A Gun a Week: Browning Citori XS, 28 gauge

Browning Citori XS, 28 Gauge.

If shooting skeet with an automatic shotgun like a Remington 1100 teaches you anything, it's that unless you bring your wife or your mom with you to the field, you're gonna have to pick your hulls up yourself. Whether you pick them up as you shoot them, which is frowned upon by the rest of the squad, or after you're done with the round, it's a pain in the back. They add up and they get scattered about and mixed up with your buddy's rather quickly. Yeah, it wasn't long before I decided I needed an "over and under" shotgun that lets you shoot your targets and then deposits the empties right into your hand.

The lever that opens the action so you can load or unload the shotgun.

On Citori over/under shotguns, after firing you push the lever on top to the left and the action "breaks" open on a hinge and the empty hulls are shot by spring-loaded ejectors out of the gun--and if you're smart and lazy--right into your hand. Some folks can eject the shells and catch them out of the air with one hand. I cannot. One of the reasons I don't play professional ball (of any kind) is that I can't catch. I just let them pop directly into my hand and then into my Walmart shooting pouch which I've had since 2001 or so. No bending over is involved.

Eject! If you're smart, you cup your hands over the flying hulls so you don't have to
bend over to pick them up. If you're good, you catch them mid-air in one hand! 

After taking a beating from Browning Citori 12 gauge over/unders, and dragging a hefty "tubed" Citori--a gun that lets one shoot sub gauges in his 12 gauge--around the skeet field, I figured I'd be better served if I just had a 28 gauge. Everybody already knows that 28 gauge shotguns are magic. Lithe and slender, they are easy to carry on the skeet field and while hunting though I ain't never hunted with mine and probably never will. It's too fancy!

The Citori line from Browning Arms Company was introduced in the '70s and was a cheaper to make version of the Browning Superposed which was the last firearm design drawn up by the man himself: John M Browning, genius. The Citoris are made in Japan instead of Belgium, like the old Superposeds were, and everyone poo-pooed on them because of that fact early on. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, but Japanese precision machining is right up there with the best, and these days, with CNC machining they're making guns that're tighter than Dick's hat band...which is good.

There's gold in the engraving and the trigger.

Admittedly, I wasn't actively looking or shopping for one when I saw the ad in the catalog from CDNN Investments but as soon as I saw a 28 gauge Citori XS for "BELOW COST!" I had to have it. Normally, the paying for relatively high-dollar shotgun like an XS would be the hard part. But luckily I had an old F-250 laying around that I sold to a former co-worker and with that wad of cash deposited in my checking account, I called CDNN while my debit card was burning my fingers. It was just meant to be. Shipped to the gunstore's FFL holder, my buddy, and I had it a week later.

If you've ever unboxed a new gun that you have bought sight unseen, for more money than you make in a week, you just haven't lived. Waiting for a child to pop out of your wife or significant other at the hospital is a close second to the anticipation you feel unwrapping a shotgun you've never laid eyes on. And, as with my kids by the way, I wasn't disappointed! It was lovely seeing the nicely-figured wood and the bright and shiny bluing that was all brand new. As a dumbass carpenter used to working for a living, brand new guns are few and far between, but this, this Miroku-made Browning XS was brand-spanking new and all mine!

The finest piece of wood on any shotgun I own. The one ding is from a clay
target shard. Yet another reason to wear safety glasses when shooting.

And if that weren't enough, the store where I'd had it shipped was run by my buddy who just so happened to have worked at Browning Service in Missouri as a budding, fresh-out-of-college gunsmith and did in fact, have a barrel set in .410 bore laying around the shop unused. Now, the Japanese company that the purists hate machine these things to tolerances only dreamed of by a bunch of Belgians and thankfully, the .410 barrel set snapped right onto the 28 gauge receiver with no fitting needed! One snap and I had a two barrel set! Two guns for the price of one.

A desperate search online to find a barrel set case was launched at the time.
The case too is a Browning of course.

