How One Deer Rifle Became a Family Hunting Tradition

My favorite thing about deer hunting is the traditions. Growing up and learning to hunt in Pennsylvania, I feel like I had an advantage over hunters in other parts of the country to experience hunting traditions. One of the first Pennsylvania hunting traditions I remember is spending the weekend prior to the opening Monday of rifle season at the Pecks’ cabin. The Pecks are two brothers who are lifelong friends of my grandfather, and my dad, grandfather and uncle would take me, my brothers and cousins to their cabin to feast on prime rib and hang out with local hunters. Once rifle season opened, my grandmother made it a tradition to have a fresh pot of ham and bean soup waiting for us hunters when we came in for the evening. If you were lucky enough to kill early, you could enjoy your soup at lunchtime while everyone else was still in the woods.

Of all the traditions I was lucky enough to experience growing up, the one I looked forward to the most was receiving a hunting rifle from my grandfather for Christmas the year I turned 12. He did this for all his grandsons, and I vividly remember unboxing my Browning .243 Win. the year it was my turn to be gifted a gun. Although this was how we all received the first deer rifle to call our own, it wasn’t necessarily the gun we took our first deer — or even buck — with.

Changed laws allowing for kids to hunt with a mentor before Pennsylvania’s traditional hunting age of 12, paired with my family’s habit of hunting out-of-state, meant my brothers and I all killed our first whitetail bucks prior to receiving our deer rifles at age 12. Since we didn’t have firearms of our own yet, we relied on family-owned guns to take afield. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were beginning what would become a new family hunting tradition…

An Accidental Tradition Is Born

When my dad was a kid, the first whitetail buck he shot was on public land in Pennsylvania. He was carrying a Remington Model Seven chambered in 6mm that my grandfather had purchased. The rifle has a beautiful, short, wooden stock that is ideal for a youth hunter, especially those of small stature. And my grandfather worked up a custom load that he felt comfortable sending into the woods with his kids and future grandchildren.

Decades later, when it was time for my older brother to go hunting, my father took that same 6mm out that he had shot his first buck with. Sitting in a double ladder stand on a piece of mountain ground owned by my grandfather, my brother downed a 4-point. It was his first-ever buck and another one for the old Model Seven.

A few years later, I had my opportunity to hunt with the 6mm at 9 years old. Having already taken a doe, I was eager to notch my first-ever buck tag. I was fortunate enough to have my opportunity in the well-known whitetail country of southeast Kansas, and on the first evening of the hunt I made a heart shot on a young 9-point as he drifted past the tree stand at just 25 yards.

I have no doubt that you’re seeing a pattern emerge. A father and two of his sons all shooting their first bucks with the same deer rifle. Ironically, none of this was planned. For whatever reason, my dad and grandfather had felt that our family’s 6mm was the right gun for my brother and I to kill our first bucks with. And the unplanned pattern continued when my younger brother and last of my father’s sons killed a 5-point in the same area of Kansas where I had killed my 9-point. It too was his first-ever buck, meaning my father and all three of his sons had shot their first bucks with the same Model Seven Remington.

It wasn’t until recently that my older brother and I talked about this unintentional trend and realized it had actually become a tradition. And it’s a tradition that we will carry on. As I’m now married and beginning to think of starting a family, and my older brother is married with a son of his own, we’ve made a pact that our children each have to kill their first buck with the old 6mm. If we deliver on this, it will make three generations of Garlock hunters to shoot their first buck with our 6mm. And considering my grandfather purchased the gun, that would make four generations of hunters in our family to carry this Remington rifle.

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