Jessica’s New Rifle

Jessica passed her Hunter Education class a few years ago and we decided that she was finally physically big enough to get her a hunting rifle. Her older brother and sister got new guns when they were younger than her, but Jessica stayed shorter longer than they did so she had problems reaching the grips on standard length long guns. She already had a shotgun and .22 so it was finally time for her to move up to hunting big game. I taught Hunter Safety for over twenty-five years and was a police handgun, rifle, and shotgun instructor for over twenty years so firearm safety was instilled into her since she could crawl so I only needed to cover the safety location on the new rifle itself.

I researched many different rifles and calibers before finally choosing one for her. The rifle had to be lightweight but yet be a smaller caliber that didn’t recoil much. I preferred a bolt action with a detachable box magazine personally for hunting so I kept my search to those. Rifle caliber was a bigger challenge as it had to be sufficient to hunt elk, bear, moose, black bear, and possibly a brown bear without excessive recoil in the lightweight rifle. I took many of the short magnums off the list because of recoil effectively leaving the choice of a 7mm-08 or a .308 Winchester. The 7mm-08 did not offer bullet choices above 175 grains so that was a concern for me should heaven forbid that she ever has to deal with a charging bear. The .308 has a wide range of bullets available from 110 grains to 220 grains so it was the winner. Some of the new powders allow it to almost reach .30-06 ballistics so it definitely met the minimum standards for bear that I set.

As luck would have it, we started looking for her rifle right at the beginning of the great Kung Flu hoarding, but the one and only local store that sells guns had a few .308s to choose from. Jessica did not go into town with us so it was up to me to choose which one she would like the best. I was hoping to find a Remington Model Seven originally, but I knew that wouldn’t happen as Remington Arms had gone out of business. I tried the actions on the in-stock .308s and several felt like they were full of sand so I decided on the Mossberg Patriot with a black synthetic stock. The action was smooth and it already had a scope on it so I won’t have to worry about upgrading a scope for a few years. The weight wasn’t excessive and the length of pull was just a hair shorter than the standard so it was just a little long now, but she probably wouldn’t ever outgrow it. Ammunition was still very scarce so I bought a box of bullets to reload the .308 cases that I had at home. In hindsight I am glad that we got it when we did because the great 2020 gun and ammunition shortage started a week later and everything sold out with no backorder options.

We got home and Jessica came out to help us pack groceries in as usual so she really didn’t look at the back seat of the pickup. After we got the groceries out, I asked Jessica to grab the box out of the back seat of the pickup so she grabbed that and said, “Looks like dad got another gun” as she packed it in the house. After she walked through the front door, I asked her if she wanted to open the box. That’s when the light switch clicked on and she figured it out. After that she quickly opened the box and smiled ear to ear. It was only about 1 ½” too long for her so it wouldn’t take long for her to grow into it. She looked it over and I could tell that she could not wait to shoot it. She had learned how to reload ammunition a few years ago so I gave her the box of bullets and said that she would have to load some ammunition first. She happily agreed to those terms and loaded up some ammo. I had an old set of .308 dies that I found at a garage sale years ago so we lucked out on that.

The next day I got the bore sighter out and used that to get her rifle roughly sighted in so that it would be on the target to start with. The fine sighting in would have to be done with actual shooting so that would have to wait. We went out to the logging roads so she could try it out finally. We are very blessed to live only a few minutes away from shooting areas so that is convenient. We found a spur road that offered a good shooting spot so we stopped there. Jessica started on large targets so we could get the scope dialed in before she moved to smaller targets. It only took a couple of shots to get her rifle sighted in so she tried her skills on smaller targets like the ends of pop cans and bottled waters. She was clearly extremely happy with her new rifle so I definitely made the right rifle and caliber choice.

Once we got home, she got the gun cleaning kit and oil out so she could clean her rifle on her own. I did let her use a Bore Snake to help clean the bore so that sped up the process. I have no doubt that she will take care of her new rifle and it should be putting dinner on the table for years to come.