I switched from a winchester semi-automatic action to my current Browning 338 after a horrible experience hunting with 2 of my friends. We had been tracking an elk my buddy had shot for 3-4 hours in the Oregon Coast range just outside of Sheridan. We keep finding blood on leaves or rocks but no bull elk and all of a sudden as i scampered down this bank i saw there was a small group of elk maybe 8-12 with several branch bulls or spikes mixed in with the cows.

I signaled to my buddies and we all knew the hunt was on and there would hopefully a few good shots before they spooked and ran off again. I signaled that I would  count to 3 and would shoot, well i click off the safety and instantly I saw heads stiffen up below. I was maybe 20-30 yards above them which is pretty incredible for western Oregon hunting it’s always thick tree’s or brush and your lucky to get a clear shot many times let alone maybe the 3 of us would easily bag one now after all of this work.

Well I

Browning 338, the perfect elk gun

picked out a nice 4 point bull and pulled the trigger and heard this awful click and no shot, we all exchanges quick looks and none of the elk spooked they seemed confused by the sound and hadn’t seen us. Chris shot me a look and i knew he was going to shoot, I tried to re-chamber a fresh shell and now all Hell broke loose as they all jumped up to run off. Two shots rang out and I knew Chris had killed a nice spike below me Floyd didn’t get a shoot off and my damm gun wouldn’t fire again.

Well after all of the fun getting that bad boy field dressed and back to camp we talked about my finally buying a left handed gun that fit me.

The very next week i started calling around looking to see what was available for a left handed shooter, not much was available.

Well a few months later I walked into Cent-Wise Sporting Goods in Redmond Oregon and they had this beautiful custom Browning 338 with composite black stock and a Leopold 4/12 scope with a big bore eye piece that fit me to a tee.

Well the guy who had ordered it and paid 30% down wasn’t going to pay it off, well I tried to hide my keen interest to the owner, he just smiles and told me this was going to be easy for us both. He offered me the gun for the balance due and offered to bore sight it and throw in a box of shells to boot.

Well fast forward 6 years and I’ve had 4 chances to shoot it in the field and all 4 times the elk went down instantly in a heap perfect gun for killing the big boys. I have made a shot of over 700 yards and again he dropped in a heap no running off like in those hunting videos you see on  TV.