By Larry Weishuhn
I freely admit, one of my favorite places on Earth is the Choctaw Hunting Lodge! I dearly love the oak and pine covered “mountains”; the fertile flats along the streams; the many ponds on the property; the spacious and comfortable lodge along with my own “That’s Mr. Whitetail to You!” room. It is a land with abounding wildlife including whitetail deer, black bear, Eastern turkeys, feral hogs (even the unique mule-footed Choctaw hogs), and the exotic species inside their estate hunting area. I especially enjoy and appreciate the people, namely Nacolh and Dusty Vickery the expansive property’s managers, and their head guide Derek Stowe. To me, the Choctaw Hunting Lodge is magical!
You can imagine I how thrilled I was upon receiving an invitation to again hunt “The Choctaw” from Jesse Baird with Avient, a company that “does polymers”, those used in any products made in the outdoor field which use polymers in their manufacturing process including bows, crossbows, rifle stocks, pistol grips, even the polymer tips on today’s bullets and many, many other outdoor related products.
Avient is not a company to rest on their past or existing merits and products. They are continually looking for new and innovative manufacturing processes and products. Enter the Avient Rapid Heat Releasing Rifle Barrel technology. The process starts with a company’s factory steel rifle barrel, milled down to just beyond land and grooves, over which is added a layer of proprietary specialized low thermal inertia ceramic, then covered with a specialized carbon fiber sleeve on outside of the barrel. This creates a barrel that because of the rapid heat transferring ceramic, pulls the heat from the steel barrel to the outer sleeve where the heat quickly dissipates. As a result, the barrel does not heat with follow-up shots preventing subsequent bullet rise as is the case with steel or even carbon fiber wrapped barrels. The barrel process, based on my personal experiences, seems to make the barrel stiffer and more accurate.
My Avient Rapid Heat Releasing Barrel Technology barreled rifle started as a 7mm PRC, Mossberg Patriot Predator. The 20-inch barrel it now “wears” was created by Tom Sarver’s Thunder Valley Precision in Pennsylvania (www,thundervalleyprecision.com). They too added a muzzlebrake. I topped the completed rifle with a Stealth Vision SVL 5-20x50 Illuminated scope. I exclusively shoot Hornady’s Precision Hunter 175-grain ELD-X ammo because of how accurate it is in my rifle, near one-hole accuracy at ranges near and distant. I also really like the bullet’s terminal performance on game shot.
Joe Cunningham with Stealth Vision (www.stealthvision.com) set up the rifle for me to be dead-on at 200-yards, but then worked up data so I know the exact dial-up for 500, 600, 700, 800, 1000 and 1,200 yards.
I got to the Choctaw (www.choctawhuntinglodge.com) a day before Avient’s Jesse Baird and Mike Mosely, as well as long-time friend Jim Bequette, Mitch Mittlestaedt from Hornady and Matt Wilson from Ruger arrived. I took the opportunity to head to the Choctaw Hunting Lodge’s 1,200-yard rifle range to shoot my personal Avient technology barrel Mossberg Patriot Predator 7mm PRC described earlier. I took two shots; one at 200-yard target to confirm I was still properly sighted-in. I was. My third shot was at 1,200-yards, after the appropriate dial-up. My bullet hit the center of the 3-inch circle, pretty impressive!
A few minutes later Dusty, Derek Stowe ace guide at the Choctaw and I sighted in the other Avient technology barrel rifles which had been sent from Ruger. All were topped with Stealth Vision scopes, complete with their unique and patented “anti-cant green light technology”. Canting a rifle and scope has little effect on the bullet’s path until the target is beyond about 200-yards, thereafter canting a rifle causes the bullet to be as much as 24 inches or more “off target” at longer ranges.
In a minimum of time and shots we had the rifles sighted in to hit dead-on at 200-yards. Then we made proper turret adjustments and them shot out to 600-yards. Once everyone was in camp, it was planned for them to shoot longer distances.
Once the hunt started, Mike Mosely shot a really nice red stag and a fallow deer, Matt Wilson with Ruger shot an outstanding fallow deer as did Jesse Baird and Matt Middlestadt. Jim Bequette kept holding out for a good whitetail.
Me? I hunted a specific whitetail Dusty had told me about, using an abandoned goat barn as my blind inside the Estate Hunt area. Before I arrived Dusty had started putting out Vineyard Max where I would be hunting plus a few other places.
During my hunt the Vineyard Max attractant sites were covered with “critters” including several elk, numerous whitetail does and small bucks, as well as several fallow bucks and does. To say they relished the Vineyard Max (www.vineyardmax.net), created from dried grape skins (a by product of the wine industry), rice bran and chopped corn, would have been an understatement. They literally licked the ground where it had been placed after eating every bit of Vineyard Max that was put out. Vineyard Max is highly nutritious and good for the wildlife that eats it, providing required energy.
As luck would have it, I had three chances at the 10-point buck I hunted but was not able to make it happen!
Last day of the hunt I got an opportunity at a really nice, ancient 8-point with two kickers. By then I was back to shooting the rifle I mentioned in the beginning, my Mossberg Patriot Predator with the Avient Rapid Heat Releasing Barrel technology barrel.
The buck came at a trot. I raised my rifle followed him and when the crosshairs at 225-yards were where I thought they should be, I pulled the trigger. The buck was hit squarely through the vitals. I quickly bolted in a second Hornady round. As the buck turned and ran quartering away, I held an appropriate lead and pulled the trigger. He dropped in his tracks. Even so, I reloaded and watched him through my Stealth Vision scope. If he so much as twitched I was prepared to shoot him again.
Now before anyone says I should not be shooting at a running animal…let me say I spent many years teaching myself to shoot running game, both with moving inanimate targets, and ridding property I managed in Texas and other areas in the southwest of excess jack rabbits. Sixteen (16) jackrabbits eat as much as one deer does in a single day. I have also shot a goodly number of running wild hogs over the years.
I have at least two hunts planned on the Choctaw tis coming fall, one for black bear and one for whitetail deer. I will also go to the Choctaw with some friends as they hunt buffalo this coming winter. In years past I have taken two bison, or buffalo. One with a .405 Winchester rifle and one with a .500 S&W Mag handgun. Knowing how delicious buffalo met tastes, I should probably put a Choctaw Hunting Lodge buffalo on my “to do list”!
There truly is something special about returning to the Choctaw Hunting Lodge again and again!
Larry Weishuhn can be heard weekly on his “DSC’s Campfires with Larry Weishuhn” podcast, as well as on Luke Clayton’s weekly podcast, “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends”, bothon Spotify, Apple podcasts, waypointtv.com, outdooraction.com, carbontv.com and just about anywhere podcasts can be listened to. Larry co-hosts the uniquely weekly “A Sportsman’s Life” television show on CarbonTV.com and on the “A Sportsman’s Life” YouTube Channel. Larry’s most recent books, DEER ADDICTIONS, as well as two he co-authored with Luke Clayton, CAMPFIRE TALK and POOR MAN’S GRIZZLY are available through www.larryweishuhn.net and www.catfishradio.org. His Weishuhn Whitetail knives are available through www.vineyardmax.net and www.silverstag.com.