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Brent visits with "This Country Life" and "Blood Trails" contributing videographer David McDaniels to discuss David's recent elk hunt. It was a hunt opportunity that resulted from a crazy set of circumstances that initially felt like a huge disappointment. Good things happen to good people and in the end, David persevered in a big way. From darkness to light comes David's Elk Story on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.

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Designing a gun is like solving a puzzle. The gun has to work well, but it also needs to be produced at a massive scale to be commercially successful. This is something Bill Ruger needed to take into account as he went from wunderkind firearm designer in the 1930s to owner and founder of Sturm, Ruger & Co. in 1949. Perhaps no Ruger design epitomizes this more than the 10/22.

The Ruger 10/22 is practically standard issue in the U.S. Millions have been made and sold, and it has a following all its own with legions of fans customizing and modifying the gun. Released in 1964, the 10/22 was built to bring premium features to rimfire rifles at a cost that wouldn’t feel outrageous to the average consumer. From the day it dropped, it has excelled at this, setting a new baseline for 22 rimfire rifles.

The 10/22 is a case study in producing something better than the competition for around the same cost as the competition. To get to this, Bill Ruger started working on the rifle in the 1950s with designers Doug McClenahan and Harry Sefried. Together, they brought forward several ground-breaking manufacturing innovations. To the average shooter, these things aren’t as eye-catching as a decked-out M-Lok rail or fine engraving, but they are the reason the 10/22 is still with us today.

The first is the use of investment casting. Investment casting uses a mold for a rough part that gets filled with molten metal to produce that part. After the part is cast, a machinist might finish up some important cuts on a mill or lathe, but most of the work is done. When compared to machining a solid billet of steel or aluminium, investment casting is cheaper, and it still produces a quality part. In the case of the 10/22, the receiver is cast from aluminum, which makes it lighter to carry. But the aluminium also posed a bit of a manufacturing puzzle.

The barrel for the 10/22 had to be made of steel. At the time, Ruger needed to finish the steel barrel and aluminum receiver differently, before they were finally put together. Screwing the barrel into the aluminum receiver, as is done on most firearms, would inevitably mar the finishes on either the barrel or the receiver. To fix this, Ruger designed a dovetailed block with two screws to attach the barrel. This also makes barrel swapping easy, as many who want to customize their 10/22 with a new barrel have come to find out.

Another big breakthrough with 10/22 was its rotary magazine, which is pretty much perfect. At the time, Ruger had just employed an engineer named Harry Sefried. Sefried worked on the 44 Magnum Carbine with Ruger and was a wizard at simplifying mechanisms to be more effective in function and cost. From the book, Ruger & His Guns, Ruger describes Sefried’s work on the 10/22, specifically the magazine:

After the .44 Magnum Carbine [Sefried] had a great deal to do with the rotary magazine of the 10/22 Carbine; it was Harry who designed the subtly complex rotor which turned out to be the key to the way those cartridges lie in there so that the rims can’t catch on each other and the top cartridge is nicely pointed toward the mouth of the chamber.

By “nicely pointed,” Ruger meant that each cartridge was in the same position when waiting to be fed into the chamber. The rims also positioned themselves in a way where they would not lock and jam the gun. This was unlike typical box magazines, because varying spring pressure can slightly change the angles that cartridges sit, which leads to malfunctions. Successful, semi-auto rimfires using tubular magazines had been built before. But lifting cartridges from a tubular magazine to the chamber required extra moving parts—costing more money to manufacture and more chances for something to go wrong.

The last important innovation in the 10/22 is the genius “breechblock decelerator.” Using very few parts, the 10/22’s bolt is slowed down at the rear of the receiver. This gives more time for the next round to pop up in the magazine and get picked up by the bolt on its way forward. Rimfires that cycle too fast experience more failures to feed. With a reliable rotary magazine and a slower bolt, the 10/22 feeds right every time.

All of the manufacturing smarts that went into the 10/22 are great, but describing investment casting and magazine geometry to the average consumer isn’t going to sell guns. Hunters and shooters like the 10/22 because it was one of the first 22s to take itself seriously.

Ruger was a through and through gun guy. He knew what shooters liked and wanted, as you can see with guns like the No. 1, the M77, and the Mini 14. The 10/22 occupied uncharted territory in the market back in the 1960s, which is exactly why Ruger made it. Back then, rimfires were looked at as a step above a BB gun. They were youth guns and plinkers, not serious firearms. There were “trainer” rimfire rifles used by the military to take advantage of cheap rimfire ammunition, but there wasn’t really a 22 geared toward the serious shooter on the market.

The 10/22 originally came with a nice walnut stock, solid metal parts, and sleek modern lines that weren’t too over the top. It was also scaled to more adult proportions. Ruger also contracted Lyman to make the sights, giving the 10/22 a nice set of irons right out of the box. It also used a crossbolt safety, which seems ubiquitous now, but was a more serious feature at the time that was found more on centerfires. More importantly, it also worked like a reliable centerfire rifle, whereas many semi-auto rimfires were finicky at the time.