At the time of all this gun buying and alteration, I was a professional skeet shooter, so this was exactly what I needed. Yeah, needed, to play the game in all four gauges. I never said I was any good at it, but I was a real professional! I wasn't the worst at it, but I wasn't anywhere near the best. Luckily the shooters are classed, like runners are by age, but on their ability. One of the most humiliating defeats was to a guy named Pittard. Pittard! I can't even say the name without spitting a little.

At his home club, after losing in the 28 gauge event to him the year before, I was killing him one summer's day. I was on my fourth box with only two misses, up on him by two targets. We were on station seven...the easiest, most Brett-friendly station from which to shoot skeet of them all. All I had to do was hit the next four at station seven and I was gonna beat Pittard at his own field! Pittard! The six-foot-six giant, braggart and hubris-filled oaf was about to be taken down by little ol' Brett. I had one job...and I choked. I missed two or three of the "low seven" targets and watched my dreams of victory sail away toward the boundary stake and waft into the grass where if finally broke no thanks to me, my stupid brain, and my Citiori XS.

A Buckmark where it belongs: On a Browning and not some hipster's car.

I remember falling to my knees crushed as my Shooting buddy Bill Carter behind me was saying, "Brett," in that head-shaking tone that only southerners can do. It wasn't long after that I gave up my professional skeet shooting status and became the casual shooter I know and love now. I never did test well. I did have a great day with my Citori once at The Rock when I ran a straight, that is 25 targets with no miss, against a dude with a Krieghoff K80 and pretty much whooped his ass. A K80 starting cost is around $10,000 and goes up to the-sky's-the-limit dollars, but I smoked his bacon with a dirty Japanese Citori XS, homemade two-barreled set in .410. It might've been the best day of my life. I shook hands with the guy and left with three more boxes I had intended to shoot still in my car--I know when to quit.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the 28 gauge is in my mind the perfect gauge to start out new shooters and I've taken more than a few folks out with this shotgun for their first run at the targets. It just makes sense. Sure, about a million people have started out with a .410 shotgun, but that shell only holds a half an ounce of shot. Sure, there's no recoil, but if new shooters keep missing, they may not ever want to come back out and try again. The more shot you throw at a target, the better your chances of hitting it. The 28 gauge flings three quarters of an ounce of shot and pushes back enough to let you know you're shooting a shotgun, but it will never hurt you. It's the Stay-Puff Marsh-Mellow Man of the skeet world.

I sound like a broken record, but when you want to take new shooters on the skeet field,
you can't go wrong with a soft-shooting 28. All smiles and no bruises!

I guess I could hunt pen-raised quail with it, as long as the sun is shining and there are guaranteed no briers underfoot. I hate to say it, but it's too pretty to risk. I got that 1100 in 28 for the hunting jobs. No, when you see me with this shotgun, I'll be dandied up on the skeet field where I can keep an eye on my gun and baby it. And if you want to go, buy you some 28 gauge, Remington STS shells and give me your empties when we're done! That's all I ask in return. Skeet you know takes about a minute to learn and a lifetime to master!

An American designed Browning XS was used at the Camp David skeet/trap field
 by non other than the president of this country. Though a 12 gauge, it's still a
beauty, still a Browning XS! 

A Gun a Week: Winchester Model 70, 6.5X55mm Swedish Mauser

Winchester Model 70, 6.55X55mm Swedish Mauser

This rifle was my second "custom" rifle project that I had done when my buddy owned a gun
shop and I was a hanger-on. Sometimes, when you need a rifle in a caliber that isn't offered currently by the three major manufacturers, you have to go off chart. Why did I need a rifle in a not-so-popular European cartridge? Well it all started with another rifle that was chambered in an even more not-so-popular cartridge, the 7.5X54mm French MAS that I'd bought years before! See, the French 36 MAS was a rifle (more on it later) whose ammunition was about impossible to come by when I bought it. And usually that's not a problem for a reloader like me. I'd buy the brass, get some powder, dies, and go to pulling on the one arm bandit in the garage until I had a box of ammo. But! there was no brass to be had. So the next best method of stoking an old French gun was cartridge conversion.

