So You're Looking for a new Yute Rifle, Huh?

I'm going to throw out some ideas on youth rifles for deer hunting. Maybe we'll get a conversation going. Maybe not. This is just like the previous thread about deer rifles. It is about time to be thinking of what Junior's going to be shooting this year for yute season. You know: yutes. The yutes go out with their little yute rifles and shoot da deer wit dem.

Anyone who wants to go out and get a new store-bought youth deer rifle for their kid is welcome to. There are a lot of them out there-- short stocked, short barreled rifles in classic yute offerings like .243 WIN. If you have the scratch and the will to do this, by all means do. If you plan on making it the official family first-rifle and pass it down from young-un to young-un, it will probably pay for itself.

I did not go this route. For one thing, I did not have a lot of money to throw at dedicated yute rifles. I had two sons who wanted into the sport. They were big kids. They were going to be starting at 10 and outgrowing their rifles by 12 or 13. I wanted an interim fix.

The most important issue with picking a yute rifle is recoil. If the yute flinches, it's all over. That doesn't mean that you should go out and buy the rifle with the least recoil. It means that you just need to be concerned. It means it might be a good idea to start the yute out shooting a .223 Rem or something of that ilk to get them accustomed to the functioning of a centerfire rifle and gradually build up to a reasonable amount of recoil. It may mean waiting an extra year. At these ages, it is not as important to take a deer. Kids just want to be out hunting with you. Pulling the trigger is not as important as you think. Do not force the issue. The important thing is to go slowly. A lot of the recoil problem is solved through proper stock fit. However, this is a moving target. What fits them at 7 does not usually fit at 10.

Selection of venue is also very important. A yute out in the woods, sitting on a stump and shooting at deer offhand requires a rifle that can be shot by the yute offhand. If the yute is going to be up a tree in a stand with a shooting rail, he can be shooting a much heavier rifle. If he will be shooting off the sill of the window of a hunting blind or shooting off sticks or shooting out of the back of the barn off a folding card table, it is a considerably different than hefting a rifle and keeping it steady while unsupported. My recommendation is towards fixed positions. I weaned both kids on hunting blinds and then moved them to buddy-style ladder tree stands with fixed rails as soon as they were able to handle the height.

There are a lot of things that can fill the role of a yute rifle, given a little ingenuity. A 20 GA semi-auto shotgun with a skeet barrel is a great first yute gun. 20 GA slug is a potent deer killer close in. So is a Mini-14 or a Mini-30 or an SKS. You just need to be creative. Unless the yute is shooting offhand, you can get them a heavier rifle and let them use a prop. Both of my sons started with a Marlin 336 in 30-30 WIN. It had a naturally short stock. It had an external hammer that let Dad know the state of the action at a glance. It has been an ideal yute rifle for my kids. #2 son graduated to an M1 Garand after 2 season. What's a 12 year old doing with a 10 lb rifle? Easy-- bigger rifle, less recoil. It did not matter that it weighed so much carrying it out to the stand. Where it mattered was that between the weight and the gas-operated action, the Garand is a pussycat to shoot.

So what about all these marginal cartridges I mentioned: 223 REM? 7.62X39? Yes, they are okay, but you have to be willing to limit the kid's range. Be thinking about extended bow-hunting ranges. Nail a deer with a 223 REM, a 7.62X39, a 44 Mag rifle, or some such round and that deer will go down-- provided the yute has made a good shot. Bad shots with any of these cartridges are going to get lousy results, but then they probably would have been lousy with a 30-06. These are not going to be beanfield rifles. For any yute rifle, be thinking about finding a venue that offers a 20-50 yard shot for the kid's first deer.

So what about semi-auto guns? Yes, they do offer a challenge for the supervising adult. However, there are a couple of tips I would recommend for any yute rifle. First, limit the number of rounds. My kids started with 3 rounds. That is the number of rounds I usually load as well. Sure, the magazine will hold 5, but after 3 shots you probably should take a break and re-think your strategy. With a semi, you might want to start the kid off with just 2 rounds. Honestly, I have had over a decade's experience with kids and rifles. Basic firearm safety is basic firearm safety. If the child cannot be trusted with a Mini 14 loaded with 5 rounds, he should not be trusted with any firearm. The other tips I can give you is fairly basic as well: Do not trust safeties. My kids started with a lever with three in the magazine. When the deer showed up, they worked the action and brought a round into the chamber. Unless it was showtime, my yutes never had a hot one up the spout.

