My First Buck - God Served Me Some Humble Pie in the Best Way Possible

 The only way that I can claim that I was prepared for Saturday, November 1st was to say that I was correctly dressed in warm clothes. I can't lay claim to anything else. Not the location, not the rifle or even the skills involved. I was completely reliant on the pre-season skills, hardware and the preparation efforts of others that invited me to hunt what I can only describe as the perfect location for whitetail deer. 

I generally like to consider myself as reasonably prepared for whatever adventure might come my way especially since I am considered the resident gun-guy. I have exclusively only hunted woods, swamps and wetlands to date and never needed to take a shot beyond 100 yards that I know of. This was different and I was not prepared. I was not prepared to hunt a powerline. 

I guess I could say the other claim I could make was to say that I needed help and that I will do what someone else suggested. I forced myself to sit back and have my guide pick my spot and to borrow a rifle for this hunt. The space was a high voltage powerline right of way that you can see for literal miles in one direction from my spot. The distances that I would be shooting were no more than 200 yards but the tone of the conversation lead me to leave my Winchester 94 in .30-30. Not long range by any imagination. I had been handed an older Savage 110 in .270 Winchester with an older Nikon 3-9x scope.

Heading In

We were walking in as the sun was creeping up so we were a little behind but that's fine as my party had my two nieces with us. I managed to climb the surprisingly steep hill and get into my tower a little after legal shooting time. In fact, it was just enough light out to see three deer near the edge of my shooting space. I attempted to use the rifle's scope to get a better look but the fog and made things a little difficult. At the time, I couldn't make out any racks. I couldn't really make out more than just silhouette. The small pack worked their way out of the opening shortly after spotting them. I spent the next 30 minutes making sure the lenses were clean and that I fully understood the rifle. I studied the space where I saw the deer and attempted to estimate the distance. I figured the area I was expecting to see deer would be around 120 to 180 yards away. That would be the case for both the right side of my stand and the left side. Both would be downward shots, something I had forgotten to take into account while I was there. 

A singular deer did come up out of the woods not long after the first ones cleared out but I opted not to do anything about it. It was after that point I remembered that I actually had a scope and could dial up the magnification to have better positive identification. I suppose I have been using red dots a little too long.

By 8:45 AM, nothing else had shown up and a part of my party was about to head in as they were getting cold. I had even texted them back at 8:57 that I didn't expect anything else would show up. Then I put my phone down and saw a critter. 

I pulled the rifle up and adjusted the magnification up to 9x for positive identification. There was a rack and it's a around 6 to 8 points. I committed to it. I got into a stable position and tried to calm myself. I waited for a better broadside shot. It took a little watching and I did try to observe and remember the immediate location details. What tree branches where hanging where and what the ground looked like. Any easily identifiable markers. I got a quartering broadside so I attempted to put the shot behind the front leg.

I watched as the buck take off left down the hill and into the woods. I knew we were in for a tracking session. I responded back to my party with a laugh-emoji to highlight my impatience. I really need to work on the Fruits of Spirit. They were about 300 yards to my left in a blind. We were able to see the blaze orange of each other.

I took a few moments to cool myself and work my way out of the tripod seat, making my way over to where I thought the buck had been. 

I had to make a few passes over a 25 yard area of scanning before locating a blood trail. It was pretty poorly how much blood. In fact, it took both my eyes and my 8 year old niece's to establish the start of a good trail. The worst part is that the blood trail stopped around 10 feet away. My father-in-law worked his way into the woods downhill to see if we could find anything. I chose to stay higher up and see if I could work the track and pick up the blood trail. My niece chose to be much more spirited about pushing forward compared to my conservative approach. I let her have at it. 

My father-in-law went back to get my brother-in-law since he's a better tracker and a vehicle to recover the animal if we could find it. Both my niece and I worked on following tracks that looked promising leading to a hill. By the time I had worked my way up the smaller hill, she had already made her way into a bottom with a meandering creek. Around the same time she shouts "I think I found it," I find a major blood trail. I had asked her to confirm which she was able to do so successfully. I bailed on the blood trail and found that she was indeed correct. She had been caviler on her tracking and it had paid off well. Color me impressed.

