17 minute read
Tools of the Trade
YOUR COLD-BARREL BET
A BULLET SHOCKS A BORE LIKE HOT WATER ON FROST-BITE. AND NOW THERE’S FOULING. WHERE WILL THE NEXT SHOT GO?
BY WAYNE VAN ZWOLL
Low scope magnification yields brighter images than high when you’re aiming at rams in the shadows.
The week had brought snow above the Stikine, and long days in a small tent as storms lashed the peaks. Just a day and a half remained of the hunt when skies cleared and Terrell McCombs, with his two guides, struggled up toward a bedded ram. “The steep slope and deep snow made every step feel like 30-pound weights were strapped to each leg.” Then, suddenly, the animal rose and climbed. “I had wanted a shot under 300 yards, but there was no hope for that now. I flopped [in] the snow and grabbed Rod’s pack for a rest.” Heaving from the hard climb, he called for the range as the ram neared oblivion on ridge-rest. “It’s 476 yards,” came the reply. Ignoring urgings to fire quickly, McCombs “took two more slow, deep breaths…. Every ounce of concentration was on the ram….” He crushed the trigger.
In B&C’s 14th edition of its alltime records book, published in 2017, the 13-year-old Stone’s ram killed by McCombs in 2007 ranks 70th. Of the top 100 Stone’s, just four had been shot in the 21st century.
One long shot, prone over a pack after a demanding climb, has ended enough sheep hunts to root itself as the typical finish. But not all hunts
deliver a shot. And many rams have dropped inside the point-blank range of rifles popular a century ago. Before the Depression, lever-action Winchesters felled untold numbers of sheep, from Sonora into British Columbia. Charles Sheldon, an accomplished hunter and first on record to take all four varieties of North American wild sheep, favored a London-built 6.5x54 Mannlicher. It wore a Lyman 1-A cocking piece sight.
Jack O’Connor started sheep hunting in the 1930s with a 7x57 Mauser under a Lyman 1-A. This outfit toppled his first desert ram, at “not over 50 yards.” After WW II, optical sights and fast, flat-flying bullets made longer shots practical, though veteran sheep hunters avoided them. “I have shot more rams at under 200 yards than I have at over 200,” wrote O’Connor late in life. “Probably more under 150 yards.”
Bob Hagel, a rifle enthusiast and an able marksman, didn’t send bullets over hill and dale toward rams many leagues distant. On one hunt in Alaska he spied an outstanding Dall’s ram, with others, across 600 yards of glacial ice. He had a scoped .300 Winchester but didn’t consider shooting. “All I could do was sit there … and wait for the rams to make the next move.” He endured a cold hour on the ice in stiff wind before they climbed out of sight. Hagel committed three more demanding hours to a stalk that kept him crosswind and put him above the sheep. Bellying the final yards across a shale slide, he was pinned by a young ram. Another uncomfortable, frustrating wait. Then, suddenly, the big ram “bounded up over the boulders … 100 yards away.” He collapsed at the report.
Long-time outfitter and worldtraveled hunter Jack Atcheson had little use for long shots. He was always keen to get closer, and pleased when by good fortune his chance came at spitball range. He wrote of “an absolutely beautiful afternoon” hunting ibex in Iran. As he eased “around the corner of the narrow ledge between two stunted junipers, there was an old ram lying in front of me about 30 feet away. He was immediately on his feet and running. But I was ready. Although I seldom shoot at running game I felt that at this distance I could make a good shot—and I did.”
OK. So hunters of yesteryear closed in on rams. What if, with time running out on a sheep hunt you’re unlikely to repeat, you spot a distant ram and there’s no practical approach?
A range-finder divulges hold-over. Your scope affords fine aim. Your bullet flies at Mach 3.
And you miss.
You know not where the bullet went. Your guide, bino to brow, mumbles: “Couldn’t tell. Sorry.”