Turns out, you can form 7.5X54mm brass out of 6.5X55mm brass. So like any student of reloading, I headed down to the gun store and ordered up a batch. The problem was that the owner didn't ask, and I didn't mention, how many pieces I needed. So 500 pieces of 6.5X55mm brass later I was ready to reform and reload some 7.5X54mm cartridges. And I did that with mixed results. The fired cases were so bulgy and misshapen I was scared to keep doing it, and I put the rifle aside for a while...for years. By the time I got around to wanting to shoot the old French gun again, there was this thing called the Internet out there which made ordering the right brass very easy. A few clicks at Graf & Sons and the days of scary, distended cases were over for the old French gun...

But in an ammo can out in the garage, there were close to 480 pieces of brass for a cartridge that I didn't even own a rifle with which to shoot them. And that's when I started thinking about rebarreling a used rifle and that brings us to a used Winchester Model 70--remember the Model 70 I was blogging about? And sure enough, one came through the gun shop on consignment with the right price on it.  I snapped it up, prob'ly never even shot it, and placed an order with ER Shaw Inc. on their website for a 24 inch sporter barrel with a .264 inch bore. I had broken ranks with my gunsmithing buddy and bought a stainless barrel from ER Shaw instead of from the hallowed halls of Douglas Barrels, Inc. Heresy I tells ya! But I was in a hurry.

Long and lean, skinny for caliber 6.5mm bullets cleave the air and lose velocity
much slower than their 30 caliber counterparts--in other words: Flat Shooting.

The Model 70 I bought was Winchester's economy model. It sports a blind magazine that has no hinged floor-plate for quick unloading meaning you have to run each cartridge through the action one by one to unload the rifle when you're done hunting for the day. You can do this safely because in the middle position the rifle's three position safety, a throwback to our old buddy the 1903 Springfield, allows you to block the trigger and sear connection yet work the bolt to remove your cartridges. Click the safety all the way to the left, and everything is locked up. Click it all the way to the right and KaPow! It's such a neat swing safety that aftermarket suppliers make it so you can fit this type on Mausers, Remingtons, etc.

The very safe safety is set to "KaPow" in this photo.

The bolt the safety is attached to is a push-feed type that Winchester utilized to save money after, oh, I don't know, 1964. If you've ever looked at a list of used Winchesters for sale online and read "Pre-64" or "post-64", it is this benchmark, where the company went cheap so they could crank out rifles that cost less to manufacture, that they're talking about. Before, Winchesters had a huge, Mauser-like claw extractor down the length of the bolt. But after 1964, most were made with a round-faced bolt that used a simple little extractor dove-tailed into the edge of the bolt face. Couple that with a spring-loaded plunger for case ejection and you have everything early rifle lovers hated back in 1965 when this "new" model 70 came out. I don't have a problem with this system at all. All Remington's are made practically the same way starting with the Model 721 introduced in 1948.

The cartridge, the 6.5X55mm, is a pussycat and a joy to shoot. Flat shooting and accurate, this cartridge was adopted by the Swedes in 1894! Smokeless powder had only been around for ten years or so, and it just goes to show you, when you start with a winner, you don't need to come up with another. It served them well until the fifties or so. The cartridge is a little short for my Model 70's "long action" and it doesn't quite fill up Winchester's magazine so care must be taken when loading the rifle that ensure the cartridges are pushed all the way to the back. Do this, and you'll have no trouble at all. The bolt face needed a little opening up since the case head on the Swedish cartridge is bigger than our American standard of .473" going all the way up to .480" but that's the only alteration made to the rifle's action.

They really need an intermediate length action, but they'll hunt in a converted
long action. Trust me.

The barrel I ordered is stainless even though the rifle is just blued steel. I say blued, but it looks like some kind of painted-on, baked-on finish. I don't think it's good old-fashioned bluing, and it looks kind of mixed-matched with the stainless steel, silver barrel, but I don't mind that. The fact is, finding a gunsmith that'll blue a gun inside a year from the time he takes it in is like finding unicorn tears. I ordered stainless so I'd get my rifle back before I died of old age. It's not the first rifle I've done like that and it won't be the last. Gunsmiths are on their own time. Even without bluing, be prepared to wait and wait when you're doing a rebarreling job. He or she will get it done, and you might even be pleasantly surprised.