I took a look at my score and didn't find and exit wound. The entrance wasn't big nor obvious other than what looked like disturbance of the fir. The entrance had been behind the leg as planned but I suspect that I misread how much of a broadside I was given as the bullet looks to have entered at a much shallower angle. It had entered a little too far back behind the leg and likely transited the stomach. I didn't complete an autopsy. We found the Nosler bullet just in front of the right rear leg on the opposite side just inside the hide.

A devastating hit to be sure but I should have shot in front of the leg and not behind.

My buck did turn out to be an 8 point and I am very grateful for both the experience and blessing.

Lesson's Learned and Reflection

My hunt was essentially a re-visit of everything that's worth going over for what you need to do to be a good hunter. Patience, practice, staying humble, breath control, keeping calm and solid pre-season work. Also, gear, having good, reliable gear is very helpful. Just being a gun-nerd isn't enough to be a good hunter.

I suspect this bullet was a Nosler Ballistic Tip

I'm not a fan of the phrase "bring enough gun" because you just don't need a big cartridge to get an exit wound in a broadside shot. I got a pass through with my .357 Mag rifle at 99 yards. What this hunt taught me is that you can think you're doing the right thing and still get it wrong or that things happen. Having a larger caliber can help with that situation. However, even in this case, the .270 didn't exit. This shouldn't be a velocity issue either as I estimate that this shot was around 160 yards which isn't very far inside the .270's window. Simply put, I may have needed to go much larger to have been able to get an exit in this case. Or I should have taken a better shot. 

I am very grateful for the Lord my God's blessing and for my niece.

New Products from Ruger - Glenfield is Back and the 1894 in 10mm Auto

 Ruger has a few new products they have announced but there are two items that stuck out and both are related to Marlin news. 

Firstly is the answer to Hornady's curious release of a 10mm Auto version of the LEVERevolution line of ammunition. Unless you were familiar with the old conversions of Marlin 1894 rifles in .357 Magnum to 10mm Auto, this didn't really make much sense. The only people I had heard about doing the conversions was Ranger Point Precision.

Well, the second piece of the mystery is Marlin releasing a 10mm version of the 1894 Trapper. It's probably the first factory offering lever action in a traditional action (no I did not forget the Tombstone but I did remember the Taylor's 1873 while I wrote this) in a semi-auto caliber. It does make me wonder if they will do a 9mm version. It also makes me wonder if my 10mm General Purpose concept has enough merit that someone's doing something with it.

The other piece of news is the return of the Glenfield brand. Previously, Glenfield was the brand of a budget-ier version of Marlin rifles you would get from J.C. Penny's or maybe K-Mart back in the day. I'm pretty sure K-Mart sold Glenfield stuff. Anyway, Ruger brought back the brand and is releasing what looks like modified Ruger American rifle gen 1 for hunting applications. Looking at my favorite web crawler for prices shows a few online retails have the .270 Winchester version for around $399. I'll keep an eye out for that since I've been toying with the idea of having an inexpensive bolt action deer rifle and this new Glenfield Model A might just be the ticket if it's accurate.

I don't know what Ruger's intent is for the brand so it will be very interesting to see what they come up with or dump into the brand.

Extra Life 2025

 https://www.extra-life.org/participants/562988

This is a last-minute sort of thing and I don't even know if I'll be streaming this weekend but if you feel led to donate to Extra Life to support Children's Miracle Network hospitals, I would appreciate it.

I have several friends whos kids have ended up in CHOA over the last few years, so this effort got more personal.

The URL above is my link to donate. Anything helps.

Deer Season 2025 - I'm Excited but Not Completely Ready

 Who would have thought that having a full time job and being a Dad to a 1 year old would be time consuming? Sarcasm aside, I managed to get my lever actions zeroed up and validated for rifle season here in Georgia. I now have access to a new piece of tucked away land I am able to hunt owned by family so I'm able to use a suppressor without issues. The Marlin 1894 CST will be the primary critter-getter for the start of the season. 

