SOME big game hunters don’t see any use for lightweight rifles, and some believe lightweights are inferior to what might be called standard-weight rifles.  Partly this arises from changes in big game hunting in the United States over the past half-century.  White-tailed deer have been the most common American big game since bison were almost wiped out in the 1800’s, but throughout the 1960’s and into the 1970’s, most deer hunters hiked around the countryside because whitetails were still relatively scarce.

Due to persistent subsistence poaching and even some market hunting, the whitetail population dropped to its lowest level during the first half of the 20th century, especially during the Depression.  In a few states whitetails were completely wiped out, and didn’t return until game departments transplanted deer from other states.  Even where enough deer existed to hold legal hunting seasons, there weren’t enough whitetails to sit on a stump and hope a legal buck (does were off-limits) wandered by, so most hunters actually had to go looking for one.

Sometimes they still-hunted alone, sneaking through woods where a buck might be found, but others made multi-hunter drives.  In either technique, a typical shot took place at close range, often at a moving deer.  Consequently many hunters preferred lighter rifles for quicker handling, but also so they’d be in their owners’ hands, ready for a shot, instead of slung over a shoulder.

If overall sales are any indicator, during this era the most popular whitetail rifle was the Model 94 Winchester carbine, almost always a .30-30.  Supposedly the 94’s big virtue was relatively rapid fire, but the carbine was also “handy,” due to the 20-inch barrel and the under-barrel magazine, which added some weight to the front end.  Overall weight, however, was still light, something under seven pounds loaded, exactly how much depending on wood density.

Similar-weight bolt-actions also existed, such as the 1903 Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine and the Savage Model 20, but since most hunters used iron sights there wasn’t any real advantage gained by the superior accuracy of bolt actions.  Most whitetail hunters preferred lever-actions because they were faster-firing and, especially compared to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, inexpensive.

By the late 20th century whitetails became so numerous that in some places many people considered them pests.  More hunters started sitting and waiting for deer, and some discovered that sitting well above the ground worked better, allowing them to look down into openings.  By 2000 the vast majority of whitetail hunters sat and waited, instead of sneaking or driving, often in portable treestands but sometimes in permanent blinds resembling those called hochsitzes, “high seats” in Germany.  This was not only a more effective way to kill deer, but in settled country safer, one reason for the vast number of hochsitzes in Germany, a country smaller in area than Montana but with almost 100 times more citizens: On smaller properties, amid lots of people, it’s far safer to shoot down toward the ground than through the woods.

About 10 million Americans hunt deer each year, and since most are after whitetails, the vast majority sit.  Very few have to walk very far to their stands, and even climbing a ladder into an American hochsitz isn’t too tough.  Consequently light rifles don’t provide any real advantages, and in fact can be a disadvantage when shooting hundreds of yards across a green field in the Southeast or down a sendero in Texas.

But other kinds of big game hunting still require hiking, sometimes up and down steep terrain.  Quite a few elk and mule deer hunters find that a lighter rifle (and boots, backpack, etc.) allow them to comfortably cover more country, though some he-men still firmly believe anybody who can’t carry a “real” rifle should stay the hell out of the woods.

Much of this residual resistance to lightweight hunting rifles occurred because of the evolution of the bolt-action hunting rifle, in particular telescopic sights and magnum cartridges.  Scopes started becoming more popular in the 1930’s, when a Texan named Bill Weaver offered scopes most hunters could afford, though most hunters still used iron sights.  By the 1960’s scopes became almost universal, thanks in part to becoming more waterproof, and relatively inexpensive variable-magnification models, but one side-effect of scopes was adding at least a pound to rifle weight.

Scopes and magnum cartridges went hand-in-hand, since most magnums offered extra velocity to flatten trajectory, important back when hunters had to “guesstimate” range.  Human eyes are too close together to accurately judge ranges (though before laser range-finders many hunters believed they were really good at it) and a flat trajectory minimized eyeballing errors.  It’s not coincidence that the popularity of magnum rounds coincided with post-World War Two increase in scopes.

However, most bullets were still relatively primitive, basically the same design used since the development of practical smokeless rifle powder in the 1880’s, with a lead-alloy core inside a relatively thin jacket of harder metal, usually copper alloy.  These often over-expanded or even disintegrated upon striking game at magnum velocities, and the only practical way to semi-guarantee deeper penetration was to use heavier bullets.