Above: The Winchester 54 that gave Wayne this target was built a century ago. Accurate enough for any hunt! Below: Slim iron-sighted carbines, easy in hand and scabbard, have killed many bighorn rams in steep places.
If you called a good shot and the beast is still there, you hold the same and fire again. This time, your guide earns his keep. “Five-o’clock. Not much.” Your third shot is ready; the ram is nervous. You nudge the crosswire higher, farther into the 9-o’clock breeze. Not much. What on earth does that mean? No time to ask now. You halve the correction, lock your lungs and squeeze….
By this time, a killing hit can come as a surprise. You’ve lost confidence in rifle, load, optic, your guide, even your marksmanship. You start contemplating variables that had once seemed inconsequential— things which you’re now ready to indict for criminal mischief.
Things like rising bore temperature on the follow-ups, and increased fouling (primer and powder residue, lead and copper deposits).
You may have noticed the first shot from the clean, cold barrel of your rifle routinely lands apart from successive shots. Or that bullet holes “walk” or string, perhaps vertically, when on a hot day a few shots make the barrel uncomfortably warm to the touch. Do heat and fouling shift point of impact? How can anyone correct for a miss if the next bullet won’t go where the first did, relative to the sight picture?
“I’ve tried to confirm or deny that a group from a warm barrel will form apart from the first hole punched from a clean, cold barrel,” says friend and ace rifle-maker D’Arcy Echols. “That result is surely possible with a factory-stocked hunting rifle and a given factory load.” But he stops shy of predicting it. “Besides, a warm-barrel shot may still be good enough—especially when your targets are big game vitals the size of a basketball.”
Above: To ensure a stable platform, this glass- and pillar-bedded H-S Precision stock also has an alloy spine. Below: This Bergara bolt shows clean CNC work. Close-tolerance lock-up helps keep shots on the same path.
D’Arcy has spent years wringing fine accuracy from his Legend hunting rifles. “The receiver of a properly bedded big game rifle will be stress-free, unburdened by points of tension or pressure. Its barrel will be floated or mated to a forend that lets it vibrate and flex the same, shot to shot. The scope must also be stressfree in its mount.” He adds that a barrel stress-relieved by cryogenic treatment can also reduce the chance follow-up shots will stray from your first. “With good hunting loads in a high-quality, properly bedded rifle, I’ve yet to see a radical shift after first-round impact from a cold or even a cold oiled bore.”
Not all rifles meet Echols’ standards. I’ve watched shots from slim barrels hit farther and farther from the first, or wander erratically as the steel got hot. On a warm day, a frothy small-bore magnum fired quick-step can soon blister your hand. But you’ll seldom empty magazines lickety-split in T-shirt weather afield. Checking accuracy from the bench, I allow at least a minute between shots, action open. Having more than one rifle on tap lets me rest each barrel often without wasting time.
Its weight and shape have something to do with how a barrel reacts to heat. The mass of heavy barrels acts as a heat sink, and helps it resist expansion. The bore of any barrel heats before the exterior surface. Thick barrel walls slow heat transfer. As slim barrels heat faster, they cool faster too. Ditto for carbon fiber barrels, though I’ve been told heat retention and dissipation depend on weave angles and on the resin used. Carbon fibers conduct heat longitudinally and insulate “across grain.”
Wandering point of impact due to barrel heat hardly ever affects a hunt. Your first shot is usually the most important, and often the only one you’ll get. Bore temperatures for aimed second and even third shots will be little different than for the first. If like me you start hunting with a clean, lightly oiled bore, fouling after the first shot will change the bore surface. But given the size of game vitals and the ranges at which most game is killed, this change won’t leave your freezer empty. I use a “cold-and-clean” target in pre-hunt prep. Over several range sessions, I fire only the first shot at this target. Pretty conclusively, the resulting group, comprising shots only from a cold, clean bore, tells me where my first bullet will go.
