in Northern California trying to fill my Late Season Archery tag.

Looks like conditions will be close to ideal for finding rutting blacktail bucks.  Friends have been seeing bucks with the does for the last two weeks. 

The bucks are winding up the rut around Sonoma and Marin County.  This buck was keeping an eye on a doe not far from my home.  I hope I can find one this “in love” this week.  If one would pose like this at 25 yards as well would be GREAT!