My first mountain hunting took place more than half a century ago in Kamchatka. They took place in areas of active volcanoes, far from human settlements, where even local hunters didn’t climb. The main weapon was the expedition carbines based on the Mosin rifle. Several times they gave us carbines that had zero firing and a very decent accuracy. It's clear the main motive of hunting was a primitive passion, but in those conditions, it was supported by the sincere preference of the participants of the expedition for fresh meat to all types of canned food.
The head of one of these expeditions was Sasha Koloskov. We just got to the area of work, when I ask him, what will be do first hunting or work? He replied that as long as there was strength and courage, it was necessary to get meat, then it would be better to work
We spent a dozen seasons in Kamchatka, then there were mountain hunts in the Altai and the Caucasus. All of them were conducted without transport support and most often alone. This is the base of all my recommendations. I got acquaintance with modern foreign rifled hunting weapons much later. I knew later that our European friends include grouse, capercaillie, marmot, wild boar, roe deer and deer as mountain hunting animals.
The shooting conditions may be different, it depends on the hunting method. The most common situation is when the hunter approaches the animals. In these cases, the shooting distances range from a hundred meters to half a kilometer or more. This is probably the most typical case. The exploration can requires spending several days, but in the best case you can get animals at the feeding site or at a natural or artificial salt lick. You need to take into account the wind and the possibility of camouflage when choose a convenient distance. If you know the terrain and the habits of animals, you can organize a drive them to the hunter, even by one person. Goats or sheep disturbed during feeding will certainly try to go to the rocky tops. In this case, the shooting may be not long-range. In some regions, large corral hunts are arranged in the mountains covered with forest. In Siberia, we hunted goats and sheep with huskies, and the animals escaped from them on the rocky defenses.
The different shooting situations may occur with different probability when hunting mountain ungulates. Our traditions require the hunter to do everything possible to reduce the shooting distance. Ideally, you should shoot only when there is a full guarantee of hitting the killing place. The Austrian manual for huntsmen recommends the following distances as the maximum when shooting with optimal cartridges: roe deer-150 meters, chamois-200 and red deer – 250 meters. De facto, these distances can be increased several times with careful selection of a cartridge for your rifle. Previously, the hunter must determine the maximum distance from which the bullets don’t leave the circle with a diameter of 150 mm by shooting. There are some situations when long-range shooting is the only chance to get the beast. The most difficult thing is long – range shooting at running or, even more difficult, jumping on the rocks goats or sheep. Occasionally there are situations when animals, have run away not far and pause for a few seconds to assess the situation. It is desirable to use this moment. I know about the situation but they are very rarely in the mountains when animals appear suddenly short. You need to prepare for such cases in advance, to practice the skill of shooting without aiming-offhand. At the same time, you should strive to increase the distance as you train, when a circle with a diameter of 150 mm will be hit without a miss. This skill can also be useful for corral hunting.
The important question for any hunting is the choice of the optimal caliber. If you hunt on your own the question of the weight of your equipment becomes one of the most important. Hussein Golabchi, the undisputed authority in mountain hunting, says that he considers the 7mm RemMag cartridge to be optimal. It is difficult to disagree with him, since this cartridge provides good flatness and energy of the bullet. he 7mm RemMag has become the most popular in this caliber for the 55 years that it has produced.
Three-hundredth calibers are even more popular today, at least in Russia. Moreover, some of the old ones are still in the top. First of all, it applies to the American veteran patron .30-06 Spring. Cartridges of old developments are more perfect than their progenitors in many ways. Modern cartridge companies use more reliable and stable primers, homogeneous and stable grades of gunpowder, new bullet designs and modern cartridge assembly technologies. 30 R Blaser is a fairly powerful cartridge among 300 calibers. It is assembled in a narrow and long welt sleeve, what makes it convenient for use in single-shot rifles and combined weapons.
The cartridge .308 Win (7, 62x51) is quite suitable for mountain hunting, because it is one of the most accurate serial rifle cartridges. It is important that the mass of rifles turns out to be quite humane due to the relatively small cartridge.
The listed three-hundredths belong to moderately long-range and we can talk about targeted shooting, only if we bear in mind a distance of up to three or four hundred meters.
Many hunters today prefer to use rifles of stronger calibers-from three hundred magnums to three hundred and thirty-eighths when the transfer to the hunting area is provided by transport (aviation, automobile or horse-drawn), and the mass of equipment is not a limiting factor. I don't see any sense in large calibers, although adherents of hunting with caliber weapons .408 CheyTac can argue with me.
