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What Makes a Great Tracking Rifle?
Mark Scheeren is an expert on rifles for tracking deer, having built and modified dozens of rifles in his perpetual search for his perfect tracking rifle. In this article he covers the relevant characteristics of the rifle, as well as the personal considerations for each hunter searching for that perfect tracking rifle.
February 06, 2026
written by Mark Scheeren
Tracking: The ancient art of following and stalking game animals by means of its spoor. Tracking is mankind’s first sport.
For much of the hunting world, following the tracks and sign of a deer only occurs after it’s been shot. The majority of hunters in the New World sit, rather than stalk when hunting - whether that's in a treestand or in a blind or on the stump their grandfather once shot his bucks from. In this manner of hunting, tracking is a short process of finding the expired whitetail somewhere within a few hundred yards of where their kill shot took place. This is the more commonly held definition of “tracking a whitetail” in most parts of America and Canada today.
But for those of us who follow and interpret the tracks of a living game animal to then catch up and take the life of that animal, the experience of “tracking” has a whole different meaning! This strenuous and nuanced endeavor necessitates certain equipment to make that happen successfully, the most important being the tool by which you will actually kill the animal, your rifle - your “tracking rifle”.
A Man and His Rifle - The Marriage
Trackers are a different breed. By and large they are a pretty dedicated group to their craft. Tracking is hard to do, takes years, even decades to master, and requires a mental and physical stamina that is quite extraordinary. The old saying, “you carry your rifle a lot more than you shoot it,” becomes a literal statement that means something here. As you carry your gun over mountains, through wet snowy spruce bogs, across slippery and sometimes violent rivers, you will either learn to enjoy and emotionally marry yourself to that gun, or you will learn to hate it. There’s little middle ground here because tracking is a process of extracting the world’s softness out of you. Carrying a rifle that doesn’t have the right combination of features for that particular individual will render that hunt useless and worse, painful, by day’s end.
People are Opinionated - Surprise, Surprise
Yup, people are opinionated. I’m sure that comes as a surprise. Opinions can gather on social media to become movements that have value, or fictional fables that have real downsides. Here’s the best example in the tracking rifle world that I can think of: “The Remington 760/7600 pump action rifle is the best tracking rifle ever made”. Now before I go down this road of challenging this statement, know that I wrote 2 entire chapters in my book, Learning to Track and Hunt Wilderness Whitetails in support of this very model, even though it's not my favorite personally. So I get it. Yes, it is the gun the famed Benoit family carried when tracking, and that thousands of other trackers have now found favor with. There’s a reason for that. On paper, it does exhibit all the earmarks of a competent tracking rifle. But like any rifle, not all people will find a certain style of gun a proper fit or feel for their body type, eyesight, or other factors including extremely subjective reasoning like, “it’s just plain ugly” (the pump rifles aren’t known for their aesthetic value as much as their practical features).
Here’s my point; with enough common opinion on a subject, objective truth becomes cloudy and sometimes lost. The example here - the 7600 - is just such a situation where the truth of something has been lost to a social contagion. I know this, because I was a victim of the tracker’s pump-action craze.
The Pump Action Craze - Don’t Get Caught Up
Go onto a New England-focused hunting forum, and type, “The Remington Pump is not the best tracking rifle” and watch what happens. Actually don’t; you might get deplatformed and cancelled for life.
Because the opinions about this particular model rifle were, and continue to be, so extreme and biased towards the positive, you, like I, might assume it’s the only avenue to becoming a truly competent tracker. I spent nearly a decade missing bucks - some really nice bucks - because my 2005 Remington 7600 30’06 Carbine did not, and would never, fit me right. Believe me, I did everything in my power to make it work; thousands of practice rounds shot; endless modifications for proper fit; hand-loaded ammunition testing to see if that would help; all manner of scopes, red dot sights and iron sighting options tested; I did it all! The bias towards it being the only true tracker’s platform was so profound at the time, that even after missing buck after buck after buck, I convinced myself something was wrong with me and not simply the fact that this was the wrong tool for me.
I also found that because I was left eye dominant and a right hand shooter, the peep sight everyone said was the tracker’s dream sight, never worked well for me either - even when I installed and used them on rifles that were a better choice and fit for me later on after trading in my pump, the peep sight remained a problem for me.
