Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Combination Guns and Drillings Savage 24 variations

Thank you, Sir. My cousin had a .22/20ga when I was a kid in the 70's that I got to shoot some and I thought it was the coolest long gun I'd ever seen. I purchased my first 24 in .22/410 in the mid 90's and fell in love with them all over again. (It is the one on the far left in the photo above - still one of my favorites to take squirrel hunting.) The first time I handled a 24F I thought it was ugly, heavy, and expensive. I was buying nice, older rimfire model 24's at auction for $300-350 when the new 24F was $525 at Wal-mart. I saw the writing on the wall and was chasing after the older ones before Savage discontinued the the 24F in 2007. They are a fun gun to collect because of all the different calibers and configurations. For example - the one on the far right in the photo is a 24S-A made in 1965 (same as me!). It has a side lever release, a hammer mounted barrel selector, and a case colored receiver that looks very much like a New England Firearms or Harrington and Richardson single shot rifle receiver. This receiver variation was only shown in the 65, 66, & 67 catalogs. Unfortunately my example has had the butt stock cut down for a kid (they did a very nice job), so I'm still looking for an original length butt stock.

Holy cow!!! You were made in 1965 and in 1965 I was in the navy at Little Creek, Virginia at Assault Boat Coxswain's school getting ready for an assignment in the beautiful exotic land of the People's Republic of South Viet Nam.

I have a Savage 24 model 24E-DL made in 1965 with .22 WMR on top and 3 inch 20 gauge on bottom. It has a long story to it.

I was 14 years old in 1956 and lived on a dead end gravel road that ran parallel to Bayou Bernard in south Mississippi. The bayou was across our 40 acre cow pasture and my brothers and our friend who lived at the very end of the road hunted up and down the bayou all the time for squirrels, rabbits, and other small game like quail, doves, and other targets of opportunity. I had and still have a single barrel model 37 Winchester .410. There were a lot of fox squirrels in the pine timber once you got out of the hardwoods along the bayou and the little .410 would not always shoot far enough to knock a squirrel out of the top of one of those tall pines, so I needed to take along a 22 rifle to get them in the pine tops. Carrying two guns was a PAIN.

One day I was down at the end of the road with my brother at our friends house and we were getting ready to go hunting and we were discussing who was going to take what so that we would have a gun for whatever we saw and his mother over heard the conversation and told me to take her gun which was an old model Stevens 22/.410 with the tennite stock. I had never seen one before, but I gladly took it because even to a dumb kid, it's advantages to a hunter were obvious.

Then life happened and three years ago I got a phone call out of the blue from my old friend who happened to be living only about 30 miles from me and both of us are now living in another state. I had not heard from him in over 50 years. He came up for a visit with his wife and we had a good time talking about "old times." He no longer hunts and has not for a long time. During our talking, he asked me if I wanted what he called "an old gun that you used to use" that he found in his mothers closet after she died. He said it is that "funny one with the rifle barrel on the shotgun barrel." I of course said, well hell yeah I would love to have it.

A week later he came up again and brought it to me, but it was not the old Stevens 22/410. It was a Savage 24E-DL made in 1965 which was long after we once roamed the banks of Bayou Bernard in search of lions and tigers and possums. It was in sad shape. The trigger guard was missing and it was covered in thick rust. I mean, it was completely covered in rust. The stock was cracked and scraped. He said the gun had been used by all of her grand children, including his two boys, and they had "sorta beat it up."

When I cleaned the barrels, they were not as bad inside as I thought they would be and the rifle actually shot a nickel sized group at 50 yards from a sand bag rest. I took it to a gunsmith who said trying to polish out the deep pits would ruin the lines and it would "look funny" once it was blued. So I had him clean it up as best he could and Cerakote it in a camouflage pattern because I am going to hunt with it and because that hides about as much of the pits as can be hid. I left the chromed receiver just as it was however because although beat up, it was not rusty.

Even though it is not the same gun that I once hunted with, it is close and comes from the same source and I am tickled to death to have it. I used it on a squirrel hunt last fall and killed 21 squirrels with it over a two day hunt in North Mississippi. I am going to use it this spring to turkey hunt.

It's strange how some things work out in life, but I have lived long enough and seen enough to not question fate. Some things are just meant to be and others are not. If you are going to be happy, you learn to accept that. I was meant to have this Savage 24 and I am going to use it to kill a gobbler in about another week or so even if it isn't as nice as any of those you have. I am going to enjoy using it more than you can ever imagine because I should actually be dead now and this old gun should have never found its way to me.

My grandma used to say: "If you can't have what you want, you'd best learn to want what you have."

Indeed, it is funny how life works out sometimes. I went to a wedding yesterday in a historic, touristy little town. There has been a professional theatre there in the summers for over 50 years. I took a girl there to see a few plays back in high school. I was crazy about that girl...but it was not meant to be. We lost track of each other after high school - she attended junior college in another town where she met her future husband and I moved out of state for a few years. I never married. I thought of her often, but I knew she was married and that was that. About fifteen years ago I was in my hometown and ran into her folks at a restaurant and we had a nice visit. A few weeks later I opened my mail box and found a letter - let me just say that when I looked at the name in the return address on that envelope - well, I know what being a lottery winner feels like! She wrote that her mother had mentioned seeing me and told her I was living in KC..., Now, don't get the wrong idea here; she is still married to that same great guy and they had five children together.

