Why every deer camp has a ‘brush gun’ story

By V. Paul Reynolds

During camp debates about the best deer rifle calibers, someone inevitably pipes up: “Yea, that .35 Remington is one helluva brush gun.”

But what does that really mean? It means the bullet is big enough to slice through an alder branch or nick a beech tree and still stay on trajectory — and, if you’re lucky, still bring down a deer.

We’ve all done it, right? Placed a .270 150‑grain Nosler bullet perfectly in the center of an 8‑inch spruce tree instead of the intended target — an 8‑point whitetail buck standing broadside.

One of my deer camp buddies, Phil, did just that in his early hunting days. The mistake earned him a nickname that has stuck to this day: “Spruce.”

Logger and outdoor columnist Joel Tripp wrote about a fabled stump, a deer hunting hotspot for his father and friends back when most hunters relied on shotguns and buckshot. Legend has it that, as a kid, more deer were shot from that stump than anywhere else in the family woods.

By the time Tripp was old enough to take his first deer vigil on the celebrated stump, he found himself more fascinated by the spruce trees topped in a circle nearby. After examining them closely, he concluded they had been trimmed by buckshot over the years.

I’ve had my own brush gun moments. A wounded black bear once eluded me after my 7mm-08 round lost shape and punch after shaving the side of a hemlock.

More recently, while bow hunting this fall, a fixed broadhead intended for a standing crotch horn stopped short in an old blowdown. On the flip side, I’ve also shot a deer after my arrow went straight through the fabric of my camo ground blind. It was a typical 10-pointer that hangs on my wall to this day.

Perhaps it was tunnel vision or buck fever, but in neither encounter do I recall actually “seeing” the obstacles between me and the deer in my sights.

Then there’s a latter-day brush gun story with a happy ending. Avid deer hunter Tyler Strasenburgh, who has taken his share of deer with both gun and bow, was hunting one of his favorite runs this fall with his .308 when a young buck appeared nearby. Strasenburgh put the deer’s vitals in his scope’s crosshairs and squeezed off the shot. 

Pow. A perfect bullseye — dead center through a tree. Yep, another doggone spruce tree.

Figuring he had really blown the shot when he hit the tree, Strasenburgh was nonetheless surprised and delighted to find a significant blood trail. The wounded deer, hit in the vitals, traveled some distance, but the grateful hunter recovered it shortly after. 

In this unusual case, you wonder whether the caliber — the .308 — and the particular ammo, Federal Fusion, made the difference. Or was it just plain serendipity, sheer luck?

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books. Online purchase information is available at www.sportingjournal.com, Outdoor Books.