The 10/22 has grown with the market largely because it works, but also because of the design innovations to help with its manufacture. Since its release, there has been a boom in aftermarket modification because the 10/22 is easy to modify. The rifle is like a Lego set for anyone looking to customize a gun because there is practically no machining work required to make upgrades. Want a new barrel? Simply swamp it with a couple of screws and an allen key. How about a new trigger? The entire fire control unit comes out for an easy change. Today, the 10/22 still can’t be beat for the money, and there are hundreds of ways to tailor it to your specific needs.

Ruger has made dozens of versions of the 10/22 starting in the 1960s. There are some with Monte Carlo combs, Mannlicher-style forends, fluted barrels, takedown survival models, laminated stocks, and a pistol version. All of them are good buys on the used market. Early guns were stocked in walnut, and later guns were stocked in birch, maple, synthetic, and laminate. Personally, I’m a sucker for walnut stock, but I’d be happy with just about any 10/22. Compared to newer 10/22s, early models will have more metal parts, like a metal fire control unit, but they will not have an extended magazine release.

The used market is a great place to score a deal on a 10/22, but Ruger still produces the gun with several trim packages, and it almost makes more sense to buy new. The entry-level is the standard model with a wood or synthetic stock. There are also several takedown models, a line of carbon-fiber barrel models, and a more premium competition line. Ruger also makes left-handed 10/22s that are true left-handed guns and an SBR with a short barrel.

The most fun thing about the 10/22, though, is the ability to customize the rifle. Kidd and Volquartsen are two great aftermarket parts companies that stock everything from triggers to barrels. Bolt-hold-open buttons, magazine releases, and triggers are places a lot of people start, as aftermarket parts can be an upgrade to standard controls on vintage 10/22s. You can even start from scratch with an aftermarket receiver and build the entire gun yourself from premium parts.

Whatever you’re looking for, there’s probably a 10/22 that will suit your needs, from backyard plinking to squirrel hunting. And if you already have a 10/22, enjoy it. It’s still one of, if not the best semi-auto rimfire available today.

Photos via Matthew Every

Are you hunting the sign a mature buck left behind or figuring out where he’s going next? This week on Back 40, Bronson Strickland, Tony LaPratt, Jason Michael, and Skip Sligh break down how they read buck sign and use it to predict a deer’s next move. We dive into scrapes, rubs, bedding, travel corridors, hunting pressure, and the clues that actually matter when deciding where to set up. As the rut approaches and bucks begin covering more ground, knowing where a deer has been is only part of the equation. The real challenge is anticipating where he’ll be when you’re in the stand. If you’re trying to turn fresh sign into an actual encounter with a mature buck, this episode will help you think one move ahead.

Presented by Moultrie

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Steven Rinella and the MeatEater Crew discuss: Only Fins Katie; livescope effectiveness; the commercial panfish fishery; Ted Cruz’s cormorant control bill; tough titties; Alaska Native and U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola; and more.

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In October 1990, Montana hunter Cary Greenlee arrived at a funeral home with his wife's body in the back of his Suburban. Anita Greenlee had been shot in the chest during a hunting trip, and Cary insisted it was a tragic accident. But as investigators dug deeper, they uncovered whispers of an affair, conflicting accounts, and troubling questions about how Anita really died. Nearly two decades later, prosecutors finally brought murder charges. What happened next left the case as controversial as ever—and raised the question of whether Anita's killer had escaped justice.

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It’s that time of year when the term “rut-crazed” not only applies to deer but also to hunters. Every fall, Google sees a 2,000 to 3,000% increase in searches related to the whitetail rut in the US alone between September 8 and November 8. That’s an unfathomable amount of brain power the whitetail community annually dedicates to demystifying buck breeding behavior.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably consumed content in that genre at some point. Like holiday decorations in a department store, the torrent of rut predictions, rut reports, and hype over the Rutting Moon seems to only come earlier and with more intensity every year.

But is all of that guesswork really necessary?

Decades of deer research suggest that key aspects of the rut are biologically set in stone, including the central obsession of so many rut hunters: timing.

Hardly anything in our environment is as consistent as the Sun. It rises in the east, sets in the west, and we will presumably follow the same path around it on a 365-day cycle until it explodes in 5 billion years or so. It only makes sense that other cycles in nature ended up tracking the sun as well.

As the northern hemisphere tilts away from the Sun each fall, the shortening of days triggers trees to drop their leaves, prompts bears to fatten themselves, and, according to science, keeps the rut on a strict schedule. Despite changing environmental conditions, a 2024 study in Ontario found that regional peak rut timing remained static across a staggering 29 consecutive years.

If you think that’s just a wacky Canadian deer thing, you’re mistaken. This theory has held up all the way down to Texas, where biologists gathered whitetail conception data for 3 years and saw the same pattern. Peak rut varies by region, but not by year.

