A decade or two ago the hottest item in Delta deer camps was a soybean field rifle. For a while, owning one was considered more important than having a four-wheel drive monster pickup, a 500+cc ATV, Zeiss binoculars, or a wardrobe of Mossy Oak.
Wait, a soybean field rifle? What’s that?
For starters, it’s long, wide and huge. Gigantic soybean fields translate into long-range shooting. It was not unusual to hear hunters talk about taking 500-yard shots at a bruiser buck in a massive bean field.
This requires having a rifle cartridge capable of being very accurate at extreme ranges and retaining enough terminal ballistics to cleanly incapacitate a deer at ultimate ranges.
Then it means having a rifle platform equally capable of delivering an accurate long shot. On top of that combination has to be scope optics of the highest clarity and repeatability. Then, of course, the shooter has to be well practiced, cool on the trigger and able to make these shots with minimal time to settle into the shot.
Of the many numerous soybean field rifles I’ve inspected, all were a bolt action magnum, usually a 7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Weatherby, or a .300 Winchester Short Magnum. Remington, Winchester, and Ruger were most prevalent, and heavy, varmint-type barrels were normal
They were topped exclusively with 50mm objective scopes.
My soybean rifle is a Remington Sendero 7mm Mag with a 26-inch heavy barrel, topped with a 3x9x50 Leupold scope. It is a tack driver that has proven itself across many bean fields.
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