Bolt action or semi-auto for deer

[Alan]

I'm old school, use a bolt action. My buddy uses an AR-10. We argue about it every season. He says quick follow-up shots matter. I say one good shot is all you need. What do you guys actually hunt with?

 

[Mokaa]

I’m team bolt cause one calm, clean shot beats spraying follow-ups and hoping the deer cooperates.

 

[Billinthedesert]

Bolt here, too. But I confess that a semi-auto or slicked up lever-action have their moments, especially when shots are close as in timber.

 

[Alan]

I’m team bolt cause one calm, clean shot beats spraying follow-ups and hoping the deer cooperates.

That’s how I see it too, make the first shot count.

 

[Alan]

Bolt here, too. But I confess that a semi-auto or slicked up lever-action have their moments, especially when shots are close as in timber.

Fair point, in thick timber a fast follow-up could matter.

 

[Billinthedesert]

Alan, the late gun writer Francis Sell earned his livelihood as a young man shooting blacktail deer in Oregon's dense coastal forests to sell to the logging camps. He preferred a fast-handling lever gun in .25-35 for this work, later developing his wildcat, the .25 Tomcat with input from friends Parker Ackley and Chick Donnelly. If you chance to read an account of Jedediah Smith's expeditions, the morale of his men -- extremely tough and experienced fur trappers and others -- sunk to despair as they struggled through the brushy old-growth fir and spruce forests of the southern Oregon coast, only to be massacred by Indians in 1828. The shots in this terrain come fast and close.