An important question is what are the criteria for choosing a mountain weapon?
The first criteria are reliability and high accuracy. Then you should pay attention to the mass of the rifle. It should be minimal, but provides accuracy not worse than one angular minute. Hunting is not shooting at a fixed target, that's why a rifle for mountains should be easily controlled as our grandfathers used to say. Modern technologies for the production of barrels guarantee the accuracy of shooting better than one angular minute. It is quite possible to get a barrel with a accuracy of 0.5 MOA with careful selection. A barrel, a bolt and a stamped receiver must be sufficiently rigid and viscous to absorb the vibrations that occur when fired. Rifles with automatic reloading have a worse fight than rifles with manual reloading.
I can name two types of the light hunting rifles. These are rifles, all parts of which (except the barrel) are made of titanium alloys. Such weapons with sliding bolt have long been mass-produced by the Austrian company Rossler. Another Austrian company, Johann Fanzoj, which has a centuries-old history, makes titanium multi-shot rifles based on the Mauser 98 Magnum. The mass of such an 8x68S caliber rifle with a barrel length of 650 mm does not exceed 3 kg. The same company also produces custom-made single-barrel, single-shot, fracture titanium lancer fittings. In general, break barrel single-shot rifles are lighter than rifles with sliding bolts and are significantly better controlled.
The second good weapon for mountains has barrels, the outer part of which is made of carbon fiber. Kristensen Arms is the leader here. The inner part of the barrels made of this company is always steel, and the thickness of this part is about 40% of the total thickness, and the outer layer is made of carbon fiber, in which the epoxy resin serves as a binder. The density of carbon fiber is determined by several parameters, but it is always lower than 1.5 g / cm3. If we take into account that the barrel steel has a density close to 8 g/cm3, it is clear that replacing steel with carbon fiber gives more than five times the weight savings. The weight of these carbines, even with the most powerful calibers (.338 LapuaMag), does not exceed 3 kg. Christensen produces carbines specially for mountain hunting for powerful 7.82 (.308) Lazzeroni Warbird cartridges, specially designed for long-range shooting.
The troubles associated with the relatively strong recoil of light weapons are overcome by training optimal manufacturers and proper psychological training of the shooter. A strong recoil is undesirable when the hunter shoots in large series, and this usually doesn’t happen on mountain hunts.
Rifles with block bolts are very good for hunting in the mountains. Unfortunately, they are unknown here in Russia but are very popular among mountain hunters in Europe. These rifles are light, maneuverable and reliable. European gunsmiths often reproduce the Hagna system one of the many known systems today. It reliably locks the cartridge of any power and provides high accuracy.
If we talk about multi-shot hunting rifles, today they are produced by many European and American companies. Modern technologies allow to obtain even conveyor weapons of very high quality. Although almost all major weapons companies have custom-made processes of weapons manufacturing. However, there are the gunsmith, which don’t work otherwise than by pre-order. Today the best rifles on the Mauser 98 system in Europe are produced by the German company Waffen G. Prechtl. Quite decent hunting rifles in our country are produced by the company ORSIS.
The attention of mountain hunters is often attracted by sniper or so-called tactical rifles. They have high ballistic performance but the price for it is a large mass and poor handling. Sniper rifles under the cartridge .308 Win with a sight have a mass of about 5.5 kg or more. They are convenient to shoot at stationary targets using good bipods. Tactical rifles for various purposes are produced at almost all weapons factories in technically developed countries. In Russia Orsis T-5000 tactical rifles are popular. High-quality weapons according to an individual order are produced by Vladislav Lobaev's company.
It’s necessary to measure its barrel with a caliber when purchasing any rifle. It’s desirable that it passes as tightly and uniformly as possible along the entire barrel. It’s useful to check the correctness of the rifling if possible. After purchasing a new rifle, it must be fired at. The meaning of this operation is to remove possible burrs and smooth out the smallest irregularities of the barrel channel. The effect of this operation on new barrels is always positive, but its magnitude depends on the method of obtaining rifling and the entire sequence of technological operations for manufacturing a rifled barrel. The shooters agree that the "run-in" should be made completely with FMJ bullets without antifriction coats. The use of abrasive pastes for this process is unacceptable. It is clear that it is impossible to fix barrels that have lost their accuracy due to a large drill.
