M03Fan has been in touch, with news of a successful, safe and ethical hunt, this time in slightly warmer weather. From his previous Mauser M03 hunting report, winter in New Hampshire looks downright scary! I hope you enjoy his story. Regards, Rick.
New Hampshire is home to around 5,000 black bears. The neighboring state of Maine has an additional estimated 35,000 bears, so there is no shortage of them in the Northeastern United States. The adult black bears in this area usually weigh around 100-300 pounds, however fully-grown older males can exceed 500 pounds. They are quick and agile and skilled tree climbers. While they might look cute and cuddly, they surely are nothing to be messing with.
Bear season runs roughly for the month of September and the easiest way to hunt them is over bait. Baiting requires a special permit and setting up the bait station starts several weeks before the hunt so that the animals get used to it.
A friend of mine has a hunting lodge in New Hampshire’s Great North Woods, with tens of thousands of acres of abutting protected forests and managed timberland. It’s always a good time going up there.
Even the bedsheets in the hunting lodge are in camo pattern!
My Mauser M03 has two barrels; the primary one being in .308 Win, but some time back I also bought a barrel in the classic .375 H&H Magnum just for fun. The recoil of the .375 is around 37 foot pounds, which is over double the recoil energy of a .308 (around 18 foot pounds), so “fun” is a relative term. Each barrel has its own dedicated scope. The Mauser M03 system allows for easy barrel changes and it holds zero perfectly between swaps.
Figuring the .375 barrel needs some actual use in the field, it’s time for bear hunting! A 300 grain Norma Oryx should to the job handily.
Go big or go home!
Even though black bears are not as aggressive as brown bears, grizzly or polar bears, they are surely not happy to be shot at, and a wounded black bear is no fun to be around. Hence the safest way to hunt is from a tree stand.
View from the tree stand, with Mauser M03 rifle and backpack hooked onto the safety rail.
I’d been waiting for a few hours and was sitting messing around with my phone taking pictures when I suddenly saw something black moving in on my left. Finally, a bear! It’s truly amazing how such a large beast can move so quietly though the woods.
Ready to shoot! Picture taken seconds before the bear moved in from the left.
The bear was very suspicious, sticking its nose in the air sniffing several times and constantly looking around. I don’t think it saw or heard me, but it knew something unusual was up. It must have taken at least 10 minutes to move maybe 30 yards. But in the end, the temptation of an easy meal was too much. It went for the bait and I had the bear perfectly in the crosshairs.
One shot with the .375 behind the shoulders and the bear dropped immediately. It was probably dead before it hit the ground.
It can be lot of work dragging game back to the road, however a game sled makes it so much easier.
After having registered the kill with the game warden, it’s off to the butcher shop for processing. The pelt goes to the taxidermist and in about a year from now I’ll be picking up a nice bear rug!
A Mauser M03 system with 308 Win and 375 H&H barrels and Leica scopes. Ed - very nice!
No, I haven't been to Africa recently. But a slice of African dangerous game hunting came to me yesterday.
In the last few posts, spread out over a few weeks in real life, I've been dealing with a large mob of big pigs. All of the action has been in one paddock that has a forest backing on to it, giving the pigs perfect shelter. The paddock is connected to another, even bigger, via an open gate, both populated with a herd of Angus cows. Forty three of them, all black and quite curious.
I spent from dawn 'til dusk positioned in the middle of the paddock waiting for the pigs to appear. The fog rolled in and out several times and didn't properly clear until midday, after which time I flew the drone around other parts of the farm a couple of times. Nothing to see. However, given the reliability of this mob, I remained confident that they'd turn up. Well, the ones still standing, that is.
When the sun set and the strong shadows along the forest edge dissipated I was able to observe two wedge tailed eagles cautiously and progressively approach a pair of pigs I'd shot a few days ago. These are huge birds and it's curious how they'll take ten minutes working their way slowly towards a carcass they've already made a start on, constantly looking in all directions, especially at me in my Landcruiser a hundred and fifty metres away. But once settled they had a good feed; ham off the bone, no less.
There wasn't much light left and I was beginning to think I'd been stood-up. I stepped out of the driver's seat to get a better look at the eagles with my binoculars resting over the hood, but before settling took a look all around the paddock, wanting to confirm where the cows were. Earlier in the day they decided to come and check me out and surrounded the vehicle. Some came within feet of the driver's side window; others were sniffing the car or licking the front number plate. A quick toot of the horn made them jump backwards in a most comical way. They eventually sidled off and left me in peace.
