Warfare to Wilderness
Written by: John Kesler, Fall Obsession Field Staff
Mankind has been both hunter and warrior since time immortal. Those stone tipped lances that worked so well for taking down pleistocene mega fauna certainly worked well for duking it out over hunting grounds with the neighboring tribe. Medieval boar spears used by nobles on their hunting estates were hardly different from those that the peasant pikemen carried into battle at their masters bidding. The famous Robin Hood killed the king's deer with the same bow he probably used to ambush the sheriff of Nottingham's men. Minutemen at Lexington and Concord took their deer rifles into battle against the legendary British Redcoats. Rifles that often exceeded the accuracy and effectiveness of the Brown Bess and Charleville muskets carried by the British, American and French regulars. Pushing into the 19th century the Trapdoor Springfields that famously failed Custer and the 7th cavalry at Little Big Horn were highly effective buffalo guns. As the saga edges into the 20th century and the great conflagrations of the World Wars, my small part in this human experience begins.
In 1917, at the Enfield small arms factory in England, two of the millions of No1Mk3 Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) rifles would be made. These rifles would go into the hands of Commonwealth infantrymen fighting in the trenches of Europe. In September of 1939 they would again be called to serve as the Nazi blitzkreig ripped across Europe. A decade later one of those two rifles would be given to my late grandfather, Harry Hancock by the New Zealand government to use in his job as a deer culler.
By 1949 New Zealand was overrun by European Red Deer and to save the fragile native forests, the government employed men like my grandfather to thin them out. At the time the British army was offloading their stocks of stored rifles and New Zealand picked them up for cheap, issuing them to the deer cullers. Harry went about shooting every feral deer, goat and pig he could lay sights on for the next couple years.
In 2020 I was at a cousin's wedding in New Zealand and got to digging around Harry's old photo albums. Pictures of the time show him carrying the rifle in both its original military configuration and with the forend cut back in a “sporterized” configuration. Not long after finding those photos I came up with the wild idea of hunting like Harry did. Residing in Gunnison Colorado meant that I wouldn't be able to use his actual rifle that my uncle still had due to international borders and a shot out barrel. I would have to use one of its “siblings”, a rifle from the same factory and same year. The second of the two rifles. After scouring gun shows and the internet, I was able to find one that met the criteria. With a mule deer buck tag in hand I got to practicing.
The SMLE was designed to be the workhorse of the Commonwealth militaries. They served admirably as an easy handling, accurate and fast working bolt action rifle from the arctic and woodlands of Europe to the jungles and deserts of the Middle East and Asia. I've always been a decent shot and quickly mastered the quirks of the gun. With a little practice I could land shot after shot on a 10 inch paper plate at 100 yards. Hardly up to the sub MOA laser crafted rifles of today but within my ethical requirements for such a hunt.
Late October arrived soon enough and after assembling my cohort of hunting partners, we set up camp. Deer were everywhere, and with plenty of elk to boot, it would turn out to be a great season. Over the first six days of the hunt we filled all the deer tags but mine, including a new hunter's first deer and my dad even got lucky with a cow elk. I made plenty of stalks on bucks to no avail for one reason or another, most of the time because I couldn't break my self-imposed 100 yard ethical maximum. 150 was pretty easy to do and I quite likely could have made a good shot, but ethics aren't meant to have much wiggle room.
On day seven my friend Lindsay who still had an elk tag and I were cruising BLM roads glassing for animals. It was getting late in the day and I decided to make a pass of the hill across from a big center pivot hay field and see what deer were crossing back and forth. Slowly rolling along, we spotted a buck that I was tempted to make a stalk on thrashing some junipers. Since the season had only a couple days left I figured I should make the most of every opportunity. Pulling over I tossed the keys to Lindsay and grabbed my rifle and shooting sticks. Working up the hill I got to within 80 yards and set up for the shot. The buck never gave me a good angle and moved off up the hill. Following along I got into range again and hoped he would give me an angle. Nope. The buck got suspicious again and wandered into the trees.
Continuing up the hill I attempted to locate the buck in some thick pines. The light was starting to fade when I spotted a forkie and the buck I was after weaving through the trees. My luck had turned and they were both heading back my way on a game trail slightly uphill from me. There was a gap about 40 yards away that if they stayed true, would put the buck in prime position for a shot. For what seemed like forever but was in reality maybe a minute, they worked towards me and the buck stepped into the opening. I lined up the iron sights and squeezed the trigger. The 185 grain round went through both lungs and broke the spine dropping the buck in his tracks. He rolled downhill and came to rest against a tree.
I had achieved what I set out to, thinking about how much of a challenge it was and a newfound connection with my grandfather. The rifle in my hands and my grandfather's resting in my uncle's safe had both been born into the cataclysm of WW1 serving in the hands of a commonwealth infantryman. Their retirement to the hands of a couple conservationists far from the old battlefields of Europe to the mountains of New Zealand and Colorado was complete.
Despite the unique story, we were hardly alone in the use of antique military surplus weapons for hunting. With the offload of rifles from the world wars, hunters everywhere made use of the cheap yet reliable firearms. There are old magazine advertisements where you can buy them by the crate for the price of today's tank of gas. Even into the early 2000s it was possible to find such deals.
A year after hunting the buck I acquired another SMLE that had the forend cut back to “sporterize” it. It cost me 300 bucks which was a screaming deal. That fall I had a doe tag and used the sporterized rifle. Significantly lighter and easier to handle and carry in the hills, I understand why they did it. It's fairly common to find surplus combat rifles from the world wars having been sporterized by guys looking for functionality over history. The fact that game all over the world has been taken and continues to this day to be hunted with rifles our ancestors fought with is proof that what works for warfare works in the wilderness.
I have continued to hunt with antique surplus military firearms even after the “hunting like Harry” experiments. Grabbing my usual 3rd rifle OTC bull elk tag the last couple years, I have carried a M1917 from, you guessed it, 1917. American doughboys carried more of them into battle in WW1 than the more popular and commonly known 1903 Springfield. It probably saw action in the same theatre of war as the SMLEs Harry and I carried. An insanely accurate rifle I’ve been able to consecutively ring 10 inch steel gongs at 300 yards with the iron peep sights. It's also ridiculously heavy, so carrying it for more than a few days gets gnarly. The M1917 was built with a particularly strong action and many have been sporterized and converted to shoot magnum calibers. Mine is still military spec and would be awesome to get an elk with one day.
This continued quest of hunting with these antique firearms when I have a perfectly good Remington 700 in .270 Winchester in the gun cabinet is a bit of a mystery even to myself. All I can say is it provides a level of connection that's hard to find any other way. Even with the tiny bit of coyote hunting I’ve done in the last few years, I opted to grab a Martini Cadet rifle made for Australia sometime around 1910 and chambered in .310 cadet. Nobody makes the ammo for it and it's a single shot rifle firing essentially a pistol cartridge, a weak choice for such endeavors when I have an AR-15 in the gun cabinet. It’s an addiction for sure.
The history between hunting and warfare has been intertwined for eternity. If you want to reach into the history books and tap into what those warriors and hunters of yesteryear went through, you should look into hunting with an antique military surplus rifle. If you’re really lucky, there might even be one in the back of your granddad's gun safe. The connections you can make between those forgotten warriors and your own time in the wilderness might surprise you.