In fact, at the time, my gunsmith buddy did the whole job and handed me the rifle on my birthday and didn't charge me a dime. By job I mean, he unscrewed and discarded the old barrel, threaded and chambered the new barrel, screwed it onto the Model 70 action, checked the headspace, test-fired it and handed it to me, for free. Happy birthday to me. Part of the reason he did so, I think, was that he had had it for so long, and he had accidentally put a long spiral down the base of the barrel with the lathe. So maybe rather than do it all over again, he just thought, "I won't charge him and happy birfday!"

Look close and you can see the crooked cartridge stamp and a nifty spiral.

I left the plastic, oops, I mean polymer, stock it came with on the rifle. I did sand the seam where the two mold halves were joined and my gunsmith did "bed" the rifle with epoxy. That is, where the metal meets the stock, he filled in any and all gaps with an epoxy so there can be no slippage. This is often done to enhance accuracy as it seems to "weld" the action to the stock with absolutely no room for anything to move and thus degrade accuracy. It just works. But if I ever come across a walnut Winchester stock with a blind magazine bottom, I'll probably snag it for the rifle just for the aesthetics, even if this Winchester is set up for real hunting in real messy conditions now. The plastic stock stands up to abuse and wet weather more than fine pieces of walnut do. Couple that with the stainless barrel, and you don't have to nervously sweat if the weather suddenly changes on you while you're hunting.

Plastic stock and stainless barrel make this rifle ready to hunt in any weather.

I have hunted with the rifle a few times and enjoyed each of those with it, but the one I remember most was the hay field. This is the field where the deer would come out of the woodwork at exactly 25 minutes after sunset--last shooting time is 30! And I mean, if they knew you were on the edge, they'd be 300 yards away on the opposite side. And if you switched sides? They would too. I don't know how they'd know, but the deer, mostly big, juicy does just did. I reckon they'd figured out that 300 yards away, at 25 minutes after sunset was just about right to stay safe.

Well, one fall I decided I go prone in the poncho a hundred yards into the field to throw them off. And frankly, it worked. The sun went down and 25 minutes later some deer stepped out of the back corner. In fact, at the time, there were so many of them I just picked one that seemed kind of frisky and shot her. This was at a time when I had really started to get the hunting bug and was learning the game, and it was this doe that taught me a few things.

One: If you're laying down in a field in the late fall and the sun goes down, and you have your Butler Creek scope covers flipped open, your scope just might fog up as the low air around you condenses into dew.

Two: Your eyes can fool you into thinking you're shooting at a big doe a hundred yards away when you're really shooting at a micro-deer that's only forty yards away. In twilight you can really fool yourself, and it just takes more time in the field to learn how to figure this stuff out.

Three: Micro-deer, that is, fawns, are delicious. Easy to kill, carry, butcher, store, cook, and chew. In fact, I always try to harvest a small doe every year if I can. So much better in the pot than a rangy, leathery old buck. 

Oh, the Winchester did its job. A quick wipe of the scope's objective lens with a gloved finger and putting the cross hairs low on her shoulder was all it took to shoot her cleanly. She ran in a tight circle before falling in the hay field and dying quickly. I think one or two people made fun of me for shooting a small doe, but I didn't care. I had just collected a deer in a modern rifle that shot a cartridge that was developed 121 years ago with brass that had been collecting dust in my garage for 9 years! It was a good evening for the Winchester and I.

You can find modern bolt action rifles chambered in the cartridge on the used market for sure. Everyone of the big three have made them at some point, though none do now. Even Winchester made them at some point. And if you do get one, you owe it to yourself to reload for it. Factory ammo is readily available at the big hunting stores but will be loaded for 100 year old 1896 Swedish Mausers that were not made to withstand pressures to which we can reload ammunition. In deference to the older rifles, factory ammunition is kept to pressures well suited for older rifles, but a reloader like me, who shoots a modern, post-64 Winchester Model 70, can squeeze a little more performance out of the Swede knowing the newer action can take it.

