Category: Gratuitous Gun Pics

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Savage Model 99

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

American Rifleman magazine once put the Savage 99 in its list of “Ten Rifles Everyone Should Own“, and while I disagree somewhat with lots a couple of their choices, the Savage 99 is a slam-dunk listing — with one reservation, which I’ll get to in a while.  But first, let’s look at this rifle and see what all the fuss is about:

I’m going to make my prejudices known up front.  I think the “99” is hands down one of the most beautiful rifles ever made, period.  That swooping stock as it leaves the receiver, the way the lever snuggles into the underside of the stock… ooooh, mommy.  And if you can find one like mine, with the “schnabel” front stock…

…and that’s before we start talking about the brilliant rotary magazine, which, unlike for some lever rifles we could mention (Winchester, Marlin coff coff ), allows one to load this rifle with pointed (and not be limited to flat- or round-nosed-) bullets.

Which brings me to my only quibble with the 99.  While it can handle medium cartridges (.308 Win, .300 Savage, .375 Win etc.), I don’t think the recoil is worth it.  My .308 Win model is, honestly, painful to shoot.  The angle of the thin stock pushes it right into the soft part of the shoulder, and for me anyway, it’s owie  after four or five rounds.  I think the perfect cartridges for the 99 are either the .250 Savage, or if you want something a little cheaper, .243 Win.  Those, I can shoot (and have shot) all day.  (I could have put a soft rubber pad on the rifle but I didn’t because wrong.)  But the Savage is not an all-day shooter, anyway.  That thin, elegant barrel heats up really quickly, and it will start to whip on you after a dozen rounds or so.

What this exquisite gun is, is a hunter.  It’s light, accurate, quick to reload (in my case, about half a second or more quicker than my Mauser 98K), and quite honestly, I can’t think what more one could ask for a deep-woods rifle.

What sets Savage 99 owners apart from the rest is the fact that they love their 99.  In the Rifleman  article linked above, the writer laments:

I once had a lovely mid-50s Model 99 in .308.  It was my favorite Texas whitetail rifle and in a weak moment I traded it for some rifle I can’t even remember.  Lesson:  Never sell or trade a good gun.

I’m one of those losers, and what I should have done was sell my .308 and immediately got a replacement in .243.  But I didn’t because I’m an idiot.  I should have just gone without electricity for a couple months…

Because of all this, Savage 99 rifles are relatively scarce, and quite expensive.  Their owners don’t want to relinquish them, and anyone who’s ever fired one, let alone hunted with it, will know exactly why.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — Browning Buck Mark (.22 LR)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

I think the Buck Mark .22 pistol is one of the best modern rimfire semi-autos to be had.  It’s certainly one of the prettiest.  Here’s a Buck Mark Plus from Collectors Firearms, for example:

…and no serious shooter is going to argue with me that much.  Perhaps you can get a more accurate .22 pistol than the Buck Mark, but you’d have to spend a whole lot more money, because it’s more accurate than almost anyone who shoots it — and other than the high-end competition .22 guns like Pardini and so on, I certainly don’t think you can get a pistol with a better trigger  than the Buck Mark’s.

Best of all, Browning makes a dizzying number of variants to suit absolutely everyone.  I’ve either owned or at least fired most of the major types — typically, the Campers have a lightweight carbon bull barrel, and the Standards have a slab-sided heavy steel barrel, viz.:

My favorite, though, is the Plus Stainless:

I don’t have one of these brilliant little plinkers anymore — not after handing off various models to friends, my children etc.  But it’s on my shortlist, simply because I miss shooting it so much.

All that said:  field-stripping the Buck Mark should never be done in the field, as such, because unless you love scrabbling on hands and knees looking for the recoil spring and / or recoil buffer, you need to be really familiar with the Buck Mark’s innards.  Ask me how I know this.  Actually, your first attempts at cleaning it should preferably be done in a clean white room with a smooth cement floor just to make retrieval of said parts a little easier.  A Ruger MkIV it ain’t, folks.  (Here’s the back story on all the above.)

Still, I miss shooting the Buck Mark — one of the reasons I traded my MkIV for a Single Six revolver was that the MkIV wasn’t as much fun to shoot as the Browning.  (And oh baby… do I love shooting the revolver.)

And on and on it goes… if I didn’t love shooting guns so much, I’d have beaten myself to death long ago over all the stupid decisions I’ve made in the selling of them.  I need a Buck Mark, badly.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — Smith & Wesson 627 Performance Center (.357 Mag/.38 Spec)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Okay, we need to get some rules straight around this here back porch of mine.  The proper order of things is that I post pics of beautiful guns and engender uncontrollable gun lust amongst you, O my Readers.  You are not repeat NOT supposed to send ME emails of your guns which cause me distress, because as any fule kno, I am completely at the mercy of beautiful guns and have been known to auction off children to be able to buy said visions.  (Not my  children, of course;  children I find wandering in the streets.)

An example of this kind of untoward behavior (the gun-bragging, not the kidnapping) is shown by Reader PC from the Great State of Texas, who writes thusly:

“I carry an S&W 627 Performance Center revolver (.357 eight-shot, N frame). Lobo Gunleather makes an inside waistband holster that, when coupled with Perry Suspenders and no-tuck shirts, carries as easily as a small Glock.”

Here’s a pic:

[whimper]

I do declare that this is quite easily the most beautiful stainless revolver S&W has made in ages, if not forever.  And eight rounds in the cylinder?

“Hand me mah smelling salts, Prissy.”