If you have read anything else from this year, you might recall that I had intended to take a Taurus 66 with a red dot out for hunting. I still do, however, I failed to follow through with the primary tenant of handgun hunting. I failed to practice, practice, practice. 

I did manage to work up a load of 16.6 and 16.7 grains of H110 over the Hornady 158 grain XTP. The recorded velocities at the time of testing were 1242 and 1239 FPS with the 16.7 actually being slower on the average for some reason. The 16.6 grain load had an extreme spread of 36 FPS and the 16.7 gr load was at 37 FPS for the ES. I have concerns about the 16.7 loads and specifically if I made the correctly. They're more in line with my previous testing of 16.6 grains and not the previous 16.7 grain version.

The velocities aren't as good as the factory Hornady Custom with the same bullets but they're still usable speeds for what I want. I did make the decision to replace the Burris Fastfire 3 8 MOA dot with the Vortex Venom 3 MOA dot I had on hand after swapping the optic on another pistol.

I still need to confirm zero with the Taurus, Venom and16.6 grain loads before I start using that. The season opens in less than 24 hours. I may still get a chance to deer hunt with a handgun but I absolutely can squirrel hunt! I think I got my old High Standard .22 revolver zeroed with some CCI Standard and the PAC-LITE with new BSA pistol scope is zeroed too. I just need to find the holster for the MKIII I have somewhere.

Anyway, I'm mostly ready. I do wish I had taken more time to get the Taurus sorted out but really I just need to zero it and practice. I can hit up the local range one afternoon to zero.

My Remington Era Marlin 1894 CST - The Current Build Out as of 2025

 In a conversation I had while preparing for the 2025 deer season, I found that I had not actually provided a complete breakdown of the status of what has turned into one of my top 5 guns I own; a Marlin 1894 CST. 

The rifle has been through a total of 3 configurations since I got it in 2019 and had a few name changes such as SodBuster or ArgetVaquero. Each iteration of the rifle's configuration has proven to be very informative in application which ultimately led me to go back to the second configuration. 

The Rifle

The core of this is a Marlin 1894 CST made during the Remington ownership era of Marlin's existence. The CST is one of the first factory lever action rifles to offer a threaded barrel by any of the big names. The only other one I can think of was Mossberg with the 464 SPX. The CST pre-dates the original Dark series of which very few of those 1894 rifles made it out of the factory before going under. Finding a Remington era 1894 Dark in either .357 or .44 is very rare. Most are likely test rifles for the influencers and publications.

The CST was only chambered in .357 Magnum and setup to handle .38 Special. It features a stainless steel construction with a wood stock that has a textured paint job in black. The lever is somewhat enlarged. It's not a true big loop but it's big enough. The barrel is 16.5 inches with a 1/2x28 thread pitch and is supposedly a 1:16 twist rate. I don't know what my rifle weighted at the beginning but the alleged weight was around 6.5 pounds. With everything on it, including 7 rounds in the cuff, the setup is just under 9 pounds with my scale. In general, for a rifle with the leather goods, a few rounds and a heavy silencer, it's pretty good. There is room for improvement.

From the factory, the iron sights were a small receiver mounted aperture sight with a ramped front sight, both from XS. There is a black insert in the barrel's rear dovetail to fill in where a traditional sight would have gone. 

Generally, the action was smooth enough but there was much in the way of fitment. My bolt never seemed to line up perfectly but it runs fine. Additionally, the threads where cut with an elevation bias so the suppressor is angled slightly high toward the 12 o'clock position. It was enough of an issue that I have to run a .45 caliber suppressor when I want a full length can. By 9mm suppressor risks a baffle strike with the second segment installed.

The magazine holds 8 rounds of .357 Magnum. I don't run the rifle fast so I can't say it's been reliable but it feeds. The receiver seems to have a sharp edge somewhere as it can be a bit tricky to get the last round in the magazine with my favorite .357 Magnum ammunition.

