The tale of my very first Handi-Rifle


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:35 am
I have a brother-in-law who considers himself a deer hunter. And he hunted with a Handi-Rifle chambered in .270 Winchester. A very capable deer rifle it was! Then he was bitten by the bowhunting bug and suddenly considered shooting deer with a scoped rifle as almost "too easy" and bow hunting was where it was at for the sheer challenge. Three years of subsequent hunting with bow only netted him...

... zero deer. Na-da. Zip. :(

So he decided to start back using a rifle. And by that time he had upgraded to a beautiful brand new Remington rifle also in .270 Winchester. One crisp and cool autumn morning he drove up my driveway with that new scoped rifle, smiling proudly and saying that he needed to sight in his prized rifle in preparation for the upcoming gun season. We pulled out some targets and my shooting rest and he got the rifle zeroed fairly quickly.

That's when he made some offhand mention if I would please spread the word at my work that his old Handi-Rifle was for sale. He produced it from behind the seat of his Ford pickup to show me it was in pretty good condition except for one deep scratch in the forend. It had probably seen, at most, two boxes of factory Soft-Point ammunition in its lifetime. It came with a fixed 4x Nikon scope Made in Japan, and also had a 12-ga factory matched barrel as well. So I asked what he was asking for it all so I could tell my co-workers.

He lowered his head in thought for a second, his face hidden by the bill of the Realtree camo cap he was wearing, and when he looked up at me he quietly said....

"Fifty bucks."

Thirty seconds later I owned that rifle, with scope and two barrels. :D

I'll be posting up some threads over in Ammunition/Reloading about my quest for the most accurate handload I could produce for MY Handi-Rifle. It's been a fun ride!

And I'm long past feeling even the slightest bit guilty..... :lol:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 1:13 am
Good story...and great score !!

Let's see some pics...
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:46 am
Great story! I look forward to seeing pictures of your new Handi-Rifle.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 12:01 pm
SHOOTER13 wrote:Good story...

DHonovich wrote:Great story!


Thank you. I enjoyed writing it. ;)

That moment happened over five years ago, and since then I have hunted with it and taken game (deer and wild pig). I have also handloaded 130-gr JSPs over Trailboss for some remarkable "Youth Loads" that hum along at around 1500-fps and are like shooting a freekin .22 Magnum. What fun!

And as a side note, the 12-ga Mod. Choke barrel patterns #8-shot 1-1/8-oz dove loads like no tomorrow, easily as good or better than my $1,000 Browning Gold Fusion with a Modified Choke.

I'm hoping that sometime soon I will send the SB-2 receiver back for another fitted barrel although I cannot decide what chambering $96 should buy!

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