The cows were scattered along the south-eastern edge of the paddock. As I scanned from left to right over their broad distribution I saw the movement of smaller lumps in the gap between the last two. Binoculars - yep, it's the pigs! They'd pulled a swifty on me and came out of the forest four hundred metres away from their usual check-in point. The light was getting dim and they were busy rooting around in the soft ground so I decided to walk up to them. They probably wouldn't notice me.
I stopped when I was a hundred metres away then risked a sideways move to increase the angle between the pigs and the closest cow beyond them. Once I was satisfied with the background situation I cocked my Mauser M03 and raised it to my shoulder. After a day of mostly sitting quietly in the car, this walk of three hundred metres in the cold air had got my heart and breathing going, along with the excitement I guess. I wasn't happy with the steadiness of the crosshair, so I changed to that stance with the left elbow resting on the hip, with thumb and two fingers extended and supporting the trigger guard and magazine bottom. You know the one. It was steadier, but not rock solid. It felt like the shot was good but the biggest boar took off like it was fresh out of the factory.
Reload! Rifle to shoulder. Swing. Lead. Fire! Thump and tumble. No doubt about that one. Before moving I stopped to pick up the ejected case and then pursued the gang of mid sized pigs that had almost reached the forest. Sometimes they return if a sow has been left behind. But it was a big boar that I'd hit and he was a cranky bastard who'd been bullying them around. They didn't come back. What happened instead was most interesting.
The boar had squealed up a storm when he went down, as pigs do, for the slightest reason, or for good reason. He was quiet and lying still when I approached but then jumped up and made a wobbly charge at me. I hadn't refreshed the chamber since the last shot but soon fixed that. Another 150 grainer in what the police refer to as centre-of-mass didn't make any difference. He was getting closer. A third hit (or was it the fourth?) this time in the middle of the head didn't make a whole lot of difference either. After a few more steps the boar did pause for a think though, which I'd say went along the lines of, 'Yeah. Nah. I think I'll have a bit of a rest now.' He stopped coming at me and sagged slowly to the ground. I reloaded just in case.
A charging boar stopped with a Mauser M03 in 270 Winchester.
Holy cow! That was a bit more exciting than usual. And it wasn't over. I'd forgotten about the cows. As I was standing there, catching my breath, with earplugs and earmuffs protecting my hearing, the herd of cows gathered behind me. They'd watched the whole thing, which triggered deeply ingrained genetic coding. These Angus cows were all Cape Buffalo, in their hearts. They were not happy with me. They formed a half-circle around me and were lowering and tossing their heads, mooing and approaching closer and closer, until they formed a shoulder-to-shoulder wall less than ten metres away. At that point I remembered a video where I'd seen the same behaviour from my cows' buffalo cousins.
I had no choice but to do the same as Ian Harford's professional hunting guide. I went bananas at the cows, yelling, jumping, waving arms and charging at them. They broke and started running and I did too, heading for the Landcruiser. The cows formed up and came after me and three or four times I had to double back and charge at them, which served to scatter those that were closest. They herded back together and charged parallel with me, with some eyeballing and swerving at me. I swung at them a few times and yelled some more to keep them away. By the time I made it the 300 metres to the 'cruiser they were charging past it on the other side and then away into the paddock. They respected the Landcruiser - big white metal thing with noisy horn.
Phew! Lesson learned - don't shoot pigs on foot in the middle of a herd of empathetic Cape Buffalo wannabes.
I saw my first mobile phone in 1987. Its owner was a young real estate agent who couldn't stop telling a group of us at a weekend lunch how incredibly useful it was, along with how easy it was to carry around in its own briefcase. His stories of closing deals from the side of the road were amusing, but I couldn't see a need for such a device in my own life. I remember him saying it cost $8000. That was part of my reason for not needing one.
I had a similar experience when digital cameras came along. I was making good pocket-money at sporting events with my film cameras and was determined not to switch to digital until it satisfied all three of being better, cheaper and more convenient. I had to wait a bit, but we got there. Looking back on that makes me snort with laughter.