So why do Benchrest competitors
mind barrel heat and fouling and other such variables? Because the level of accuracy required in that game is exceedingly high! A .23 knot fired in a Benchrest match is out of the running if other rifles are shooting “into the ones.” Even in smallbore prone competition, I fired twice offtarget after cleaning my rifle, so the bore surface would be as uniform as possible during the 40 record shots. A couple of lead .22 bullets at just under Mach 1 generate little heat or fouling; but when the key to winning is X-count, and Xs reward uniformity, shooters mind details.
Barrel-maker John Krieger has contended with barrel heat in shooting the National Match course at Camp Perry. The offhand stage of the NMC gives shooters 10 minutes to send 10 shots. But prone and sitting stages are much faster: 10 shots in 60 seconds, 10 in 70 seconds, respectively. Service-rifle barrels get hot! John hasn’t indicated to me that heating was a problem; but he made sure his barrels were fouled. “In fact,
Iron sights can deliver excellent accuracy, as here on 50-yard and 50-meter smallbore prone targets.
A long sight radius and a small aperture bring precise hits. This Mauser, by H&H, dates to the 1920s.
I fired fouling shots before I left for Perry, and didn’t clean the barrel all that week. I experienced no change in accuracy.” A hunter too, John says he fouls the barrel of his big game rifle before each trip.
As heat and fouling arrive together, it’s hard to tell if one or the other is responsible when groups open up. Both are unavoidable in rapid-fire events. But the level of fouling is easiest to regulate.
Shots that walk up the target face as the barrel warms, or rifles that join two bullet holes and leave a third adrift have caused shooters to babble incoherently in their sleep. But fretting is pointless. Having grown up
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Hunters now use powerful glass to aim as well as to find rams. But long shots are seldom necessary. The muzzle matters! It’s a bullet’s final contact with the rifle. Keep it clean and protected from nicks.
when 1 ½-minute accuracy was very good for a hunting rifle, I’m loath to invest much time or effort to bring groups under an inch. A 1 ½-minute rifle shoots tight enough to hit 6-inch targets at 400 steps, farther than I wish to fire at game. It’s also as tight as most hunters can hold most of the time afield. If you must tug bullets closer to each other on paper, check first the scope mount and action screws. Bore scrubbing to remove accumulated copper fouling can be useful, especially after salvos of leadfree bullets. Changing loads is worth a try before you switch out the scope or tinker with the rifle.
More important than tending to minor enigmas, you’ll practice shooting into Frisbee-size targets from field positions at ranges from 50 to 300 yards. Include follow-up shots, at a brisk cadence up close. A rifle’s bore condition is a variable only when you fire more than one shot to kill, and only when a small change in point of impact matters (at extreme range or when the bullet must thread a tiny opening). More important variables that are always variables: distance, wind and light conditions, the beast’s presentation, vertical shot angle —also your mental focus and body position, your hammering heart and heaving chest, your muscle spasms and joint wobbles.
I’d be surprised to learn of a wild sheep missed or lost because a warm barrel threw a follow-up bullet to a different place than the first. Most misses and crippling hits result from poor marksmanship, and from shots fired when the hunter has little chance of killing.
I trailed well back as the couple scrambled up the spine to earn a shot at the ram from above. The slope was steep, a jumble of rock with no trail. Their final yards across a boulder field spooled out slowly. They couldn’t afford a misstep.
I eased up behind them quietly as she bellied onto the rock. Her husband was a good coach, slow to move and ever on her flank, eyes often to his glass, reassuring hand on her shoulder. There’s no hurry. The seeking is over. Relax. Focus. Pause if you must. She did. I could see the tension in her neck, in her tentative movements. A bullet’s flight from a ram, the world holds its breath for you. You feel it waiting.
I relaxed for her, rolling silently from my knees onto my side against the ruddy basalt. It had sun on its skin. The sky was blue. The mountain smelled of sage.
The report caromed to a stop in the boulders. A clatter of rock. The bolt snicking shut. Again! If the first looked good, hold the same! Aim carefully. Crush…WS
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