Accuracy while hunting whitetails has been a heated subject in my family for as long as I can remember, likely because my deer hunting grandfather often said, “One-shot, deer; two-shots, maybe; three shots, never,” making his three sons very competitive, one-shot deer hunters. Generally, my uncle Jack was recognized as the most accurate shooter in our deer hunting gang (his rifle was a Model 64 Winchester). But every time accuracy became the subject before or during a deer hunting season, practically everyone in our gang of 11 or 12 deer hunters had one or more tales to tell about amazing shots they had taken, including me.

I grew up being another Nordberg who felt that it was especially important to be very accurate with my deer rifle: first to drop deer I shot at with one well-placed humane shot; second to ensure the venison obtained would be very tasty; third because while I was a teenager, two adult hunters insisted that the doe I had wounded and was following was not wounded when they shot at it, and it was therefore theirs, after which they left the area before I could find my father.

Even before then, however, I annually spent enough time at shooting ranges to maintain my accuracy while using rifles with open sights only. In the 1970s, I began reloading rifle cartridges to further improve my accuracy. Moreover, via my early studies of hunting-related habits and behavior of white-tailed deer, it was my goal to learn how to further refine my accuracy by learning how to consistently take mature, unsuspecting bucks, standing or moving slowly, within 50 yards.

My sons, who enjoyed watching me reload bullets when they were young, recently purchased new, lightweight, no-recoil deer rifles chambered for new, big game cartridges, topped with scopes so impressive that I kidded them by saying, “Now all you have to do to take big bucks is tie your rifle to a tree in the woods and check it occasionally to see what you got.”

Meanwhile, I recently took a step backwards, purchasing an antique, lightweight (6-pound) Model 64A Winchester lever-action rifle made in 1970, chambered for 30-30 cartridges with a tip up Lyman no. 2 peep sight mounted on it. The reason was, at age 87, my favorite big game rifle purchased in 1975, a Ruger Model 88 bolt-action rifle chambered for 7mm Remington Magnum cartridges with a heavy magnum barrel and a variable scope mounted on it, weighing 12 1/2 pounds, began weighing about 50 pounds (or so it seemed), painfully wearing out my back by noon each day while hunting whitetails.

Though purchasing a 30-30 might seem like a terrible step backwards, a Model 64A has a 24-inch barrel (unlike a Model 94 with an 18-inch barrel), which gives it greater accuracy and nearly gives a 30-30 bullet the trajectory and power of a .308. Moreover, though I had to pay an inflated price for this rifle in excellent condition because it is a much-sought gun collector’s item, it was far less costly than a modern, lightweight rifle weighing 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 pounds, costing three to five grand.

What about accuracy? The first time I raised my Winchester to my shoulder, I was very pleased to find myself looking through the ghost ring provided by the metallic ring off my Lyman No. 2 tip-up peep sight, which would enable me to very quickly see the bead on the end of my barrel centered in that ring—and on the spot on a deer where I wanted my bullet to hit while the entire deer was visible whether stationary or moving. It was just like when peering through my string peep on my hunting bow at full draw, which enabled me to be very accurate with my bow.

The trouble was, with that peep sight tightened down as tightly as possible, at 50 yards at the rifle range, my tight, three-shot groups could not be raised higher than 2 1/2 inches below the bullseye. At ranges between 100 and 200 yards, leg shots on deer would then be common, and leg-shot deer can rarely be successfully recovered. When I was young, the rusty 22-rifle that my grandfather gave me to kill gophers making holes in the cow pasture had to be aimed two inches to the right and two inches low to hit a gopher ten feet away. I wanted nothing like that for deer hunting, when shots must often be made instinctively, so off came the No. 2 Lyman peep sight.

In its place, I installed a new Lyman Model 66a Receiver Sight, commonly found on most rifles used by American soldiers during the WWII. It came with a screw-on disc with a very small hole for very accurate adjusting at the rifle range, and a replaceable disc with a larger hole with all the advantages of a Lyman No. 2 peep site, but with a much stronger and easier to adjust foundation. With this receiver sight, I will now be able create a Model 64A lightweight Winchester rifle that is very accurate out to 200 yards without using a scope.

Considering that fact that more than 90 percent of all the white-tailed deer I have tagged during the past 80 years were within 50 yards, none actually requiring a scope for accurate shooting, I will then have a perfect deer rifle for a man my age. Just in case, considering that I have taken a few prophy-class bucks up to 400 yards away, I will also know how high to hold my front bead above a big buck at such longer ranges when needed.

All I did to improve my accuracy since I began hunting whitetails in 1945 paid off well for me, giving me the best mature-buck hunting imaginable. If I had it to do all over again, accuracy would again be number one on my list to improve my deer hunting success. If all it ever did was give you one good opportunity to take one big buck per year, like me, all your friends who hunt whitetails would finally consider you to be the luckiest buck hunter they have ever known.

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