Essentially I had completely handicapped myself for nearly a decade because I never thought to question the tracking community narratives being peddled and repeated online. To this day I watch and listen to people strong-arming tracking newcomers into that same unfortunate narrative I fell into. There are many people in whom that pump rifle is the absolute gold standard, but there are just as many who won’t find the right fit in that model. Here’s the point, if something isn’t working for you, don’t be afraid to let it go for something better, and you don’t need to spend a decade frustrated while doing it!
Rifles are An Emotional Buy - So Choose Wisely
Rifles are an emotional buy, and opinions about what’s best or isn’t best, can be extreme. This is even more prevalent in the tracking world, and for good reason. When you find something that works for you on the track, it will be a real boon to your success rate. In the tracking art, most opportunities for a kill shot are mere seconds long, so your rifle must fit right, and have a sighting system that works for you. After my 9 year debacle with the Remington 7600, I went full circle back to my beloved lever actions and semi autos with low power scopes. For the last 11 years I’ve averaged 1 big woods buck per year with 8 of those killed in their beds. That’s a 0% to 100% success rate shift, simply by trading one poor fitting rifle for one that works for me.
It’s natural for emotions to be a part of the rifle vetting process; just make sure the emotion you end up feeling is confidence and excitement, not trepidation, annoyance or worry. Any negative emotions in regards to equipment will eat at your success rate in the big woods.
Tracking Rifle Options - There are Many
The first myth to debunk about “tracking rifles” is that there are only a few models that fit the bill. We know the usual suspects: the aforementioned pump gun starts the list, along with the Winchester 94, Marlin 336, various Browning Bar models, and Remington 742/7400, among a few others that are seen as shoe-ins. But let us debunk this idea with one simple statement; the best tracking rifle is a gun that you like so much that it will always be the first one you pick out of the crowd in your gun safe. That’s a dead ringer for a great tracking rifle.
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If that same rifle also remains the one you’d pick after a 10-mile day tracking the North Country miles, you're starting to see its value as a tracking rifle.
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Next, if you don’t have any worries in its reliability and….
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it’s accurate enough to hit a pie plate offhand at 50 to 100 yards, and…
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you simply look at it and smile (for whatever memories or reasons it evokes that reaction), you’ve now found the right combination!
Because any rifle that checks off these boxes, is not just going to perform its duty mechanically, but it is one less thing that pulls you into the negative mental spaces that true mountain trackers wrestle with on each day of tracking. The mental rollercoaster coupled with the physical challenges are enough struggle - your rifle shouldn’t be one of them.
So today, when people ask me what’s a good tracking rifle, I used to list what I thought was best. Now after more than 40 years in the field, I start with - “What rifle do you carry, and do you like it?” If they immediately tell me about the gun and how much they love it - they’ve answered their own question - stick with that. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bolt action, single shot, muzzleloader, or a Rem pump. In the end, if you are a tracker, a beginning tracker, or a veteran - you know what you like. Use it.
“But I Really Don’t Know!”
Now if you genuinely don’t know, or you are relatively inexperienced, or you ended up buying what you were sold or coerced into, and it's a nightmare - then here is how to find the best gun the quickest.
Go to a local gun shop that allows you to pick up and handle their rifles. Pick out all the ones you think you would like to take on a track. Next, pick each one up to your hip, close your eyes, and quickly shoulder it and then open your eyes (of course make sure it's unloaded and pointed in a safe direction before you do so). Do this with each rifle in succession. Do this regimen a few times. One will stand out as naturally comfortable; it will be obvious. That’s your best starting point and go from there. After purchase, experiment with iron sights, peep sights, or optics over a summer, and again, choose which sighting option makes you feel confident. That’s the key.
The right fit is just that. Don’t overthink it. And ignore those who say “that’s not a tracking rifle!” if it’s not the typical class that’s popular in the social media and hunting club circles. Because in the final analysis, the only criteria for a true tracking rifle is the one that works for you.
The strenuous and nuanced endeavor of tracking a whitetail necessitates certain equipment to make it happen successfully, the most important being the tool by which you will actually kill the animal, your rifle - your “tracking rifle”.
