With fall hunting season upon us, it is time to open up the gun safe and/or gun closet and get ready to do some hunting.
While many of you probably hunt dove, my fall hunts will primarily be for pheasant, duck, deer, coyote, and wild hogs. And I may sneak a goose hunt in during December.
The caliber of choice for the pheasant, duck, and geese–12 gauge.
The caliber of choice for the deer–30-30.
The caliber of choice for the coyote–5.56.
The caliber of choice for the wild hogs–.308 Win.
A lot of hunters like to use an over/under shotgun to pheasant hunt, but I enjoy a semiautomatic because it gives me one extra shot in the event I have two birds at once and I miss one the first time around. I also like to use a semiautomatic because the felt recoil is lower, due to the action of the shotgun, and that allows me to do better staying on target for second (or third) shots.
My 12 gauge for this fall is the Mossberg 940 Pro Water Fowl. The Water Fowl comes with camouflaged fore stock and rear stock and green CERAKOTE on the receiver and barrel, so it blends in to the environment. Moreover, it has a HIVIZ front sight that picks up light, even on the cloudiest day. That sight glows bright, making target acquisition a snap. And the action on the Water Fowl is spectacular.
I had a great pheasant hunt with the Water Fowl in South Dakota last month.
When it comes to deer, I use my trusty Henry Repeating Arms 30-30. The 30-30 is a classic round and it is more than sufficient when it comes to taking down whitetails or mule deer from 100 yards and in. (I hunt in wooded areas in Kentucky and the shots are usually right at 80-90 yards.)
A 30-30 lever action is nostalgic, bringing to mind the frontier days in which settlers relied on the rifle to keep their families safe and to put food on the table.
A Henry 30-30 lever action is not only nostalgic, but made in America and accurate right out of the box.
When it comes to coyotes, my round of choice is the 5.56. My go-to coyote gun is the Daniel Defense V7, which I have owned for years and used on coyote hunt after coyote hunt. I have a Vortex scope on my V7 and, in my experience, the rifle has proven deadly accurate and unquestionably reliable.
For wild hogs I travel to West Texas and a .308 is the round of choice. The round is large enough to provide one shot, one kill scenarios again and again, yet with recoil that is more than manageable. This fall I am hunting with a Watch Tower Firearms Type 10–chambered in .308–with a Pulsar Night Vision Thermion thermal scope on top. The combination of the two–the Type 10 rifle and the thermal scope–spells doom for the wild beasts.
I have suppressors on the Daniel Defense V7 and the Watch Tower Type 10, for the benefit of my ears, my fellow hunters’ ears, and the environment.
Those of you who hunt already know that there is something special about getting away from cell phones, social media, and televisions, into a place where the sun is rising behind you as you sit in a blind or on the ground, under cover, as the daylight breaks. For hog hunters, the time together with other hunters around the dinner table before the night hunt starts is a time where memories are made and stories exchanged.
If you hunt with dogs, watching them retrieve the pheasant and duck is itself worth the trip. And then there is the post-hunt conversation, boots off, sitting outside the hunting lodge or the farm house or the pickup truck, talking about things that grandpas talked about decades ago when they did the same with their hunting buddies.
Happy hunting, everyone.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
