The barrel on my 308 rifle finally wore out. My father gave me the rifle when I was 16. It was a Sako Forester, to a kid it was the most awesome rifle I’d ever seen and even now, 56 years later is still a special rifle. I used the rifle for several years with the iron sights. The competitions at the club included an iron sight section which really appealed to me.

I got my first deer up the Te Kopua creek in the Galatea faces with that rifle. Got a 3x Lyman scope for it then used it for all my deer hunting till I moved to the South Island. I recall looking at my packet of hunting ammo and seeing only three cartridges left. Tallied up the deer I’d got so far with that packet, 17.

My hunting grounds were mainly Urewera, Kaimanawa and King Country. Had some competitive success with the combination. Most of the ammo I used was CAC soft nose. Started reloading for the rifle and thought it was pretty cool to be able to tweak my loads. Convinced myself I could make pretty good ammo. Moved to Hokitika where I used a 270.

The 308 was my go-to rifle for all my hunting trips in the North Island till I started hunting for Forest Service. The next time I used the rifle extensively was while working in the Urewera. The close bush hunting in the Manganuiohou had been suited to the 222 but the Whakatane and Waikare meant a higher proportion of longer distance shots. Deer were seen on big  slips and river clearings which were really beyond the effective range of the 222. Every tail was hard earned so if you had a better tool you would use it. I found the 308 very effective and made some long shots when it was impractical to get closer.

Different bullets didn’t seem to make any difference in results, hit them in the thoracic cavity and the tail was on your belt. The next major use for my 308 was on wild bulls in the North. Our boss at the time was not a very sophisticated rifleman. He found us some ammo which had been loaded for shooting goats out of a helicopter using FNs. It featured a 110 grain M1 carbine bullet. He said his brother had shot a deer with it so it would be good on bulls. Needless to say I didn’t use it on bulls, bought my own good strongly constructed bullets. It was dangerous enough without using grossly unsuitable bullets.

Got all smart one time when going to shoot big stags in the Raukumara. Loaded up some wizzbang 180s, just the ticket. Worked well on the big stags but just as well on the smaller Urewera deer. Some years later put some over a chronograph and found them to be going about the same speed as a 30-30. Devastated me. Used the rifle in the far North as a saddle rifle while hunting bulls. The aperture sight was more convenient for scabbard use. Even shot some whales with it. Eventually the accuracy declined so Arthur Golding put a new barrel on it.

Used a Tikka Battue for a while in Fiordland and Stewart Island and found it very effective and easy to carry around. I didn’t use it myself on thar but I had to help one of my cobbers who was having a very hard time connecting with his Ruger full wood carbine. He’d shot one with my 270 but couldn’t do it with his rifle. We tried it on a cardboard box, dead on at 100. Found a good bull the next day. Held one hand as high as I could and the other at my stomach. Said hold that high and half that into the wind. He bowled the thar. 

I’ve been really pleased with the results I’ve had with the 308. In a reasonably weighted rifle it’s not too abusive on the shoulder and cheek. Some of the very lightweight carbines demanded a lot of concentration to shoot well but if you could stand the pain they were accurate. Most of my NRA shooting was with 308s but that’s a different facet of shooting.

I hold the 308 in very high regard as a hunting cartridge.