S&W also makes a 2″ snubby version (which I think is the type Reader PC carries, from his description);  but for me, the 5″ barrel as pictured is the business.

Were it not for the fact that the Performance Center models retail for well north of a grand ($1,200 at our local Academy aaaargh), I’d already have bought one by the time you read this.

As it is… oh, mommy.  I am so weak.

I hope I’ve made myself quite clear about this bad behavior from Readers.

Alternative Carry Option

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

Tami Keel on carrying spare parts for one’s guns around:

I actually have two spare-parts trays for my Glocks. One is a larger tray that stays at home and has all the things that came off guns when replaced by aftermarket bits, as well as routine-maintenance parts like recoil-spring assemblies and such. There’s a spare set of uninstalled night sights in there in case the ones on my carry gun start leaking tritium or spit their little vials or inserts out.

I too always carry spare parts for my 1911 or High Power (whichever I’m carrying at the time), and it’s not recoil buffers, extractors or springs.

It’s a collection of parts known as “Smith & Wesson Model 637 Airweight”.

And Tami provides just such a rationale when she writes (emphasis added):

With Glocks, it’s generally trigger-return springs or extractors that break, and I’ve got a couple of each in the tray.  And, thanks to the reminder in the discussion that started this train of thought, it’s going to have a couple spring-loaded bearings in it now, too.  When I used 1911s, I generally had a second, fitted extractor, as well as a recoil-spring plug.  With revolvers…well, there’s not too much that’s likely to break or fall off on a revolver, and what there is generally can’t be fixed while watching TV in a motel room.

Actually, all this is making me increasingly want to carry a revolver  as my primary goblin repellent.  Either of these would do:

Whether the blued Colt Trooper MkIII (~$1,000 secondhand) or the stainless S&W Mod 65 (~$650 ditto), I would suggest that either of these oldtimer .357 Mag wheelguns would do the trick (along with, it should be said, a couple-three speedloaders)*.  And instead of the S&W 637, I’d carry a small semi-auto  in my pocket as backup, such as the Kahr PM9 (~$400) in 9mm Europellet:

I await with equanimity my Readers’ scorn, insults and opprobrium in response to this plan.

*Of course, given my druthers I’d go for a Python, but the price (~$3,000) makes my nose bleed.  Even the King Cobra (~$2,000) brings the red stuff from my nasal passages,beautiful though it is:

I wish I wasn’t so damn poor…

Gratuitous Gun Pic — Uberti Stallion Target (.22LR / .22 Mag)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Whenever we look at modern single-action rimfire revolvers, the common model we think of is the Ruger Single Six, with its swappable .22 LR / .22 Win Mag cylinders.  I have one, I’ve owned a couple in the past, and I don’t have a single bad thing to say about them.

However.

I happened upon the same offering at Collectors Firearms, only this one’s made by the Italian Uberti company, and good grief, it’s a beauty:

…and at an old GunsAmerica listing, I found it in non-stainless:

Now we all know Uberti makes fine cowboy replica guns (and I’ve shot several of them, in .44-40, .45 LC and .357/.38), but I missed that they also make some other .22 revolvers, featuring a scaled-down Colt Peacemaker action.  When I went to their website to see what was what, there was this beauty (which looks more like a Ruger Bearcat, incidentally):

Case-hardened, brass sub-frame, AND there’s a 10-shot model option?  Be still, my twitching trigger finger.

And from what I can see, you’d be in for less than $500 each.

Want.  All of them.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — James Purdey And David McKay Brown (12ga)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Before we get started, let me say at the outset that I don’t care if you can find a decent second-hand pump-action shotgun for $450 at Bubba’s Bait-‘N-Guns.  This isn’t that kind of post, as you will soon see.

Some people might say that spending this much money on a pair of shotguns is ludicrous or even foolhardy.  My opinion is that these guns exist right at the very end of the quality curve — I cannot think how they could possibly be improved — and therefore the cost is irrelevant.

Granted, to buy these guns you probably have to have so much money that cost becomes irrelevant (i.e. “if you have to ask…”), but like buying (say) a Ferrari Enzo, it isn’t the money that’s important.  (I, by the way, am not one who actually subscribes to this philosophy — had the lottery been in my favor last night, I still  wouldn’t have called Collectors Firearms to put a hold on them — but I do understand why this can be important to some people, and I pass no judgment on their preference whatsoever.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting the absolute best of anything, as long as you can afford it.)

Now all that said:  there are a couple of things about these Purdeys that I don’t like.

1) I prefer my shotgun stock not  to have a pistol grip — left is the Purdey, right is my preference:

2) I prefer double triggers to single triggers:

With all that in mind:  had the lottery been in my favor last night, I might  have called Collectors to put a hold on these two David McKay Brown shotguns (#1 and #2) because they are completely in my wheelhouse, so to speak, even though they’re not a matched pair.

(And I care not that this gun bears the initials of its previous owner — I put no stock in virginity.)

These two guns are, in a word, exquisite — and for those to whom this kind of thing matters, David McKay Brown is pretty much on a par with Purdey as a gunmaker.  (Purdey has the better P.R., but McKay Brown is extremely well-respected among the shotgun cognoscenti.)  And too, they’re not as finely engraved as the Purdey guns, but frankly, I’m not in thrall to fancy scrollwork (although I do appreciate it.)

And it certainly doesn’t hurt that the McKay Brown guns are half the price of the Purdeys… still nosebleed, but from only one  nostril, so to speak.

Want.