The side-effect of extra powder, velocity and bullet weight was extra recoil.  Back then many he-men didn’t believe in recoil pads, partly because the pads that existed weren’t all that great anyway, especially after hardening for a few years amid the elements.  But their opinion also involved esthetics, along with being a real man.  In Roy Dunlap’s classic book Gunsmithing, published in 1950, this paragraph from the chapter “Design of Gunstocks” sums up the prevailing thoughts on the subject:

“Recoil pads should never be used except for rifles of very heavy recoil, or for injured persons or others not able to take normal recoil….  Recoil pads distract so much from the appearance of a good stock that they should never be used unless absolutely necessary….  [Stockmaker Thomas] Shelhamer’s comment on recoil pads is very pertinent: ‘A good rifle with a fine custom stock having a recoil pad is like a man in evening clothes wearing rubber boots.'”

Due to this common belief, most experts suggested rifles of “adequate weight” to reduce recoil and aid aiming.  Many of the gun writers of the day were real he-men, either physically or mentally or both.  Like tree-stand whitetail hunters, they didn’t see any need for lightweight rifles, and often said so, quite firmly.

One eventual exception, however, was a writer named Jack O’Connor, who gained considerable influence during World War Two when the magazine he wrote for, Outdoor Life, was distributed to American soldiers.  O’Connor wasn’t a recoil wimp — among other custom rifles, he had a .416 Rigby built on a magnum Mauser action, though he did have a recoil pad fitted, which might have been acceptable even to Roy Dunlap.

Originally O’Connor believed in heavier hunting rifles, just like many other men of his era, when many believed heavier rifles were especially needed when hunting mountainous country, because they steadied down quicker when a hunter’s lungs were heaving from a climb.

But among O’Connor’s skills as a gun writer was one not commonly encountered, then or today: He was a keen observer of other hunters and shooters, including his wife and their young daughters and sons while they grew up hunting, and learned from his observations.  (Most gun writers, like most humans, believe their personal experience is universal.)  O’Connor noticed his family didn’t consist of big he-men, so equipped them with lighter rifles chambered for lighter-recoiling rounds — and also noticed supposedly wimpy rounds killed game pretty well.

He was also among the early fans of Nosler Partitions, the first truly controlled-expansion big game bullet widely distributed in North America.  He’d already used cup-and-core bullets with heavier jackets with some success, but the Partition really changed how much bullet weight was required to penetrate larger animals.  Some of his fellow gun writers never noticed this.  One wrote that Nosler should offer a 300-grain .338 Partition, because he felt their 250-grain was too light for all-around use.

Eventually O’Connor became an advocate of lighter-weight rifles in smaller calibers, as did the guy who was probably the second most-influential gun writer of the era, Warren Page, the shooting columnist for Field & Stream.  Among many other rifles, Page had a custom rifle built for a 7mm magnum wildcat that weighed around seven pounds with scope, and used it (often with Nosler Partitions) to take hundreds of big game animals all over world.

Today’s younger hunters can’t really comprehend how much influence O’Connor and Page could have on their readers, but back then only a few hunting/shooting magazines existed, and the circulation of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life rivaled many popular general-interest magazines.

Consequently demand for lightweight rifles grew, and factories started making lighter bolt-action rifles, probably the most popular 1955’s Winchester Model 70 Featherweight.  With a typical 1950’s hunting scope Featherweights weighed around 7½ pounds, not considered particularly light today but far less than standard pre-’64 Model 70’s, which often weighed nine pounds scoped.

However, weight reduction was limited by both walnut stocks and actions.  The most popular bolt actions used for most American big game rifles prior to World War Two, the 1903 Springfield, 98 Mauser and Model 70 Winchester, weighed close to three pounds.

The Remington 721 and its later version, the long-action 700, weighed around 38 ounces, including their sheet-metal floorplates, and the short-action 700 weighed 34 ounces.  Many traditionalists whined about the push-feed actions and flimsy floorplates, but others liked the lighter weight-though it wasn’t always obvious in most 721/722/700 factory rifles, because they still featured rather stout stocks and barrels.