The 6.5X55mm Cartridge was designed for this rifle, A Swedish Mauser,
Model of 1896. Factory loads are made safe enough to shoot in these older rifles.

Heck, even if you don't reload and just shoot 140 grain, Core-Lokt ammunition you'll never miss the extra 100 feet per second and the deer will never know the difference. I'd stay away from old military ammo for your modern rifle, but if you're just plinking with an old 96 Mauser I'd say, enjoy. I'm snobby enough to say that my Model 70's barrel has never been polluted with old, military surplus ammo. There's always a small chance when shooting surplus ammunition that they were loaded with "corrosive" primers, so there's not gonna be much chance that I'll shoot them unless there's a horde at the door.

My Model 70, even though it started out life as a "cookie cutter" model, has now become a distinctive rifle that shoots a well-rounded cartridge and shoots it well. I like it not because it's a gorgeous, custom rifle, but because it reminds me of the crooked road, and the slowly-working buddy, that got to me to it. And it's always fun to work up a load for a rifle you had made up from scratch and get it to shoot well enough to carry afield. That might be the most fun of all--imprinting a rifle with ghosts and memories of my own.

If you look up and see this, you might be a deer.

A Gun a Week: Remington Model 30 Express, Caliber 30, Model 1906.

Remington Model 30 Express, 30 Caliber, 1906.

I've had a thing for Remingtons since the first Model 700 I bought way back in the late '90s. And once you've bought a 700, the acme of Remington rifle evolution, the only way to go is backwards in time. This Model 30 just so happens to be the oldest rifle, oldest Remington, that I own. It's safe to say they don't make them like this anymore, and of course, my gunsmith buddy always says, "Yeah, there's a reason for that!"

The Model 30's story goes all the way back to the Great War, back when England paid Remington to crank out their ugly Enfield P 14 for their war effort. And after the US entered the war, Remington factories were called upon to crank out our version of the P 14 affectionately called the M 17 Enfield. His Majesty's rifles were in .303 British, but our rifles were chambered in a fairly new (at the time) number called Calibre .30, model of 1906. Nowadays we just call it 30-06.

Here's the British version, The Enfield P 14 in .303 British.

When the war was over, Remington was left with three or four factories and thousands of complete and nearly complete rifles that no one needed anymore. Most of those factories were shut down, and left holding the bag, Remington wisely entered the post-war sporter rifle market with a stream-lined version of the battle rifle they called the Model 30. The line of rifles was introduced in 1921, and mine was made in 1926.

And here's the US Army's Enfield M17. They were easier to make than our
premier battle rifle, the Springfield Model 1903.

It's marked MODEL 30 Express on the receiver and the barrel is stamped SPRINGFIELD 30 CAL. 1906. The battle tested cartridge had just started its march to the top of the list for American hunters and shooters. Veteran's back from the war might have been eager to hunt with a the rifle and cartridge with which they were familiar. To this day, 30-06 is the go-to, do-all cartridge that will take any game animal in North America. Most of America's military cartridges are still quite popular today going back to the 45-70 Government. The only one that isn't as popular as the others is the 30-40 Krag, or 30 Army. Never heard of it? Yeah, neither has anyone else. But the 30-06 is here to stay.

Nicely tapered tapered barrel for sporting purposes.

Remington did all they could to sporterize the M17 and make one of the ugliest military rifles better suited and better looking for the field. They chopped off the gigantic rear sight housing on the receiver bridge and dove-tailed the new rear sight onto the now nicely tapered sporter weight barrel. What they couldn't get rid of was the less-than-sleek safety lever that is as big as I have ever seen on a rifle. To say it's obtrusive is an understatement! It's as big as a human thumb and swings to and fro just over ninety degrees. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it's a positive safety. You flip this monster all the way over and you're positive the safety is engaged. It is right by your thumb though, and I guess that's nice.

Now that is a safety lever! Note the two filler screws for an after market receiver sight. 

