Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters M70 - David Ommanney

Brian Herne, in "White Hunters," says that David Ommanney says the M70 is the best rifle ever, hands down. Considering that DO banked his life on his rifles, what do y'all think?

BS.....

Well...ok. Ha!!!

Rev, Well why shouldn't he have said that? Win. made him a pile of dough and hunter's household name. I'll still take a Mauser any day. Muddy

Literally nobody had heard of DO before Winchester promoted him and the new series of cartridges ... .338. .300 and .458 WinMag.

It was just a matter of building up a public presence and promotion of the new POS post-64 M70.

Steve

Yeah, but he said that before Winchester was sponsoring him.

Ok?

I'd put me right in the WGAF camp.

Well, you lost me. Help me out. What are you saying?

Who

Gives

A

F&^k


WGAF.


I couldn't give a tinker's damn what he may or may not have said.

When deer grow fangs I'll buy a M70....

Thanks. I'm not up on acronyms.

2nd best after the Mauser 98.

Agree..

I have 2 CRF Winchesters, a .375 & a 30.06. No complaints.
Better than the Remington 700's I had.

Chinese Water Deer







Get out your checkbook!

And I think at the time he might have been using pre-64s....though I never found anything magic about them...

Rev. I might be wrong about this, JB would know...but Harry Selby had to send his beloved 416 back to Rigby for something and in the meantime used a Win.M70 in 458...which he ended up liking so well he sold the 416 when it finally came back.

FWIW, if he liked that vintage of M70 in 458....he was the only one

The barrel was shot out and it had to be rebarreled.

What I think is that David Ommanney used a lot of push-fed M70's as a paid consultant to Winchester (and personal PH to Jim Rikhoff, head of Winchester PR).

This.
Any of you remember the 1965-66 Winchester ads where David Ommanney was pictured with the "new, better" push-feed Model 70's with free floated barrels?

The free float was about 1/8". (Or, a stack of dollar bills!) I bought one then in 300 Win. mag, still have it. It is rough as a cob in the fit/finish department but it is very accurate.

Here you go, Ingwe.

http://www.ezine.nitroexpress.info/NickuduFiles/Africa-PDF/Africa317.pdf

And this link as well since it has some correspondence from Harry Selby saying that he went back to the .416 once he got it back from Rigby. Here's what he says about it: "The .458 did me well enough but to even suggest that I had become attached to it and sold the Rigby .416 as a result is laughable... it is like comparing chalk and cheese."

Here's the link to the AR discussion.

http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1411043/m/9561097831/p/1

Good deal Rev. Learn something new every day....

"...like comparing chalk and cheese." I heed to remember that.

Best means different things to different people, but after 30-some years of hunting with it, my pre-64 is my favorite HUNTING rifle by a good margin, and I really like me some Mausers.

Well, I always kinda liked that Winchester SS Extreme Weather so I'll have to order one up in 7 WSM. Might as well order an Edge stock now to beat the Christmas rush............

Sounds like a good idea if you are gonna hunt 'water' deer!

....must have crack in the drinking water over there.

As I recall, David was quite enthused about the new shotguns and the Mark V plastic shell as well.

Dave did have a very nice double rifle too.

Professional Hunter David Ommanney with new pushfeed (pre-production stock) Model 70 African, chambered for 458 WIN MAG, in Tanganyika - 1963.

But you gotta admit, it is a nice hat.

Thats the M70 that developed such a reputation for breaking at the wrist.....


As I remember, Ommaney took quite a lacing from a leopard after his stint with Winchester.

Must have been using one of those push-fed M70's

And lion.

The leopard mauling was in the late 50's. Also I've read that pre64's might have been used for some of the killing and the new guns swapped in for the photo shoot. At least thats what one Alaskan guide who took Ommaney hunting up here claimed happened on a brown bear.

If I was gonna hunt Africa as a Pro....it would be with what Peter Hathaway Capstick used...a .470 Evans....with irons!!

I've heard rumors that Capstick used a Smith-Corona typewriter for most of his killing, but I don't know for sure. His stuff is very entertaining, real or not.

Old Jack once said that some folks don't seem to be able to step outside their tent without being charged by something, but I'm not sure if that was a general statement or if he had someone in mind.

Now that it's been brought up, I remember the Ommanney ads. I was blissfully ignorant of the pre- and post- hoopla at the time.

I looked at the new Winchesters in 1964 and 1965, and I read the Winchester ads featuring this PH. The quick conclusion was he will lie for enough money.

Pappy348,

Though Capstick did have a PH license, apparently he got most of the stories he published while working as a bartender in bars PH's frequented. I have hunted with several far more experienced PH's than Capstick, and none of them have had nearly as many close calls as PHC reported in just his first book.

None of them resent Capstick, since his books did more for the safari business as anything published during the same period. But the consensus is that he was more of a good semi-fiction writer than anything else.

He wouldn't be the first to gild the lily a bit. Good reads, true or not.

Thanks, John.