The next necessary work for the owner of a new rifle is the selection of the optimal cartridge. It is clear that the caliber is determined by the barrel, so you should choose the manufacturer of cartridges and the type of bullet. This work is due to the fact that your barrel has a certain step of rifling. The bullets of different masses will have different initial or muzzle velocity on departure, and therefore different angular speeds of rotation. As a result, they will stabilize differently on the trajectory. In addition, the bullets differ in the shape of the head part. Therefore,they have different distances to the beginning of rifling when they are closed in the chamber. The greater this distance means the higher the probability of incorrect entry into the rifling, therefore, the accuracy will be lower. The final choice of the cartridge should be made based on the results of shooting at 500 meters. My experience in mountain hunting suggests that accuracy of shooting, is more important than the expansiveness of the bullet.
It is quite obvious that a mountain hunter's rifle should be equipped with an optical sight. It should be reliable, resistant to the recoil of powerful cartridges. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the sniper sights of army tactical rifles at the end of the last century had quite a moderate magnification and mass. The most common PU sight used for the Mosin three-line rifle during the Second World War had a magnification factor of only 3.5 and a mass of 270 g. The PSO-1 sight, which is still active today on the Dragunov rifle, has a magnification factor of 4. Over time, a 1 P59 optical sight of variable magnification (from 3 to 10) with a more high-speed lens was developed for the SSVD rifle. All these sights provide the ability to conduct targeted shooting at single targets up to 800 meters. This allows me to recommend relatively light sights with a multiplicity of no more than 12 to mountain hunters.
The main problems with shooting in the mountains are related to the terrain features. One of them is the constant air movement, especially strongly manifested in the lower parts of the gorges. The dense and cold air of the peaks rolls down the gorges of the watercourses in the morning. From the mid of the day, the warmed air rises to the top in the form of quite powerful updrafts, their localizations associate with the nature of vegetation and relief. Therefore, there may be zones with different wind conditions on the trajectory of the shot. You should to observe vegetation and the movement of fog (clouds) can give the useful information when shooting at long distances in the mountains.
Another regular mountain difficulty is the determination of the shooting distance. Its definition "by eye» inevitably leads to mistakes in the mountains, especially if there is at least a small fog. I advise to use a sighting grid that helps to avoid catastrophic errors. But it is more reliable to solve this problem with the help of a laser rangefinder. Its modern versions will also tell you the angle of the target location. It is necessary to reduce the aiming angle as the angle of the target position changes and it does not matter up or down. It must correspond to the projection of the firing distance on the horizontal plane (the horizon of the weapon) when shooting both up and down. In extreme cases – when shooting vertically up or down, the aiming angle should be zero regardless of the distance. In other words, the axis of the barrel bore should be directed at the target. You can practically not think about it at angles of less than 15 degrees. Then you should multiply the actual distance to the target by the cosine of the angle of the target location and set the aiming angle to the appropriate distance. Let's assume that we shoot 300 meters at a sheep male that is above (or below) us so that the angle of the target location is 35 degrees. In this case, we must set the aiming angle corresponding to the distance of 246 meters. If the angle was 45 degrees at the same distance, the sight should be set as for shooting at 214 meters. If the ram was at an angle of 60 degrees from us, the sight should be set at 150 meters.
It is known that the temperature affects the rate of burning of powder. The cartridges must have a constant temperature before firing in order for the shooting to be stable. This is easy to make if you carry several cartridges or a loaded clip in an inner pocket. This rule is useful to follow both when shooting weapons, and when hunting. You should make 3-4 shots at the target after arriving in the hunting area, especially in the mountains, it is in order to make adjustments to the local barometric pressure and temperature in the sight.
It’s useful to have a cartridge in the chamber in case of a sudden appearance of a close target when you are hunting on foot. The cartridge in the weapon must be changed to "thermostatic” for a long-range shot.
A modern hunter must have a ballistic calculator, in which data about his weapon and cartridge are entered in advance. If, you have time to prepare a shot when a worthy trophy is detected, the calculator will tell you what corrections should be made related to the location of the beast. However, it knows nothing about atmospheric pressure, air temperature and wind strength. You should help it and use the so-called anemorumbometer, or a pocket weather station.
It is very important to have stable manufacturers for accurate shooting at long distances. The bipods of tactical rifles should be high enough – this is almost a mandatory rule in the mountains. You can use a strong staff (alpenstock) instead of bipods with a relatively short shot. Or you can use a backpack as a front stop when shooting lying down. There is an unusual position for shooting down in the mountain The shooter lies on the slope on his back, with his feet in the direction of the target located lower down the slope. Then he bends his left leg at the knee so that he can put his left hand on it, which supports the fore end of the rifle. This position is extremely stable, but it needs to be trained to get good results, as, indeed, all other positions.
You can master accurate shooting only by shooting.
