Okay, I left you all hanging after last week’s teaser. Here’s the payoff:
It’s a CZ 550 American in 9.3x62mm, which I picked up about 4 years ago from my late and dearly-missed old FFL. I don’t know how he ended up with the gun, but I do know he had a very hard time selling it; your typical Michigan shooter apparently has little use for rifles chambered in overpowered, obscure German calibers.
So he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I got the gun for a song… and about $300. Of course, I promptly stashed it in the back of the closet and forgot about it, since, well… I had little use for a rifle chambered in an overpowered, obscure German caliber. But hey, it’s a CZ! And it was cheap!
Fast forward to two weeks ago and an unexpected invitation to a deer hunting trip. I quickly surveyed the arms at hand and found I didn’t have a suitable deer rifle ready. Time to dig out the still-unfired CZ and get it set up for whitetail-bustin’.
A little more digging in the back of the closet turned up another forgotten bargain, a Leupold Vari-X II 3-9x40mm scope. I’d gotten it at a steep discount when Leupold phased out the Vari-X line and set it aside for… uh, now, I guess. A 2-7x or a fixed 4x might be more appropriate for the caliber, but the 3-9x is a well-proven classic and the extra magnification will be appreciated at the range.
Scope’s now mounted and boresighted (after the usual hour-long game of “is the reticle crooked?”), trigger’s tweaked to just over 3 lbs (the set pull is about a half-pound, but that’s another story for later), and ammo is on hand. Tomorrow it gets sighted in and with a little luck it’ll tip over a deer next month.
What ammo are you using?
I hunt with a .35 Whelen fairly often, and I hunted with a guy in Ontario who used a 9.3 (his was a Husqvarna, and seriously cool). You will not have any trouble getting the deer down with it I am sure.
I used the Prvi Partizan 285-grain soft point. It’s by far the cheapest stuff on the market, about half the cost of Norma.
Overpowered? Considering the number of 7mm and 300 magnums used for deer hunting, that statement may not be entirely accurate.
It isn’t really obscure anymore, since CZ started selling them in this country a coupla years ago. In Africa they’re pretty damn ubiquitous, as it seem to be the most popular sporting cartridge there..