So let's just say that I have been somewhat unconvincing. You don't want Junior out popping his first with your grouse gun and slugs. You want a yute rifle, but you don't want to spend a whole lot of money. Here is my advice: buy a used adult rifle in a caliber Junior can handle and buy a youth stock for it. Spend an extra $50 for an inexpensive Tupperware stock. It is quite a bit better in my mind than finding a youth rifle and then trying to find an adult-sized stock for it later on. My reasoning is simple: The yute is going to grow quickly, and be needing that adult stock in seemingly no time. In the interim, a little extra barrel will improve the stability of the rifle.

What was my ideal yute rifle? I tried a bunch of things. Most of them I have already described. Out of all of them, I liked the Marlin 336 in 30-30 Win as the starter rifle for both my yutes. As I mentioned previously, I liked the exposed hammer. It made it very easy to see what state the rifle was in. I liked the range; inside 50 yards 30-30 is a death ray. The kids liked the recoil and the fit of the stock. It was an adult rifle that fit both of them beginning at age 10. If I were not reloading, this would be my only pick.

My second choice for an ideal ersatz yute rifle was a Mosin Nagant M44 . This was a $60 bolt-action rifle. The rounds were that funky 7.62X54R, but I reload so it was no problem for me to buy the dies, some brass and some .311 bullets. I lopped off an inch of stock, removed the bayonet, and put on a recoil pad. The case of the 7.62X54R is like a rimmed version of a .308 Win with totally eccentric dimensions. Using H4895 powder I loaded up loads that mimicked a 30-30 WIN, a 300 Savage and a 308 WIN. All three were decent deer killers. I also bought a second stock for the M44 for about $25, so that I could restore this horribly bubba'd - up rifle when it's yute hunting days were through.

If you reload and you're interested in reloading for yutes, the Youth Load section of Hodgdon.com is a great reference. Basically H4895 is THE powder for youth loads. It is a medium-burning powder that can still give consistent velocities when loaded well below the maximum. The yute load listed for the 30-06 is roughly the same specs as a 30-30 WIN. If you can reload, seriously think about coupling this with my idea of the adult rifle and the additional yute stock. Buy junior a 30-06, or whatever you'd like to buy him for his 18th birthday. Order a Tupperware yute stock for it, and couple it with some nice yute loads from the Hodgdon site. One deer rifle, 10 years or so worth of use, and the kid walks away with his first adult deer rifle. You keep the yute stock at your house, start hitting the pawn shops to look for a good deal on something to fill it and begin dreaming of grand kids.

Kentucky does not have lower limit on age. I've once met up with a 3 yr old at the check-in station in Willow. He came over in his Power Ranger pajamas and his red rubber boots and eyed the deer in the back of my truck and announced, " Yep, that's a nice doe you've got. Mine was bigger."

To me, that's a little too young, but to each his own. I set limits on my kids.

1) They had to pass Hunter's Ed. Moose passed at 10. Angus passed at 8. I wanted them to feel the need to work for the privilege of hunting. I also wanted them to fully understand what we were up to. It also gave each kid a few years to be out with me and see how it all worked. Nowadays kids in KY cannot take Hunter's Ed until 12, but still can hunt without their card under close adult supervision.

2) They were going to shoot an adult rifle. I had big kids. I knew each kid was going to have a convergence point between their physical size, mental maturity, and will to hunt. It was all going to come together sometime between 8 and 11, and I just wanted let them hit that critical mass at their own pace.

Moose passed Hunter Ed when he was 10 and was out hunting the next weekend. Frankly, his maturity still needed some work. He was still falling asleep on the stand. That wasn't so bad. It was the snoring. Angus passed Hunter Ed at 8, but his rifle skills were still wanting. We worked at it, but he did not improve. It was maturity thing. To him, it was all bound up with an overall reluctance to move on in his life. He wanted to be a kid, and it took him a while to find his way through that. When he resolved those issues, his rifle skills improved tremendously.

In my experience, there is no sense hurrying things. It all seems like it can't wait, but then it is all over way too soon.

Deer Porn

A bunch of things have come together to force this issue to the fore at our house.

1) We started getting the Outdoor Channel again on our cable. It had been missing for several years.
2) I got a DVR.
3) It's been hot and muggy and I'm inclined to just stay in the house and watch TV.

