The tale of my very first Handi-Rifle
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:35 am
I have a brother-in-law who considers himself a deer hunter. And he hunted with a Handi-Rifle chambered in .270 Winchester. A very capable deer rifle it was! Then he was bitten by the bowhunting bug and suddenly considered shooting deer with a scoped rifle as almost "too easy" and bow hunting was where it was at for the sheer challenge. Three years of subsequent hunting with bow only netted him...
... zero deer. Na-da. Zip.
So he decided to start back using a rifle. And by that time he had upgraded to a beautiful brand new Remington rifle also in .270 Winchester. One crisp and cool autumn morning he drove up my driveway with that new scoped rifle, smiling proudly and saying that he needed to sight in his prized rifle in preparation for the upcoming gun season. We pulled out some targets and my shooting rest and he got the rifle zeroed fairly quickly.
That's when he made some offhand mention if I would please spread the word at my work that his old Handi-Rifle was for sale. He produced it from behind the seat of his Ford pickup to show me it was in pretty good condition except for one deep scratch in the forend. It had probably seen, at most, two boxes of factory Soft-Point ammunition in its lifetime. It came with a fixed 4x Nikon scope Made in Japan, and also had a 12-ga factory matched barrel as well. So I asked what he was asking for it all so I could tell my co-workers.
He lowered his head in thought for a second, his face hidden by the bill of the Realtree camo cap he was wearing, and when he looked up at me he quietly said....
"Fifty bucks."
Thirty seconds later I owned that rifle, with scope and two barrels.
I'll be posting up some threads over in Ammunition/Reloading about my quest for the most accurate handload I could produce for MY Handi-Rifle. It's been a fun ride!
And I'm long past feeling even the slightest bit guilty.....
... zero deer. Na-da. Zip.
So he decided to start back using a rifle. And by that time he had upgraded to a beautiful brand new Remington rifle also in .270 Winchester. One crisp and cool autumn morning he drove up my driveway with that new scoped rifle, smiling proudly and saying that he needed to sight in his prized rifle in preparation for the upcoming gun season. We pulled out some targets and my shooting rest and he got the rifle zeroed fairly quickly.
That's when he made some offhand mention if I would please spread the word at my work that his old Handi-Rifle was for sale. He produced it from behind the seat of his Ford pickup to show me it was in pretty good condition except for one deep scratch in the forend. It had probably seen, at most, two boxes of factory Soft-Point ammunition in its lifetime. It came with a fixed 4x Nikon scope Made in Japan, and also had a 12-ga factory matched barrel as well. So I asked what he was asking for it all so I could tell my co-workers.
He lowered his head in thought for a second, his face hidden by the bill of the Realtree camo cap he was wearing, and when he looked up at me he quietly said....
"Fifty bucks."
Thirty seconds later I owned that rifle, with scope and two barrels.
I'll be posting up some threads over in Ammunition/Reloading about my quest for the most accurate handload I could produce for MY Handi-Rifle. It's been a fun ride!
And I'm long past feeling even the slightest bit guilty.....