The 2009 deer gun season is upon us. If you’re a gun hunter, you’re probably either planning a trip to the woods this week or packing your gear for tomorrow’s season opening. Best of luck in the woods; if archery-only season is any indication, this should be a slightly better season than last year’s.

When putting your gear in the truck, don’t forget one critical piece of equipment; the blaze orange vest, coveralls or jacket required by state law. No, a hat by itself won’t do. The ODNR wants hunters protected by the added visibility of a full vest. Even blaze orange camo patterns are acceptable, if the idea of going into the woods in a solid-colored vest.

Even when you’ve met the hunter orange requirement, pay attention to where you are and who or what’s around you during deer gun season. Mistaken-for-game incidents happen every year, so be careful when selecting a stand, moving game through the woods, or – most important – when taking aim at what you think is your trophy buck.

Stay aware, stay safe, but most important of all, have fun. The deer gun season is incredibly short, so make sure you get the most enjoyment out of your time in the woods this winter.

The finished project. Photo by Matt Cunningham.

First off, I realized as I sat down to write this post that the pictures I intended for the previous post didn’t upload properly. I corrected that, so go back to part 3 of this series to see the images that should have been up there last week but weren’t.

Now on to the fun part of this project – getting used to shooting with a sling.

This is a subject were I suspect there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. Keep that in mind; I’m going to describe how I use a sling to improve my off-hand accuracy.

I keep my sling fairly tight. Basically, it’s loose enough that I can rotate the rifle, to hang muzzle-down off my left shoulder (I shoot left-handed). To ready for the shot, I bring the rifle up and rotate it upright, then use my right forearm to tension the sling; and easy thing to do in this case, as the forearm stud rests between my right middle and index fingers. That tension causes the sling to pull the butt of the stock into my shoulder pretty tight. As a result, the sling holds the rear of the rifle using my back, rather than the un-slinged method of supporting the rifle by jamming it into my shoulder. It takes less muscular tension to do this, and results in a steadier, more consistent hold on the rear end of the gun.

Many situations in the small game woods call for offhand shots, sometimes at funny angles. With the sling, not only are my arms fresher (no need to wear myself out carrying the gun in my hands), but I can snap the rifle up with less need to brace against a tree or fence post. I’ll still go for more stable shooting positions when I can, but the sling gives me another option when the first shot has to count.

So now on to the tricky part (relatively speaking, of course. This isn’t exactly rocket science). After last post, when I gathered all the bits and pieces of the rifle sling project, I set up a workbench and got down to the task of separating the action from the stock.

Bracing the stock in a solid, padded rest or gun vise makes it easy to align and drill the hole for the rear stud. Photo by Matt Cunningham

Before you do this, make sure you know what you’re getting into. Every rifle’s different, and you don’t want to disassemble one in the wrong sequence or do anything that might result in a misalignment. I suggest using a gun vise or, if like me you have more enthusiasm than forethought, a couple of sandbags or beanbags to hold the stock steady and cushioned as you do the work.

My subject rifle came apart easily enough, with the simple removal of three screws. I set all the metal aside, braced the stock securely on the workbench and marked locations for the studs.

Stud positioning is important. you want to make sure that the studs and sling swivels won’t interfere with your shooting form. hold the stock like you’re aiming, and see if the mounting spots you marked will interfere with your positioning. If so, make the necessary adjustments before you even unpack the drill; an extra hole in the stock may not affect your accuracy, but it’ll certainly detract from the gun’s looks.

I had to counter-sink the hole for the forward stud mount to avoid interference with my rifle's action. Photo by Matt Cunningham

I ran into a minor challenge when mounting the forearm stud on my air rifle. The rifle’s a break-barrel, meaning that the barrel has a hinged mount that allows it to act as a lever for cocking the spring-powered piston that drives the pellet. The lever attaching the barrel to the piston would have interfered with the stud’s threaded end and nut were I to mount it normally, so I had to come up with a work-around. I countersunk a hole big enough to let the nut mount flush, then used washers to adjust the depth of the threaded end. The finished stud sticks out more than I would have liked, but gave me the advantage of a tactile reference for hand placement, which can be critical on a spring-powered air rifle.

Once the holes were drilled and studs set to the proper depth, I re-mounted the action into the stock. When doing this, I was careful to make sure I tightened the mounting bolts evenly. The design of this stock seemed intended to counter any unevenness in the bolt tension, but I didn’t want to take any chances. In addition, the re-assembled rifle went back to the range for a quick sighting-in session, just to be sure I’d still hit what I aimed at.

Now that the studs are mounted, I’ll get into the uses for a sling as a stability device. Stay tuned for more on that, and as always, hunt hard and hunt safe.

Adding a sling, even on a rifle without studs already mounted, is one of the easier modifications you can make to your hunting implement. First, of course, it helps to have the right parts.

Shown here are the parts for this project: a basic webbing-type sling, a set of studs and, of course, the hunting implement. Photo by Matt Cunningham

There are probably as many variants on the basic rifle sling as there are hunters who use them. Width, thickness, padding, appearance and adjustability can all be changed, even on a modest budget. And while a long-hiking big-game hunter may desire a cushy, padded strap for all-day treks, I find I prefer something on the other end of the scale for my small-game adventures. The camo webbing sling I’m mounting to my air rifle is about as basic as you’d want to get; it’s adjustable, wide enough that it doesn’t dig into my shoulder, and doesn’t have any extra hardware to clank and rattle while I’m stalking.

