Picking a Rifle for Saddle Hunting Whitetail Deer
Written by Walter Edward Lee IV
An Alabama buck killed by the author from a saddle December 2023.
Saddle Hunting is no longer the new kid on the block despite it's continued growth in the hunting community. Since landing on the season in 2018, the saddle hunting community has continued to evolve as lessons are learned with time spent in the deer woods. One unexpected area, at least for myself, was the need to reconsider what makes a good rifle from the saddle. This was something that frustrated me for quite some time as I bounced from potential solution to potential solution only to be frustrated with the end result. Some of my answers were answered through carful evaluation of my gear, but the final question was answered when I realized my understanding of what makes a good rifle was ... incomplete. Why did saddle hunting cause a problem?
To answer this question we have to start with what I grew up hunting in ... ladder stands and climbers. In both of these situations you have a brace in front of you that allows you to lean far forward and rest the rifle for a steady shot. There is no tree or ropes in front of you to snag the end of the barrel or to hinder movement. In the picture above I am hunting with one of my favorite deer rifles I own, a Winchester Model 70 chambered in 7mm Remington Magnum. While this is a flat shooting and devastating round for a deer, the gun features a long barrel for optimized muzzle velocity which often was caught on the tether to the tree or would bump the tree I was facing as I switched sides. This leads me to my first observation. Observation No. 1: Consider total gun length
There is no doubt that today's deer hunter lives in the land of excess when it comes to fantastic calibers for whitetail. At this point it really boils down to the situation you will hunt for your decision and how compact can you get the gun. This is where short action rifles have a clear advantage. Rounds like the .308, 6.5 Creedmoor, 450 Bushmaster, 45-70, and .243 Winchester are terrific options and can be easily found in affordable but deadly carbine options. While my preferred choice when shooting at a deer on my weakside (for those of you who don't know this is the side of the tree your dominant hand is on) is to use the tree as cover and slowly rotate until I can take my shot, there are urgent moments when you must maneuver quickly. The more compact the gun is, the easier this is to do without taking your eyes off the target. As I started saddle hunting I found my targets were often much closer in range than I had experienced in the past and this leads to my second observation. Observation No. 2: Consider a Lower powered Scope
My climber was a deadly option ... until I moved to Florida the land of swamps and gnarled trees. Back home in SE Ga finding a straight tree within eyesight of a game trail was easy as can be since nearly all the land available to hunt was timber land and that meant more perfectly straight pine trees than any man could count. When I moved to Florida I found that deer lived in isolated pockets and while finding those pockets was difficult, finding a tree where I wanted to hunt was even harder (Saddle hunting enter stage left!) The dense swamps in Florida often gave me 1 - 2 trees that I could hunt for any given setup and it felt like more often than not a climber simply wasn't a good option. I also seemed to find that given that my setup was so much lighter and compact, that I was beginning to explore areas I would have never dreamed to take a climber into and this meant I was frequently encountering shots from 35-75 yards instead of 125-175. I quickly realized that my 4x optics were almost overkill and penalized my field of view in already dense vegetation. I believe the 2x-10x range magnification serves the saddle hunter in a far more practical way by increasing the brightness of the scope and allowing for more reliable and expedient target acquisition in dense areas ... especially during the rut with moving targets. It was my dive into scopes that quickly lead me to my final and most frustration observation.
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Observation no. 3: Make sure your rifle fits
For whatever reason, I was never educated nor prompted to understand what goes into a properly fitted rifle. Perhaps it was the ability to choke up on the gun in climbers and ladder stands, or perhaps its because this isn't a commonplace discussion unless your a child. In either event, I had a lot of difficulty getting a clear picture through my scope and I spent a lot of time with various gun rests and anchors attempting to solve the problem with the wrong tool. Consider the posture that you have in the saddle, which is nearly vertical, and this quickly became my focal point. In my pursuit to understand why my scope had such a limited field of view. As I began to attempt to adjust the rifle, I realized that I couldn't get the relief I needed unless I was prone or leaning far forward and this made me begin to contemplate if my hobbit sized arms were the problem not the scope ... and they were. My Length of Pull was off by nearly two inches and this was the ultimate issue I faced. Recently, I purchased a new .308 carbine which matched my LOP and the difference was immediately noticeable. 
Conclusion
I just gave you another excuse to buy a new gun. You're welcome.