Rusty Annabelle was the Alaskan version of Capstick.
I would say that while both hunted for stories during rounds at the bar and that probably both writers experienced what they wrote about, but they just exaggerated it a bit.

Now, I bet JB has better stories about Clay Harvey and Lee Hoots.
Hoots is on there because he said that the 257 Weatherby was a poor Western Cartridge one year and then said it was the best Western cartridge ever made the next. You just can't find religion like that and expect us to think anything other than he probably relies on the experience of the hunters at the cafe that he frequents.(I am sorry that is a long @ss run-on sentence). Who knows maybe he will get better.

I've just got one Annabelle book, "Horns in the High Country", that I picked up in a little drugstore for a dollar about forty years ago. I need to dig it out and re-read it, as I enjoyed it a lot the first time. Get me off this stupid iPad.

Thanks for the reminder.

It was probably a general statement, but J.O'C certainly had a few individuals in mind when he made it. Capstick was one of them. Frank Hibben was another.

I think he also wrote that if someone was convinced that they were in constant danger of being chomped or stomped, that it just added to the fun.

A modern equivalent might be taking a long plane ride with a bunch of young men of a certain ethnicity.

Pappy,

HORNS IN THE HIGH COUNTRY was written by Andy Russell, who was part of a Canadian outfitting family and the real deal.

I drive by his place most weeks and know Charlie well.

By golly, you're right.

Please don't tell anybody I was wrong about something. It might cause a panic.😱

Actually, I'm relieved. It's a great book, and I'd hate to think it wasn't true.

Yep,I met Andy in 1970 and he was genuine, but, very much of a showman and not shy about self promotion.

This, is not uncommon with the various GOs, etc. that service the foreign hunters who come to BC-AB to collect trophies and seems part of what the dudes expect and pay for.

In contrast, the real bushmen I have known are often shy, but, with strong opinions when you get to know them. These tend to be introverts, which one would certainly never say about Andy!

The prototype PH, even though a fictional character, is Allan Quatermain, the hero of a number of H. Rider Haggard's novels and short stories. He was modest in stature and demeanor, but steady and fearless in a pinch. He also was always respectful to the native people he encountered and employed. He could well have been modeled after Jim Corbett, except he pre-dated Corbett a bit, and of course Corbett wasn't a PH, at least not in India. Based on his articles, I think Finn Aagaard was the same sort. I never met him, but was very sad when he passed.

I'll likely never make it to Africa but if I were going and had to pick from the PHs I've seen on TV, I'd probably go with Ivan Carter. He seems to know his business and looks steady in a pinch.

IIRC Allan Quatemain was modeled after F.C. Selous.

I think Finn Aagaard's .458 was a push feed.

The push feed didn't seem to be an issue with these guys. The rifle had a reputation for breaking at the wrist.

I thought I read somewhere that Finn's .458 was a rebarreled .425 w-r. I could be mistaken though or he could've had more than one .458

You are correct about Finn's .458. It was a rebarreled Mauser. It was Harry Selby that used a push feed .458 while his .416 Rigby was being repaired.

Finn had two .458's, a push-feed M70 and the rebarreled .425 Mauser-actioned rifle.

Well, now you've gone and done it. I went to archive.org and downloaded a bunch of Selous' books. About 100 pages into " A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa", I have to say you're probably right.

The books, free to download, are available in several formats, but I prefer the PDFs, as they are actual copies of real books, with the yellowed pages, bent corners, and flyspecks intact. I tried one on Kindle format, but the OCR resulted in a bunch of annoying text and formatting errors. archive.org is a great resouce for books and audio of all sorts including Old Time Radio and audio versions of classic book for those who like to read with our eyes closed.

Thanks for the tip, ingwe.

I think there is simply no advantage to CRF over push feed or vice versa. While the original post '64 had some issues unrelated to this, Winchester corrected them.

I have killed African dangerous game with both CRF and push feed model 70s (with handloads no less), non-dangerous game with Weatherby MkVs and a Husqvarna (Mauser?) action, and the only failure was with the Husqvarna.

I have also shot thousands of rounds with both types of Model 70s in NRA Highpower matches, using .308 and 30-06 ammo, with nary a problem.

Also, every military rifle designed since 1903 (actually since 1898 as the Springfield was merely a copy of the Mauser) has been push feed.

For the most part, I think you're right, but the fact is that many other experienced and professional hunters prefer the CRF rifles. Some of the CRF "failures" likely are the result of rifles that were built on CRF actions but not tuned properly to the cartridge. And some folks seem to be able to find a way to futz up with almost anything. I tend to like older rifles, and most of them happen to be CRFs, because that's just they way they built them in those days. I also like, and own one example of, the older Sakos, which are push-feeds, albeit with fixed ejectors. What they all have in common is that they were built by people who took the time to make sure they functioned properly before they were sold. Now it seems like the customer is expected to perform the quality control. The number of functional problems reported here involving mid and high-end factory rifles amazes me, as does the cavalier attitude the manufacturers seem to have.