This rifle does sadly include a push-button safety that I am not a fan of. There are many people who agree with me. I have not yet deleted it.

I have never put the rifle on a bench with a big scope and shot groups but with the red dot, I can around 2 inch groups if I work at it and shoot very slowly. If there is enough interest from the community, I will change the setup back to a scope and see how it does with magnification.

The CST was discontinued when Remington sold Marlin but the closest current equivalent is the Marlin 1894 Trapper made under Ruger's control and is offered in .44 Mag and .357 Mag. 

The Accessories

The first setup was a Burris Fastfire 3 dot and a direct thread mount for my Dead Air Wolfman and a cheap sling. At one point, there was a scope configuration with a Leupold 2.5x intended for hunting but all of that was replaced.

Midwest Industries came out with a specialized mount for the 1894's footprint that was an aluminum base with the Aimpoint Micro or T1 footprint but includes an integrated rear aperture sight. Essentially, it is a singular bar of metal that you screw a red dot such as the Aimpoint Micro or a SIG Romeo 5 to that also has the rear sight. That entire assembly then screws to the receiver. The kit also comes with a new front sight that has wing protectors. It's very similar to that of an AR-15's front sight.

Sadly, they no longer make the T1 version of their mount but they do still make one that has a short length of picatinny rail. I knew I wanted an enclosed optic and I prefer dedicated mounts so the T1 version is perfect for me.

The MI mount hosts a SIG Romeo5 GEN1 which has been a reliable Go-To for several years for me. While not the highest quality, the price point and capabilities are well balanced and have been working very well for me over the years.

I personally think that a traditional lever action rifle needs to have 2 or 3 pieces of leather no matter what. Every lever action rifle I own has a leather cartridge cuff (or box pouch) and a leather sling. It might also have a lever wrap. In my case, the CST has all three and all of this came from Mason Leather. Mr. Mason has been making this stuff for years now but the cartridge cuff is a bit special. He no longer makes the 7 round cuffs seen in my setup but he does still offer 4 rounds. I got the wrap to match the cuff around the time I got the rifle. The sling is a more recent addition. I replaced the cheap junker I had on it for an incredibly well made Latigo sling with brass fittings. I get no benefits from Mr. Mason. I just really like his work and I have several items from him.

Regarding the silencer and configuration, I have chosen Dead Air's Primal. The Primal is a heavy, fully welded, .45 cal suppressor. It uses the HUB mounting thread pitch and can use the various end caps and devices Dead Air offers. In my case, I am using the standard KeyMo mount and a .45 cal end cap. This was due to a slight manufacturing defect with my barrel's threads not being perfectly aligned with the bore. Were I to use the 9mm suppressor I have, the long configuration risks a baffle strike. The .45 cal bore mitigates that risk. The sound is still fine.

The muzzle device the suppressor attaches to is a now discontinued JMAC Custom's Zero mount. It has no flash hiding or break capabilities. It only mounts the suppressor. The Zero allows me to quick detach the suppressor if I need to but at this point, it's rare for me to do anything else with the Primal. It's all but dedicated to the CST.

Finally, I did add a Ranger Point Precision lever screw that lets me remove the lever and bolt for cleaning. I have found that to be very important when shooting very dirty handloads for suppressed plinking.

As of October of 2025, this is the complete accessory list:

Midwest Industries 1894 T1 Mount with Front Sight - Discontinued but a picatinny version is still available

SIG Romeo 5 red dot - A new generation of this dot is now out

Dead Air Primal - Still offered but feel free to substitute to your needs

JMAC Customs Zero 1/2x28 mount - Discontinued but a similar mount is offered by Dead Air. You don't actually need this as there are newer mounting options.