Oh, that wedding I went to yesterday? The groom is one of those five kids. I've known him since he was five years old and my lady and I were invited to sit at the family table. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Back to the Savage 24's
I've got a 24B-DL .22LR/20ga that was made in 1962. It has the large button type barrel selector on the left side of the receiver, which is a bit unusual as most of the button type selectors were on the right side of the receiver. Mine has a little wear and tear, but it's still pretty nice. I bid on one at an estate auction back in October that was absolutely pristine. I got a little carried away and bid more than I should have...and it sold for $575....to someone else!

I've also got a 24H-DL .22mag/20ga made in 1964 with hammer mounted barrel selector that is darn near perfect

Thank you!

How do you stand hunting in such a ugly place?

You mean with such an ugly dog? That stupid dog has never been any use getting me on grouse. She flushes them 100 yards out. I'd have to birdhunt with a 243 to have any chance of scoring with that dog along. All she does is chase squirrels and eat cookies. The one squirrel she caught chewed her up good too.

She's not good for nothin.

I was just joking about the place, that place is beautiful. If I lived close to that I'd lose my job cause I would lay out all the time. It's as pretty a east Tennessee but without the trailer parks. Laff'n

I'm down to three, an original Tenite Stevens, a solid barrel 24DL 22-20, and a 24V 222-20. Three on the wish list, a 24DL in 22WMR-20, a V 357-20 and a V 30-30/20. At 71+ I might not be around long enough to find them as scarce as they're getting.

I like it! Now why can't we have something like this on the market? Between castings, forgings and CNC, I'm sure a good quality product could be made to sell for what the M6 is bringing. Might have to hang some picitanny rails and lasers on it to get the attention of the masses but I'd settle for a plain jane entry level one with rust blue and walnut.

Papa, Re: the 22/20, seems I've heard the satin-chrome DL "grail" is the 22Mag/410. That should be on your bucket list too. Here's a 222/20mag and 30-30/20mag I have that may be of interest.

Are you saying that the .22WRM/.410 combo is hard to come by? Real question.



Bought this 24DL recently to keep behind the kitchen door so that I would have something to shoot the fox that the neighbors say is stalking my hens.

That is probably my favorite "woods loafing" firearm! Mine has a Bushnell Banner 4x20 mounted via modified B-Square Weaver adapters and SUV rings.

Several years ago, I bought a Westpoint 242 in 22LR/410 and reamed the 22LR to 22Mag. It has proven to be a good shooter and my friend, Andy, has used it to eliminate coons and foxes that were stalking his hen house.

This 24DL combo has impressed me. Action snaps open and close as crisply and solidly as some bespoke British doubles I've messed with at the local Cabela's Gun Library. Eyes are not good enough to shoot with the receiver sights but with the inexpensive Bushnell Sportview, the .22WRM barrel has made some 50 yd groups that equal those made with a CZ 452 and high mag/dollar scope.

I Sure Wish I'd bought one of those .357 Max/20 ga. Camper Specials back in the day...

I don't know that I've ever seen a 24VS in the flesh or even an original 24V in 357 Max.

I would happily settle for a .357 Mag over 20 gauge.

I re-chambered a 357 mag one to 357 max some years back. The guy used 180 gr 35 remington bullets in it and shot deer & hogs very effectively with it. Great FL swamp gun.

Carried a 24V in 357 mag/20 gauge in Alaska. Great gun for snowshoes and ptarmigan but I felt undergunned when walking grizzly trails!

I wouldn't walk a grizzly trail unless I was toting an RPG!!!!

You fellas who live out west will get a laugh out of this, but I'm going to tell it anyway. I was so poor that I only had one one rifle and it was a model 70 Winchester chambered for the .243 Winchester cartridge. I had killed a truck load of white tail deer with it and a bunch of hogs hunting down south where I live.

My first chance to hunt out west came when a friend who was stationed out there in the military called me and said, meet me in Grand Junction, Colorado and we'll hunt mule deer on the Uncompadre Plateau. So I loaded up my truck and met him in Grand Junction and we went up on the plateau and pitched our tent and went hunting.

One day I was easing along through those trails in the junipher when I came to a little creek and there was a still steaming pile of bear poop. There was a BIG bear track in the creek mud and there I stood with my trusty .243. It had never occurred to me that there would be bears in the deer woods because we didn't have any bears in the woods where I had been hunting way down south.

The next year I went back out there hunting and took along a .375 H&H Magnum and everybody laughed and asked me why I had such a big rifle to kill mule deer. I told them I didn't have it to kill mule deer. I had it to kill ole GIRZZ if he came at me thinking I was gonna be his lunch. The moral of this story is to follow Ruark's advice and USE ENOUGH GUN!!

And you need to use enough gun not only to kill what you are hunting, but also to kill what may be hunting you.

Yeah, I know. Some of us are slow learners. But I dam sure got the message when I saw that pile of steaming bear poop.