I have not been watching deer porn or turkey porn all that much for quite a while. I was aghast.

1) The music is much louder than before. How do you keep the deer from hearing it? What does Rap, Trance and Heavy Metal have to do with deer hunting?
2) How is it that the camera guy always seems to get to the carcass ahead of everyone else and yet the hunter and his buddy always are surprised to find it? If it were me, I'd just stay behind the camera guy and follow him to the kill-- he's like a bloodhound.
3) Has the whole world thrown away their lever-action and bolt-action rifles and adopted TC single shots?
4) Since when did deer hunting become a team sport? Frankly I would not hunt with guys who wanted to compete at deer hunting. This isn't a fish derby.
5) If they would just shut everybody up and stop all the dang whispering, they'd probably not need all that super-duper camo and all those gadgets.
6) Somebody needs to get the editors of these half-hour masterpieces to a doctor and get them diagnosed with Adult ADD and get them on some Ritalin.
7) Somebody needs to tell the executive producers that the The Kay-Fabe lines they're using were stale in the WWF before Andre the Giant took his big dive. They need to hire writers that never worked for Vince McMahon.
8) Why is it that guys on TV always have to hop on the back of the animal grab it by the antlers and work the neck. It sort of reminds me of those horsey rides at Woolworth's. Put a kid on one, put in a nickel and they pull on those reins like the darn thing is really going to get up and go trotting around the store.
9) It used to be I could keep the kids quiet on Sunday morning by plunking them down with a pile of pancakes and putting on a deer or turkey DVD. Now even the youngest is getting bored and walking off.

On the plus side:

* I gotta say that it is good to see fewer tall fences in the kill shots.
* The racks don't seem to grow as much between the kill shot and the recovery shot anymore.
* Some of the old crowd have started staying out of the trees and they're keeping them back at the office. As a result, I'm seeing fewer heart/lung shots taken through the rump and a few fewer stupid comments.

On the .243 WIN for Deer

It always makes me cringe a little when folks start talking about .243 WIN. Mind you, there is nothing wrong about .243 WIN. It's one of the cartridges that's on my short list. It's just that. . . well, see if you can follow this.

I've been on hunting forums for about ten years now. There always some guy who is:

1) Passionately in love with the .243 WIN
2) Loves to take shoulder shots
3) Passionately against a whole slew of bullets.

One bullet blew up on him. Another pencilled through. This one works. This one doesn't-- vast experience with a number of bullets and he can write volumes on the relative properties of most premium bullets manufactured for the .243 WIN.

Does anyone else see this? Again, I'm not knocking 243 WIN or .243 hunters or .243 rifles. I'm not making sideways dings at 6mm or 25-06 either. It just goes back to what I was saying about there being just a small performance window in which to operate before you either A) exceed the operating limits of the lead and guilding metal of the bullet or B) exceed the operating limits of the deer and pass through the opposite side.

Now you come to the .243 WIN. Here is a rifle with lots of velocity and considerably less mass to deliver than its 308 WIN progenitor. The window between A and B has become somewhat compressed. Now a direct hit on a rib can cause perfect mushrooming , but a glancing deflection at short range can produce incredible forces on a bullet that rips it apart. How do you deal with that? A stronger bullet? A poly-carbonate tip? This is where the argument ensues. One guy swears by TSX, another thinks Inter-whatsitz work better. Then the Partition guys sounds off. Meanwhile, I'm sitting back with my low-budget .308 diameter Corelokts and Interlocks scratching my head. I don't have strong opinions about the bullets I choose. I've never needed them.

I saw a discussion a while back on the subject of elk. Thankfully it did not include the .243 WIN, but the bigger animal and bigger rifle ( I think it was 300 WIN MAG) just made the problem bigger. The fellow was trying to find a single bullet that would kill an elk equally well at short range and long range, but he required that both be accomplished with shoulder shots. His experience was that his bullet of choice was over-expanding at short range. Somebody asked why not save the shoulder shots for 200 yards and out and keep the close-in shots at the chest and be done with it. It was the classic example of what I'm driving at:

Bullet(x) + Distance(y) + Density(Z) = Perfect DRT shot

Bullet(x) + (1/2 X Distance(y)) + Density(Z) = Grenade

Bullet(x) + (2 X Distance(y)) + Density(Z) = Pencil


It doesn't even have to be a 2 stuck in there. It could be a 4 or an 8; you can put in any value you see fit. You can play with density instead of distance or change bullets or whatever. The problem is that as you get a smaller lighter bullet and drive it faster, the equation gets tighter.