The Model 30 is a shameless Mauser rip-off just like its Model 1903 cousin (but that's another post). There's no denying it. The ugly, dog-legged bolt sports the massive claw extractor and two locking lugs the Mauser brothers made famous. And on the left side of the receiver there's a huge, Mauser-like bolt release that you yank to remove the bolt for cleaning and maintenance. The Model 30 even retained the stripper clip guide that was milled into the receiver of the Enfields, and I suppose some hunters would have used it, especially if they had been trained for battle with the rifle. Stripper clips can still be found at gun shows and mail order, and it might be fun to use them hunting--better than having your cartridges clinking around in your pocket.

Massive extractor claw, stripper clip guide, and huge bolt release all inherited from
the Mauser K98.

The stock is a slender rail of walnut with a schnabel forearm and finger grooves. To me, its straight-combed stock feels a tad high for its open sights, as if they anticipated folks scoping the rifles even though the receiver isn't drilled and tapped for scope mounts. You really have to jam your cheek onto the stock to get them lined up the way I was taught to shoot open sights. The receiver is drilled and tapped for a receiver sight like a Williams or a Lyman on the right side, which might be easier to utilize with this stock. I could get a higher front sight I guess, but so far it's done its job when asked.

Like a bunch of rifles from the early years of the 20th century, this rifle has a steel butt plate. And if it were a stone-cold shooter, I'd probably replace the torture device with a rubber recoil pad. But since it has some collector value--even if just to me--I'm content to keep it as is. Shooting from the bench isn't any fun, that's for sure. But when you're hunting, you never feel the recoil, and that's a fact. When I'm hunting, I'm usually bundled up in winter clothes, and when I'm shooting from the bench, I have an old knee pad that goes under my shirt so the other shooters can't see it and make fun of me.

A steel butt plate and a lightweight walnut stock equals quite a thump when shooting.

Before I took this rifle hunting, I did shoot it from the bench. A pretty unscientific undertaking, but since I would just be shooting for the deer's vitals and not bench-rest accuracy, I set a 5 1/2" X 8 1/2" red card at the hundred yard target stand and let fly some home-manufactured 30-06 cartridges. If I can get the bullets into that size rectangle at 100 yards, then I'm pretty certain I can hit a deer in the vitals at the same range and closer. I know that any further out than 100 yards I'll have trouble even seeing the deer as they tend to disappear behind the rifle's front sight. And if's it's predawn or post sunset, I can forget about it. So 100 yards has always been my default limit for open sight hunting, and additionally, I only do so during the morning hunts because as the morning moves along, the sunlight gets brighter and brighter increasing my ability and confidence.

The first time I hunted with it was a grey, drizzle-filled New Year's Day morning--the last day of the season. Earlier that morning while sitting in the stand I was busted by a little spike buck that had walked out of the pines underneath me and he made such a big deal out of seeing me that I thought I wouldn't see another deer the rest of the morning. But soon enough, across the gas line clearing from me, a doe stepped out quietly from the thicket and stared right down the gas line at my friend who was up a tree further down. While she studied him, she stood in a classic broadside right in front of me about 68 yards away. A quick neck shot and she was mine instantly. No tracking was necessary.

It's quite a good feeling taking a rifle that you know was made for war, retooled for hunting, and then probably forgotten for decades out into the field to hunt and harvest a deer. For me, who believes that objects have ghosts with them, it's putting these haints to rest when I use the object, the rifle, for the purpose it was intended that I like. When you shoulder an old rifle and when you shoot it, you're repeating a process that some nameless ghosts did before you. You feel the same heft. You feel the same recoil. You hear the same report just as those ghosts did years before you, and that's a really familiar feeling among hunters.

A Gun a Week: Remington M700 Classic, 350 Remington Magnum

Remington Model 700 Classic in 350 Remington Magnum.