After the sling, the mounting studs deserve some attention. Depending on your type of stock (wood, composite, etc) and the way the action’s bedded, you may have clearance issues for the front stud. I ran into this issue, but came up with a workaround I’ll describe later. In general, measure before you buy to ensure you pick up a sturdy set of studs that aren’t too long or wide to cause problems in the field.

The next post will have lots of pictures, as I take you through mounting the studs. Until then, hunt hard and hunt safe.

After the “learning experience” that was the last few week’s adventure in bow building, I have decided to pursue a project that I think will have more success. And it’ll probably be useful to more of you, as I suspect there are more folks out in reader-land interested in shooting straight than are interested in building their own longbows.

Then again, archery’s a glorious pastime, so I could be mistaken.

Over the coming week or so, I’m going to add a sling to my squirrel rifle. Since it didn’t come with sling studs mounted, I’ll be getting out the tools for a little work. not much work, though, as this is actually a very simple, straightforward project that anyone familiar with a drill and a screwdriver can pull off in an afternoon.

But why add the bulk and potential tangle of a sling to a rifle? The most obvious reason is that it makes the implement easier to carry over long days in the field. Even something as small as an adult air rifle will probably weigh in around five to eight pounds, enough weight to wear out your carrying hand after a few hours of stalking through the brush.

And there are situations when the sling will need to come off the shoulder. The aforementioned brush is a prime example. Go into thick cover after squirrel or rabbit with the rifle slung over your shoulder, and you’ll be snagged in no time.

Still, I think it’s wise to have sling studs on any rifle, and not for the carrying convenience alone. A sling serves another purpose in the field; learn how to use it, and I guarantee it’ll improve your accuracy.

I won’t get into too much detail yet on sling technique. First, I need to mount the thing to the rifle. If you’re eager to move ahead, I’d recommend picking up a copy of Wayne Vanzwoll’s useful book, The Hunter’s Guide to Accurate Shooting. There’s a plethora of useful information in there, including a much more detailed discussion of slings and their uses. Until next post, that should get you started.

Well, folks, let’s just say there’s a reason you should follow directions.

My would-have-been bow is now a pile of well-shaped kindling. Here’s the story of how it got that way.

As of last post, things were going along quite well. The bow shaped up nicely, and I had started to get a smooth, even bend out of the limbs.

But then I got impatient.

A primary key to bow building, I think, is the ability to move forward by tiny increments. Gouge a section of a limb or remove too thick a splinter with an overly enthusiastic rasp, and all your hard work can go off with a bang.

Which is exactly what happened to me. After getting a good bend in the bow, and tightening the longer-than-used tillering string to its max, I tried to string the bow. Looking back, I should have taken a good bit more wood off the thing and made sure it was bending evenly. Then again, maybe I was in for it from the beginning; the second picture shows a splinter that had started to rise as I shaped the bow, indicating that the wood’s grain was not close enough to the longitudinal axis of the bow to take the strain.

Oh well. Every boyer’s site I can find online says beginners make more firewood than bows. After this project, I can believe it. But there was a beautiful moment when the bow started to bend, when it tensed the string with a surprising strength, that I could almost see the whitetail standing past the business end of a handmade wooden arrow, my silent stalk leaving it unaware of the harvest that was about to take place.

There are plenty more wooden staves where that one came from, and I’m by no means done with bow building. Stay tuned and who knows – maybe next time, it won’t just be fancy kindling.

A while back, I shared a photo of the roughed-out longbow I started building. Thanks to a stretch of free time on a recent weekend, I was able to make more progress on the project.

Building a functional bow from an otherwise ordinary piece of lumber is a fascinating exercise. First, one has to pick the right piece of wood, and that’s not as easy as it might seem. Wood fibers run the length of the tree, and building a bow in line with those fibers results in a strong, resilient hunting implement. But most machine-cut boards aren’t parallel to the fibers. Trees can grow crooked, and the move to make the most lumber out of a tree means boards can run across the grain. It takes an educated eye to pick a potential bow out of a pile of oak boards.

Let’s just say I’m working on that skill.

Once the board is picked out, things progress at a good clip. You measure the board and cut it to the rough dimensions of the bow. In my case, I went for a pyramid limb design. The bow tapers in width from just past the handle to the tips, and stays pretty consistent in thickness for the length of the limbs. It’s an attractive design, and I was able to shape it up quickly with basic hand tools.

Once the bow started to bend, I put it on a tillering stick. Basically, this is a post that allows me to draw the bow to a desired length, then step back and look for incorrect curves in the limbs.

The photo shows the bow in one of its first tillering moments. The plan is to remove wood bit by bit until the bow is A: flexible enough to string and draw to my desired length (about 29″ in my case). B: a weight high enough for hunting, but low enough to draw.

I’ll update you on my progress in coming posts. Until then, get out your tools and start hacking. Better yet, get out in the woods; it’s a beautiful day!

I hope you took a kid hunting during the last two weekends. And I hope, even if you came home with an empty game bag, that it was a memorable time and got a budding outdoorsman or outdoorswoman started on a wonderful, life-long journey.

The ODNR has more going on to get kids outdoors than just the youth hunting seasons. In fact, I recommend you check out this recent news brief, to learn about what the Division is doing to encourage not only an interest in the outdoor recreation, but also an interest in conservation.

Once you read the link, drop back by and share your thoughts; is this program something that a local school in your neck of the woods could put to good use? If so, I suspect the folks at ODNR would be more than happy to talk with you.