![]() ![]() Lonesome allows for planning a morning hunt to match the last-minute conditions and the country. The E-Tip is a lead-free projectile designed with a polymer tip to open up quickly for maximum tissue damage, and it’s my contribution to the “green” movement, since I don’t drive an electric vehicle, burn wood in a stove, eat meat and generally conduct my affairs as did generations of my male ancestors. It’s listed as the “most accurate” load in my Nosler manual. 308 consists of 39 grains of IMR 4895 behind a 165-grain Nosler E-Tip (for Expansion Tip) or AccuBond bullet, both of which have delivered consistent accuracy to have put venison in my cooler in the past. Lonesome is the time guys like me spend at the loading bench, carefully metering out precision loads for making a cold bore shot at whatever distance was necessary to anchor a deer and notch a tag. Still, there is nothing wrong with the solitude of the High Lonesome, which is only what you make of it. I missed them both, along with my dad, uncle and granddad who are long gone, but for whom there is always room at my campfire. ![]() But my brother couldn’t make it, and my longtime hunting buddy was, I presume, still on the job in Alaska else I’d have heard from him. Lonesome is a relative term for people like me, I guess we learned at a young age that solo hunting can often be good hunting, though at night, around the crackling fire, it is good to share a libation and swap memories with one or two companions. I may not sleep quite like a baby, but it was good sleep and I still managed to be awake before sunrise to cook up a healthy breakfast before heading about 1,000 yards almost all uphill toward the top of a ridge, where I hoped to encounter a mule deer buck with at least a 3-point rack. My bedroom was a Cabela’s cot, shortened a couple of inches so it would fit inside my truck bed with the canopy and tailgate closed to keep the weather off, and a thick foam pad for insulation. And nothing allows me to communicate with them like a warm campfire on a chilly night, when I’m all alone with my thoughts and the ghosts of hunting pals who have moved on to their last camp, somewhere up around that next turn in the trail. I think it must have been this way for my grandfather and father before me on at least some occasions. Still, I gathered plenty of wood for a decent campfire, set up my cook table under a blue tarp, fired up three lanterns and a couple of battery-powered mini-lamps and dined on grouse from a previous hunt and hashbrowns, the latter carefully grated from potatoes I boiled in advance and fried up in a combination of bacon grease and olive oil. As I had so often experienced in years past, mine was a solo camp, in the High Lonesome, 11 miles from cell phone service and three times that from the nearest semblance of civilization. 22 Long Rifle.įor the second year in a row, I had no company on this special weekend. ![]() 308 Winchester, or either of my handguns, a vintage Model 57 S&W in. Opening weekend of deer hunting came - and went - with nary a shot fired from my rifle, a Savage American Classic in. ![]()
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