That should be a huge relief for an anxious whitetailer who is dangerously close to using Tarot cards to decide when to sit that Holy Grail rut funnel. Still, some hunters can’t abandon their conviction that the Moon, not the Sun, is what gets bucks on the move.

Since the lunar cycle is shorter than the length of the average month, full moon dates shift backwards by about 11 days with each new calendar. The Harvest Moon is the full moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox on a given year, and earned its name centuries ago as a convenient source of nighttime illumination in a time when you otherwise couldn’t keep working the fields after dusk.

The Hunter’s Moon, or Rutting Moon, is the full moon that follows the Harvest Moon. It’s unclear whether the term “Hunter’s Moon” originated with farmers who had a unique opportunity to spot game in the moonlight across their freshly harvested fields or with Native Americans who took the moon as their signal to stock up on meat and hides for the winter. Either way, there’s one thing the Hunter’s Moon was never meant to imply—that it has any influence at all on when the whitetail rut takes place. But once modern deer hunters dubbed it the “Rutting Moon,” that idea found a lasting foothold in the whitetail world.

Today, we have plenty of evidence that the Rutting Moon is a classic correlation-not-causation situation. A 2012 study of wild deer in Texas and Mississippi modeled conception dates against moon phases and found exactly no relationship. It seems that the appearance of a full moon around the time that whitetails are breeding is simply a function of having roughly one full moon per month and about a month of breeding activity.

Planning your rut-cation around a lunar calendar is most likely a complete waste of time, and the weather forecast could be equally trivial.

I don’t think any demographic gets more hyped up over a November cold front than deer hunters. It’s fair to think that a buck sporting a full winter coat and a healthy layer of fat should get a little spring in his step when temperatures drop, and there is some evidence to support that concept.

In 2010, Oklahoma researchers analyzed a seven-year dataset and found that bucks moved more with lower temperatures between November and February. However, their summary of the analysis stated that daily weather variables—including temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and wind speed—had minimal impact overall on the amount of ground deer covered. The primary driver of deer movement was still that beautifully reliable nuclear reactor in the sky.

The crepuscular nature of whitetails and their photoperiod-based reproductive response generally overrides the inconsistent elements in a deer’s world. That leaves hunters with a simple, if not always easy, choice.

A lot of regions might only see about three weeks of really hot rut action, with the potential for a small resurgence a couple weeks after the main event. In the Deep South, seeking and chasing might drag on for months. But the fact remains that breeding will occur within the same window every year, and that window is relatively brief.

The best way to increase your odds of killing a buck is probably not to spend hours agonizing over the moon phase or the weather forecast. It’s understanding that deer will be moving no matter what, and time on stand is what ultimately fills a tag.

On October 23, 1990, a Chevy Suburban pulled into the parking lot of a funeral home in Red Lodge, Montana. Inside was a man named Cary Greenlee, his teenage daughter, and his father-in-law. In the back seat lay the body of Cary's wife, 34-year-old Anita Greenlee. She had been shot in the chest during a hunting trip earlier that morning.

Cary claimed that Anita had accidentally shot herself. But instead of calling 911 or seeking medical help, he had loaded her body into his vehicle and driven directly to the funeral home. The bizarre circumstances immediately raised questions for investigators. And as they began piecing together what happened in the woods, the story only grew more suspicious.

No one had witnessed the fatal shot. Anita's daughter reported seeing her mother walk away with Cary shortly before hearing gunfire. Investigators also believed that Cary had been having an affair with a much younger woman, whom he would marry just months after Anita's death. Questions about the physical evidence, conflicting statements, and Cary's behavior fueled suspicions that Anita's death was no accident.

But proving murder would be another matter entirely.

For nearly two decades, the case remained unresolved. Then, in 2009, prosecutors charged Cary Greenlee with deliberate homicide. It appeared that Anita's family might finally get answers. Instead, the case took another unexpected turn.

In this episode of Blood Trails, host Jordan Sillars revisits Anita Greenlee's death through court records, investigative documents, and interviews with people involved in the case. The story reveals a tangled web of family conflict, allegations of infidelity, and a decades-long struggle to determine what really happened on that October morning.

Was Anita's death a tragic hunting accident, as her husband maintained? Or did someone use the isolation of the Montana wilderness to conceal a murder?

More than three decades later, the questions surrounding Anita Greenlee's death remain deeply unsettling.

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Don’t let the heat fool you, November is almost here. This week, K.C. Smith checks in from Texas, Dalton Tunis brings us a report from northern Indiana, and Thomas Mlsna joins us from Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. With warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of whitetail country, we break down what each hunter is seeing right now, how bucks are moving despite the heat, and what’s changing as we head into one of the most anticipated stretches of the season. From fresh sign and food sources to current conditions and increasing rut activity, we’re getting boots-on-the-ground reports from three very different regions. Tune in for fresh, in-season whitetail intel as October comes to a close and November begins.

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Mark Kenyon guest hosts MeatEater Trivia with Spencer Neuharth, Janis Putelis, Randall Williams, Cory Calkins, Omar Lopez, and Laura Mascari.

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