. . . and I'm not saying .243 WIN is actually the culprit or that there is something wrong with hunting with a .243 WIN or anything like that. If somebody handed me a ..243 WIN Ruger International on my birthday like say. . . this one:



. . .I'd be leaving puddles (somebody can slip a hint to KYHillChick; my birthday's coming up). It just seems that when there IS trouble with bullet not performing well, it is usually coming from a small, fast bullet. .243 WIN is probably the most popular round in the small fast category, and this is why I see so many arguments over it. It is also right at the bottom of what a lot of states require as a minimum caliber.

What started this thread was the idea of putting something up for guys thinking about a new deer rifle. Normally folks don't think of me as being a source of advanced knowledge of rifle ballistics, so if you're looking here for advice you probably need something pretty basic. Here's my bottom line: keep to the middle way until you know enough about deer rifles to get adventurous. .243 WIN is not the middle of the road.

On Crossbows I

Lately I have been thinking about trying a crossbow. In Kentucky they're restricted to only part of the archery season, but allowed in all of it if you can get a medical waiver signed by a doctor. I'm probably eligible.

As I am getting into this, I find that there is tremendous opposition to crossbows. Some folks think of them as firearms.

Here's what I don't understand:

Management:
1) Archery in and of itself is a lousy tool for deer management. The states cannot depend on it. In Ohio, even with crossbows given equal access, the harvest in the 5 month season is about half or less of what two weeks of shotgun produces.
2) We're no longer talking about growing herds. States want to manage herds to keep the numbers from exploding. Something needs to done.

Hunting Experience:
3) You could be a bow hunter and go your entire career never seeing a crossbow hunter in the field. They're not a really popular weapon.
4) It's not a matter of noise-- they're not noisy like a shotgun or rifle. Deer don't run and hide when the crossbows take over the woods.
5) From 1) and 2) above, there are PLENTY of deer to go around now. It's not like crossbow hunters, given an opportunity, could wipe out the herd or even make a serious dent. Crossbows are just not all that efficient.
6) Safety. Is there any greater personal danger from crossbows? How many crossbow-related incidents are there?

Ethics:
6) You're a bowhunter. You like your method. You take pride in it. You take it seriously. Someone else is a crossbow hunter, and acts and feels the same way. What is the difference? What is the real difference to you?
7) Are there Fair Chase issues? Is a deer taken with a crossbow at 20 yards or 40 yards somehow not being given a fair chance compared to a modern compound.

. . . when it all comes down to it. What effect does crossbow have on archery hunting in general? Somebody please clue me in. I really wish someone would set me straight on this crossbow thing. I haven't bought one yet. I can probably get a medical waiver to hunt with one due to my shoulder and my eyes. Why shouldn't I hunt with one?

How do you say UP YURZ! in Farsi

A little while ago, I got the following message sent to me from a long lost friend on Facebook:

[quote] (copy pasted from Deborah) If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on...[/quote]

Normally I don't get political on this weblog, but I figure what the heck? These guys could use a little help, so now I'm twittering from Tehran.

But I didn't stop there . I went on Swearasaurus and found some lovely things to say to Ahmaninijad and the Ayatollah:


From my Twitter:



Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:Tu kooneh mollah chapeh beshi from yoono

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Goozidam too cheshmet from yoono

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Morde shooreto bebaran from yoono


Ahmadinejad:Kiret biyofteh! from yoono

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Man mishaasham rooyeh saret taa kaf koneh


I don't dare post the translations here, but you get the idea. If the original post is legit, that means that some Iranian security puke is going to have to wade through my Tweets. I hope he chokes.

Latest on Jagende Hutte II

We went back to work on the Jagende Hutte II this past weekend. I got the porch put on, the sheathing primed and the end walls framed. We'd have gotten more done, but the storms hit around 2 PM, and so we packed up early and left.

There's also some pics of Moose hitting a milk jug with a round of 30-06. Yowsa! Bev and Jeff, drummers from the Caledonians were out this Saturday, learning how to shoot a shotgun. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures of them, but I really fagged out and had to go in and rest. I still wasn't over that flu-bug that Angus gave me last week.

A New Forum

Here's a new forum I found. I happen to know the moderator. It's just getting started. You might want to check it out and give it a try.

New Deer and Turkey Hunting Forum