And so it has been with drones. Year after year I talked with a property owner about how much I looked forward to flying a dawn patrol around his farm, to find exactly where the pigs are. How many times had I walked down this valley or up that, in the freezing dawn light, while the pigs were laughing at me from somewhere else? Well, the technology is finally good enough. Putting my eyesight up in the sky is going to help me deal with their insanely good sense of smell. It'll even things up a bit. :-D
Unfortunately, drones can't do anything about how freaking cold it is on frosty, foggy mornings in some parts of Australia. You folk overseas keep hearing about how hot it is here. Not everywhere! Not all the time! The thing I've noticed about using a drone for scouting around farms is that it means I'm standing still for half an hour, outside in the breeze and usually in the shade so I can see the screen. With old fashioned hunting, you know the kind, walking for miles with a rifle over your shoulder, well, that keeps you warm!
Yesterday was my first time flying the Mavic 2 Pro when there's fog about. I've heard from airline pilots that they can land in light fog because they can see down through it. I discovered that pigs don't have bright runway lights pointing to where they are. It was a light fog in the distance when I took off but a pea-souper soon rolled over the paddocks. I pressed the auto-return-home button and after a short panic I had the Mavic and me back in the car, shivering.
I'd been sitting in there for a couple of hours, drinking hot chocolate and curled up trying to keep warm when I looked up from my smart phone once again. This time the fog was slightly clearer.
'Hang on, there's no Angus cattle in this paddock. What are those black lumps out there?'
Binoculars. Holy cow, those are some big pigs! There must have been some tasty grubs in the soil or something - they stayed put while I unlocked a gate and slowly drove 400 metres closer. I turned the 'Cruiser side on to make a good rest over the hood (also a warm one!), then switched off. They noticed the sudden silence, but didn't run. I soon had two sandbags supporting a Mauser M03, making adjustments to get the two closest and biggest pigs lined up. The range was at least 200 metres; perhaps 250. The Zeiss Victory HT scope was already set for 200. I anticipated that the first shot from my 270's clean barrel would print slightly high. It hadn't been fired for six months.
The shot was steady and felt good but the boar I'd aimed at, along with all the other pigs, started running at full speed. I watched a gang of piglets trying to keep up with one of the sows, then switched back to following the boar. I waited for it to pause at the fence but it barrelled straight through a large hole. Damn! Nothing! How deflating.
The fog had almost burned off when I moved the Landcruiser to a slight rise that was closer to the forest line, about 200 metres from the fence. I launched the Mavic with a new battery and once again was amazed at how quickly flying in a straight line gets the camera into a bird's eye position over the best parts of the farm. Nothing to see out there though. On the return journey I flew along the tree-line where I'd seen the pigs earlier. One of them was back! It must have wriggled under the fence while I was staring at the screen. The drone went straight over it, 40 metres up. It reacted to the noise and I caught a glimpse of it heading back into the forest. By the time I'd landed - nothing.
Now that the sun was out I found that waiting to see if any of the pigs would make another appearance was a less shivery affair. I wasn't confident, but at least I wasn't freezing anymore. An hour later the same boar I'd seen with the drone, the lesser of the two big boars from before, walked out from the blackberries and stalked behind the fence, looking for a suitable hole. The sandbags were already on the hood so I only had to lift my Mauser from the rear seat and settle it into place. The boar walked almost directly towards it. When it got to 120 metres away it suddenly turned and ran back to the fence. It was probably the noise of my 270 firing that made it do that.
Not another miss?! Surely not? After a short while I thought, 'Let's see what we can find in the forest with my drone.'
He made it through the belt of blackberries at the edge of the forest before conking out.
The smaller of two large boars knocked over with a Mauser M03 - 270 Win.
Once I'd struggled through the thorns I headed down towards where the first boar had blasted through the fence. I found this.
And then this.
He went in here. I didn't.
But we'll call that first shot I fired a true one after all. Good rifles, these Mausers. :-) Which could come in handy when I bump into the critter that did this - with its antlers.
I don't think I've shared this video before. The shooter (not me!) is very familiar with his beautiful Mauser M03, a Deluxe or Arabesque model by the looks of it. I have a Deluxe too, but unfortunately mine doesn't make the whoosh noise each time I raise it to my shoulder. Pity. I'd quite like that. Enjoy! :-) Rick.