For me, this rifle's story starts back in 2000 when the first "new" shorts magnums started trickling out from Winchester. The short, fat cartridges were all the rage at the time, and of course, being a new rifle shooter, I had to have one. But of course, I didn't want to pay for one. And part of my education of all things shooting was the realization that one can buy an old, plain-Jane rifle at a pawn shop, buy a new barrel to make it into something completely different, and pay a gunsmith to do all the work. And many times, you come out spending less than if you'd just gone to a store and bought a brand new rifle. At the very least, you spread the payments out over months and months as you accumulate the components...can be years depending on your gunsmith--don't be in a hurry.

And so the mission in those days was to find a short action rifle for sale that I could have converted. However, I had no idea that these short magnums' cartridge cases are bigger than "standard" chamberings and wouldn't even fit standard, short-action rifle bolts! So I was actually haunting pawn shops and gun stores searching for the wrong thing but didn't realize it. And it was on one of these forays on an after-work Friday afternoon that I found a used Remington 700 on the rack that caught my eye.

These days, it's almost a reloader's-only proposition since loaded ammunition
is kind of hard to come by. You won't find any at Walmart.

What made this Remington Model 700 stand out was its trim and checkered walnut stock. The cookie-cutter stocks that Remington was cranking out in those days were super-glossy hardwoods featuring "skip line" checkering that I imagine were cut by a robot, or good old black plastic. Nothing I'd seen before had sported such a fine looking, yet simple piece of wood. There was no pistol grip cap, no wedge of a cheek piece on the left side so common in other rifles--meant to make them more comfortable, but only for right-handed shooters--just straight-grained walnut with a finely cut, yet bold-to-the-touch checkering. 

The bluing was still bright and shiny, but the bolt had a lovely plum-colored "patina" to it. When you see a used firearm with that plum color to it, you know it's probably a vintage firearm and that the steel is high in nickel. I happen to love old firearms and love ones that show honest wear like the ghost of a previous owner, or faded colors that hint at all the time they've spent in the rack or a safe. This rifle was well cared for, not having any dings on it, and was in close to mint condition in spite of the purple haze on the bolt. Picking it up, the next thing I looked for was what cartridge it was chambered for.

The bolt shows the plum colour and the stock shines. The classic checkering is bold
and feels (and looks) much better than Remington's "skip line", robot cut checkering.

Stamped on the barrel was 350 REM MAG. Say what? I'd never heard of it, but luckily I was in an old-school gun store, The Gun Room, so all I had to do was put the rifle down and walk over to the reloading section and pick up a Hornady Manual and look for this cartridge. And sure enough, there was the page on 350 Remington Magnum. One-stop gunstores like that are few and far between these days--possibly a testament to less shooters in the world or the rise of online shopping. I don't know. Recently though, there's been an uptick in interest as hordes of people have started hoarding ammunition driving already-high prices higher...most blame the POTUS and his administration, but I  digress...

On the spot I learned the cartridge had come out in 1965. That's right, in 1965, a short-action sized cartridge, with a belted magnum case such as the grand pappy of all belted-magnums, the 300 H&H (introduced in 1925), was released to the public. This happened about 36 years before Winchester got around to revealing their "new" short-action magnum...again. Remington would amazingly follow suit a few years later with their Short Action Ultra Magnum series! It still boggles my mind that they had not supported their first entry into the short magnum craze, but what do I know. They came back around to it in 2003 with a jazzed up Model Seven (more on the Model Seven later!) but only for a year...

The "problem" with this cartridge is that it fits into a short action rifle which is always going to be somewhat lightweight. Couple that with a case that holds as much powder as a long action cartridge like the 30-06 and you get recoil...lots of recoil. Back in 1965, Remington stuck this stomper in a weird little carbine, crippling the cartridge with a short barrel and light weight action. Short barrels rob cartridges of velocity. If they had introduced the cartridge in a good ol' Model 700 with a 22 inch barrel, it might've gone somewhere! And that's where this 700 Classic comes sweeping in to save the day...just a tad too late.

I fitted an after-market recoil pad to the stock since the factory "pad"
was just a hunk of hard rubber and not a pad at all. This rifle kicks a bit.

