Experience has taught the author that the price of your rifle has little to do with the outcome of your hunt.

These days, a $400 rifle is cheap. Given other expenses that come with a hunting license, my heart goes out to youth afflicted with a predatory urge. To compete with $50 prom dinners, $7 movies and $3 gasoline for the family sedan, we who want young people joining us afield had best make hunting more affordable. A few companies are doing that, with rifles that retail for under $300. Sniff out sales, and you'll get one for around $200. Are these cheap rifles any good? After all, "cheap" doesn't just mean inexpensive. Nor does "expensive" guarantee success.

Last fall I hunted with a couple of cheap rifles. A CVA Optima went with me to Montana on a mule deer hunt with Central Montana Outfitters.

White canvas wall tents, picturesque under diamond-chip stars, welcomed us from their snowy pocket in the woods an hour out of Great Falls. Soon fires roared in the wood stoves, smoke rolling from pipes that popped and creaked from the sudden heat. We shed our duffel on clean plywood floors and beds with mattresses buried by sleeping bags as thick as the blanket of ankle-deep snow outside. Dale, my guide, got busy with a propane stove the likes of which you'd find in a commercial kitchen. We ate Mexican and we ate well, finishing with a not-so-Mexican homemade cheesecake.

By Coleman light I trudged back to my tent and crawled beneath the covers. The hunt played itself out again on the dimly lit canvas...

"Good golly! That's a big buck!" After a frigid day glassing mediocre mule deer, we dived for our packs. High on the open slope above, the animal moved slowly uphill. I did not tarry. Churning through heavy snow up a wooded moraine, I clawed to the crest, heaving, hoping I could shoot to the opposite slope, but the big deer had vanished.

Hunters were pulling deer across snow when a good rifle cost $50. And today's cheap rifles can still be as deadly.

Presently, Dale joined me, and we glassed the clumps of brush and creases in the mountain. After a few minutes the buck materialized from behind a tree, 400 yards up. Sling taut, my crosswire stone-still and no wind to tug the bullet, I fought temptation. But this rifle was not my own. Besides, 400 yards is a very long shot no matter whose rifle you have.

"I'm going up that parallel chute," I decided. Dale agreed to watch. Light was leaking fast, and the buck had that ridgeline in his sights. The sky had given up a couple of stars when I eased from the conifers to find an empty slope. Dejected but not surprised, I skidded down to the moraine. "Over the top," said Dale. We trudged back in silence, a half-moon glowing faintly.

I awoke at midnight to stoke the fire, reliving that climb, seeing again the buck behind my reticle. No illusion. It had happened. I'd made a choice.

The next morning, in cold that had frozen our water bottles in the Suburban, dawn was still a promise when Dale killed the engine. We eased the doors closed, peering through binoculars into the foothills.