Of guns, gunmakers and granddaughters

The rifle Tera Wolfe packed to the edge of a field five years ago during her first whitetail deer hunt had a light-colored, hardwood stock with a classic comb. Its barrel was machined in the house where Wolfe’s mom went each Saturday to style her grandmother’s hair.

Wolfe remembers the small house on Spokane’s west side and its basement where her grandfather, Al Biesen, made rifles that were sent across the globe to hunters who wanted a special gun.

Outdoor writer and renowned big game hunter Jack O’Connor made the Biesen guns famous, lauding them in his articles and books, and Wolfe remembers as a child meeting Biesen’s disciples as she sat on a high stool in the basement shop in Spokane watching works in progress.

“I met customers and saw the machines,” Wolfe recalls. “All those machines are still down there.”

The rifle Wolfe carried on her first whitetail deer hunt was a .257 Roberts with the smooth stock and elevated cheek plate. It had belonged to her grandmother and been in the family for as long as Wolfe can remember. Her grandfather, Al, made the rifle in his basement shop for his wife, who wanted to join him on hunting trips with clients in Africa and Europe.

It’s a story often revisited at family gatherings, Wolfe said.

“Grandma didn’t want to stay at home anymore, so she took up hunting,” Wolfe said.

And hunt she did, packing the .257 across three continents.

“My grandmother harvested an amazing antelope here in the states, and several animals while on safari in Africa,” Wolfe said. “I know there were more, but those are the animals I remember being on display in their home.”

Her grandmother, Genevieve, died in 2002, and Al died two years ago at 98.

The rifle had been passed to Tera’s mom, and when Tera decided to hunt whitetails for the first time in 2013 she knew she must carry the .257, with its recessed checkering and Monte Carlo comb.

“I wanted to use it on my first deer,” she said.

Carrying the hand-made Biesen in North Idaho’s brushy woods, where a scratch lurks at every bush, worried her husband, Tyler.

“It is like taking a Ferrari for a drive on a gravel road,” Tyler said.

On that autumn day five years ago, Wolfe saw several does but declined to line them up in the crosshairs of her scope and squeeze the crisp trigger that her grandad fitted for his wife those many years ago.

She knew she had to shoot a buck, so she waited. Her first whitetail deer was a forked horn.

Since then she has harvested a series of 4x4 whitetail bucks that seem to get bigger with each season.

“She’s taken off, phenomenally,” Tyler said.

Considering her background — Al Biesen moved to Idaho from Wisconsin, a state often heralded for its whitetail hunting opportunities — growing up in a family entrenched in the rifle hunting tradition, it could be surmised Wolfe knew all about harvesting wily whitetail bucks when she packed the .257 into the woods for the first time.

Besides grandma’s bent on visiting foreign lands carrying a handmade gun in her luggage, most women in the Biesen line however were not hunters. Wolfe’s interest in the sport surprised even her.

“It wasn’t known that I would take up hunting,” she said.

Her uncle, Roger, retired recently, and the Biesens no longer manufacture rifles at the Sinto Avenue location, although her cousin, Paula, continues to engrave rifles with custom embellishments.

Wolfe has since retired the Biesen .257 to the safety of a gun vault.

“I’m glad I shot my first deer with it,” she said. “It would break my heart to scratch it.”

After pasturing the gun, her husband volunteered to replace it with a new, more modern piece. She chose a .270 Tikka. It is the caliber her grandfather, Al, adopted as the best for the woods — a gospel handed down from Jack O’Connor, who for 40 years swore by the cartridge.

Wolfe isn’t interested just yet in replacing her devotion to whitetail hunting by pursuing bigger game. Whitetails are too exciting.

“They keep me on my toes,” she said.