It weighs just enough to keep recoil from detaching your retina when you shoot it, and the 22 inch long barrel is just long enough to let you launch a 200 grain, .358 caliber bullet along at damn near 2800 feet per second on a warm summer day. And that is plenty of gun for anything you care to hunt in NC and probably all of North America. If you live by the great Robert Ruark's teachings as I do, then you know you must always "Use enough gun," and this rifle will hunt.

I'm a big fan of low-power scopes like a 2-7X or a 2.5-8X. They are all the
magnification you need in NC and have plenty of eye relief  that keep you from
dinging your forehead.

I've taken this rifle hunting once which opened my eyes to another aspect of hunting that had never occurred to me before I was in the field with what I consider one of my finest rifles, and that is the fear of scratching or dinging it! This new found fear wasn't a problem for me during the dry, sunny morning hunt. I crunched through the leaves in the dark to the stand, climbed up and at day break chose a doe to shoot in the classic broadside 96 yards away. 

Having only shot paper with the rifle, I still expected the doe to fall over dead after being struck with the 200 grain bullet, but that was not the case. I watched her take the bullet and run back into the thicket. When you're hunting, even though you've practiced and practiced at the bench, and your game runs off after being shot, there's always a nagging feeling that you might've missed. Well, the doe had not run very far. Less than ten yards from the spot I'd shot her I found her. The old Classic had done its job.

Now the second hunt of the day was more nerve wracking for someone with a new found fear of damaging his rifle. Somewhere during the day it had started snowing, and by the time I was heading back to the stand, it was pouring. We all know that snow is just glorified rain, and rain is wet, and my Classic is steel and wood--two things that hate to get wet! I was sweating all that snow falling on my rifle on my way to the "green" stand when I looked up and saw two does pawing in the shallow snow trying to eat across a gully from me. Still about a hundred yards away, I just sat down in the snow, rested the rifle on my knee, cinched up as tight as I could and shot one.

This doe took the 350's bullet as I'd expected. Not a step. She dropped, kicked a little, and slid down the slope to the bottom of the gully. It was something to see--awful and thrilling all at the same time. Since it was snowing I didn't wait around for everyone else on "the farm" to finish hunting and I dragged her up to my truck quietly in the the snow by myself. And by the time all my buddies were done hunting, it was dark and cold, and it was decided that it'd be more convenient if I took my deer, and one of my buddy's, to a processor instead of trying to do it ourselves during a cold snowfall in the dark.

They jeweled the bolt too, a touch of class.

It was at the processors that I saw something very revealing about the 350 Rem Mag. Two guys were at the gambrels so I had the opportunity to see our two deer skinned and prepped at the same time. I looked at the damage my 200 grain Hornady had done to my doe and wasn't surprised. 100 yards shot, small entrance wound and larger exit wound on the opposite shoulder, but my buddy's doe, shot with the grand old 270 Winchester cartridge was damaged more severely. In fact, the off side leg fell off with the hide as the fellow skinned her! My buddy had said it was a hundred yard shot also, but it just goes to show you, that the "slow" and heavy 350 bullet is just as lethal yet less damaging as a fast, non-magnum, 130 grain 270 bullet. Yes, the evidence in anecdotal, but there it was. I think I was more impressed than anyone there. But that's just me.

No, I ain't going to rebarrel this rifle any time soon. That would be nutty. I mean, there's a reason the company manufactured this rifle and called it "Classic". It doesn't get any better, yet simpler than this rifle: American Walnut, straight-combed stock, and chambered for an all-American Cartridge in Remington's flagship model 700. 

The 350 Remington Magnum is a cartridge that's kind of been lost to obscurity, and it was just sheer dumb luck I got my hands on one, but I'm glad I did. Sure, it's no fun to shoot from the bench since it kicks like a mule, but that is something you got to do if you're going to hunt with it. Though I haven't been hunting with it since that December, I'm sure I'll take it out someday. Right now I'm on a mission to hunt with every rifle in my safe and I haven't made it back around again, but I will. It's just too good a cartridge settled into the one of the best rifle designs to never take it out hunting again--as long as it's a nice, dry, and sunny day!

Now I just have to find a Classic in 6.5X55mm Swedish Mauser
that I can actually afford.