Big Deer Blog

Around a big field or out on the plains, it might be calm or just a slight breeze where you’re sitting and glassing, but the wind might be blowing a near gale out where a buck is walking or feeding 200 to 350 yards away. “Glass the leaves or weeds around a deer, whatever you can, to determine if you need to factor in the wind on your shot,” says Texas rifle maker and crack game shot Lex Webernick. But don’t worry about remembering some fancy wind-doping equation. “If the wind is blowing 5 or 10 mph and the grass or weeds are moving slightly, hold dead-on a deer,” says Lex. “But if you’re having trouble keeping the cap on [...]

Introduced by Winchester Repeating Arms in 1895 as the main chambering for their Model 1894 rifle, the .30-30 was the first sporting cartridge loaded with smokeless powder. The original .30-30 Winchester load featured a 160-grain bullet driven at almost 2,000 feet per second, a huge step up in performance as compared to the black powder cartridges of the day. It didn’t take long for hunters across America to fall in love with this revolutionary rifle/cartridge combo, which shot flat and hit and dropped game hard. The .30-30 quickly became the go-to for deer and bear at short to moderate range. In the 20th Century, Marlin Firearms began chambering lever-action rifles in .30-30, and in 1948 the gunmaker introduced the venerable [...]