Custom Mauser ‘98 and the Cooper Model 52.

Many decades ago, a terrible forest fire ravaged thousands of mountainous acres in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina. What was once thick forest became country with an openness the likes of which many deer hunters living east of the Mississippi had never seen except in pictures. As a growth of new vegetation took hold and rapidly spread over the rich soil, the country eventually became better whitetail habitat than it had ever been before.

The result was a deer population that grew in leaps and bounds. And as each new generation of deer came along, they had more of a tendency to abandon deep forests and feed in vast open areas where they could be observed from a distance. During the rut, it was quite common to sit in one spot with a good binocular and watch several bucks race to and fro.

As hunting seasons came and went, it dawned on increasing numbers of hunters that the lever-action .30-30s that had served them so well in the past were about as useful as a pocket full of flat river rocks. Whereas most shots in many of the areas hunted had been inside 100 yards, they were now several times that distance, and extremely steep and rugged terrain ruled out sneaking closer before pulling the trigger.

At first, rifles in .270 Winchester were in great demand, and that cartridge continued to be quite popular, but many hunters eventually graduated to even more power, with the .264 Winchester Magnum and the .300 Weatherby Magnum probably seen in the gun racks of more pickup trucks than anything else.

By the time I was old enough to venture north from my home state to hunt in that area, the forest had reclaimed much of the country, but it was still intermixed with open areas that allowed deer to be spotted from great distances. Not as many as hunters saw deer on a typical day in the heyday of the area, but enough were seen to attract hunters like me who had never before experienced shooting deer in open country.

At first I thought about using my Marlin 336 in .35 Remington, but I changed my mind after a ballistics chart told me how far off course a mild sidewind would blow its 200-grain roundnose bullet--not to mention how high over a buck’s back I would have to hold at long range. I had to have something that shot flatter, hit harder, and did a better job slicing through wind.

My First .25-06
My first invitation to hunt in that country came during the early 1960s from my friend Dave Talley, who had been hunting there for several years and who just happened to live in the same city as me. Dave has since made his fortune manufacturing scope mounts, but at that time, he had about four jobs, one of which was building custom bolt-action rifles.

At the time, I had about one less job than Dave, so paychecks had to be stretched mighty thin in order to buy food and cover payments on a new house, a new wife, a well-used 1955 Chevy pickup, and a new rifle. So I did what any desperate deer hunter would do: I leaned on a friend who just happened to be a builder of custom bolt-action rifles.