Ranger Point Precision Lever Screw - Still available

Mason Leather Cartridge Cuff - The 7 round version is discontinued but there is still a 4 round version

Mason Leather Latigo Sling - Still offered

Mason Leather Lever Wrap - Still offered

Ammunition Selection

This is a big deal as it can make or break the use of any setup. In my case, I spent a significant amount of time looking for the right cartridges. I even have a full article in just choosing the Remington .357 Magnum load. To keep it short, the Remington HTP .357 Magnum is loaded with their 158 grain semi-jacketed hollow point and has been the Go-To since I selected it. It's not the deepest penetrating or fastest or largest expanding load out there. It was chosen because it works in both pistols AND rifles while still meeting penetration levels appropriate for self-defense and whitetail deer hunting applications. The bullets stayed together and expanded well with good penetration. Everything you need a hunting and self-defense bullet to do well, it does. It truly is a General Purpose loading. From my rifle, my chronograph says my Remington HTP loads are just shy of 1800 fps. I have been able to extrapolate that I should be able to achieve a good effect on a whitetail deer out to around 135 yards. As it sits, a 100 yard zero puts the bullet around 3.45 inches below point of aim at that same distance. Penetration should be around 17 to 19 inches in ballistic gel. So far, that equates to a broadside passthrough on a whitetail as I found out in 2023.

There are definitely other very capable loads on the market but I wanted to focus on the general purpose aspect of this setup and not a dedicated hunting rifle.

Most .38 Special stays subsonic from the rifle. The lighter loads probably won't but I haven't used anything under 158 grain factory loads that I can think of. I have some homemade 105 grain powder-puff loads and some heavy 200 grain thumpers that are both subsonic from the rifle and are rather quiet and fun to shoot.

Utility

I have found that this rifle works very well. It has fully replaced my Winchester 94 in .30-30 for rifle hunting applications and remains my primary deer-taker for our small property. I have a new hunting opportunity for the 2025 season that gives me access to private land and I have authorization to use a suppressor so this will be my primary tool for the 2025 deer season with a .357 Magnum revolver to back it up.

I took this doe at 99 yards and got a pass through

It also works well as a Farm Rifle in that it travels well so if I feel the need to take a rifle, I like taking this one. I have also been working on handloads in .38 Special for the sole purpose of plinking. In fact, plinking is the reason I went back to the red dot setup and ditched the Leupold 2.5x scope. It was just way more fun with my handloads and the red dot than with the scope.

Summary and Future

Simply put, from hunting to defense to fun, this current iteration is very well configured. Handloading is easy and it carries nicely. So far I haven't run into fatigue issues due to the weight but I also don't currently hunt the way I used to.

While the CST and many accessories I use are no longer available, Marlin now offers the 1894 Trapper which is effectively the same thing and might actually be a little better in most cases. The most major difference will be the wood type and the Skinner vs XS rear sight. Many of the parts have alternative versions that are still available but there are many different companies who offer similar products that one could build something similarly.

The future of this rifle should be a long term use with very few changes. I like to keep my eyes out for new products that make things better and I have identified several products that I would like to incorporate into this rifle. They aren't needed but I like them.

First is the Griffin Armament Sportsman Ultra Light .46. New for 2025, Griffin Armament announced a .46 caliber suppressor that weighs 10.5 oz without a mount. That is around 6 oz lighter than the Primal's weight minus the 4.3 oz KeyMo mount. My current suppressor setup is around 21 oz without including the JMAC Zero device. Using a direct thread with the Griffin Sportsman should cut weight down by around 11.5 oz which is a really big deal. That puts me around 8.26 pounds of in-field weight for a fully kitted out rifle. I very much like that idea as it would improve the balance and handling of the rifle. It also frees up my only full-rifle rated suppressor for other things. I would dedicate the Sportsman .46 for use on the CST.

Wren Metal Works offers a Torx screw replacement kit for the 1894. While that doesn't sound important, the screws on these rifles are slotted and they mar easily. Sadly they don't offer a stainless steel version but the black just adds a little flair. I just like these and want them. I don't have a need for them; just a want.

Beartooth Mercantile offers a pair of safety delete options in stainless and blued steels. One is a slotted bolt that just looks like another screw but they also have a saddle ring option that I am partial to. I don't need it but I'm inclined to add one.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed a look at what has become one of my top 5 guns that I own.