Still, the only way to substantially reduce the weight of a barreled action was to fit a shorter, thinner barrel.  Some gunsmiths drilled holes in magazines and buttstocks, but these only dropped a few ounces, while a lighter, shorter barrel could save a full pound, though many shooters claimed such muzzle-light bolt rifles were impossible to shoot accurately.

The first real revolution occurred when some people constructed far lighter stock out of epoxy and fiberglass fibers, a few weighing as little as a pound, half the weight of a Model 70 Featherweight’s walnut stock.  (Not so oddly, folks who made synthetic stocks never installed steel buttplates, or at least my considerable reading has never found any reference to any.  Instead they used recoil pads, and during the same era newer, softer recoil pads were developed that reduced felt recoil far more than older, harder pads.)

Some gunsmiths combined such “lay-up” synthetic stocks with Remington 700 short actions and short, skinny barrels, resulting in very light rifles that really were difficult to shoot offhand, unless of course the shooter was similarly scaled down.  But by then fewer and fewer whitetail hunters shot offhand, since they were almost always sitting down-which meant short, light rifles were irrelevant, unless a box blind was really small.

Other hunters put the weight saved by a synthetic stock into “normal” barrels, resulting in lighter rifles with enough weight forward to be reasonably easy to shoot offhand.  Articles on such “mountain rifles” started appearing regularly in magazines, and even factories began to offer them, but another revolution took place in 1985, when Melvin Forbes started building bolt actions that eliminated weight where it wasn’t needed.

His first action, and still the lightest, was the Model 20, so named because it weighs 20 ounces, including the magazine, action screws and trigger guard, almost a pound less than the short Remington 700.  He also developed a very sophisticated synthetic stock, thanks in part to help from friends who worked for the rocket division of Hercules Corporation (yes, actual rocket scientists) who provided information on various synthetic materials.

Soon some factories started reducing action weight as well, whether through using lighter metals for their actions, such as the titanium version of the Remington 700, or Kimber down-sizing the classic controlled-feed action.  Eventually rifles weighing under seven pounds with scope became pretty common, and some weighed under six.  Astoundingly, many hunters found they could shoot such rifles accurately, partly because more hunters started consistently using rifle rests after stalking glassed-up game, rather than shooting offhand.

The latest chapter in lightweight rifles, however, began with the introduction of affordable, hand-held, eye-safe laser rangefinders in the 1990’s, allowing hunters to know rather than guesstimate range.  This changed scopes considerably, and some hunters started using larger, heavier “tactical” scopes, designed to withstand frequent turret-twirling.

This initially added even more to rifle weight, but eventually some hunters found that really light rifles, even those with short barrels, worked fine at longer ranges, because they didn’t have to be chambered for hard-kicking magnums.  Lasers and turret scopes made a flat trajectory almost irrelevant, and many started using smaller cartridges and bullets with higher ballistic coefficients.  This isn’t really a new overall trend, since big game cartridges have been shrinking ever since the development of smokeless powder, thanks in part to better bullet designs.

But one of the latest trends is to mount larger scopes on really light rifles.  To some hunters this defeats the purpose of a “mountain rifle,” but in reality a longer, heavier scope adds some weight forward to the balance of rifles with short, skinny barrels.  I recently did this with my New Ultra Light Arms .30-06, mounting a 3-15×42 Tract Toric weighing half-a-pound more than a typical 3-9x hunting scope.  It shifted the center of balance noticeably forward, but even with the heavy scope and a full magazine, the NULA still weighs just about as much as a typical Winchester Model 94 carbine with a tube full of .30-30’s.

Of course, some traditional hunters don’t really get it, and apparently don’t want to.  They still think bullets for longer-range shooting need to be driven at high velocity, when moderate velocity with high-BC bullets works fine, because it results in higher downrange velocity and more consistent terminal performance.  Traditional hunters also believe a longer, heavier scope overwhelms a light rifle, when it often helps the rifle’s balance.

In a way, during the past century we’ve reversed the emphasis of almost every aspect of big game rifles.  Instead of using extra rifle weight to help us aim iron sights on hard-kicking rifles with steel buttplates, we now use sophisticated scopes to help us aim with far more accuracy, while using lighter-recoiling rifles with soft recoil pads.

What will be the next trend?