Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters John Wooters article

Wonder if anybody has a copy or a way to access a digital copy of this article? :

I remember Wooters writing an article in Petersen's Hunting mag about a 7x57 he put together as his perfect deer rifle, ruger 77 with a custom barrel and synthetic stock I believe.

Would love to be able to read it again. Or any other articles on big game rifles by Wooters.

Thanks for any help

Cheers

Are you sure it was John Wooters ? My recollection is he loved his Sako .308 with a full lenth stock. He did list the 7X57 as well as the .308 as the perfect deer rounds in his great book, Hunting Thorphy Deer. E

Yes, I am pretty sure. He also had a Winchester 88 for a while that he regretted selling. Then he had a custom Mauser in 280 built too. He was always searching

If they had the 6.5 Creed back in Wooters day his search for "the perfect deer rifle" would have ended right then & there..

I recall that JW wrote that his first deer rifle was a Savage 99 in 300 Savage which he liked, but cast aside when the Winchester 88 was introduced in 308. Among many others, he had a Remington 14 or 141 in 35 REM that had the barrel cut back to the length of the magazine tube that I always liked. JW wrote a short series of articles about his early hunting experience in east Texas for, I think, Shooting Times that I really liked. The characters that he brought to life in those articles, Richard "Dick" Fonville and Palmer "Peg" Melton, seemed as real and if they were standing in the room, Dick with his Savage 99 in 250-3000 and Peg with his Winchester 64 in 32 WS.

Shouldershot,

I have a couple of John Wooters books, I will check if he has any reference to a "7X57" rifle and PM you.

Doc

Good book.

Very practical, knowledgeable guy. We could use some more like him. JB can't do it all, though it appears he's trying!

He built a light 25-222 on a Sako action, I thought that was neat.

.25 Copperhead?

John Wooters was one of the reasons I thought the 308 was the ultimate deer cartridge. Then I actually started using it on deer and I found for the hunting that I was doing it was more than I needed. Now and days I think the 250 savage is MY ultimate deer cartridge. The 308 is my do everything cartridge.

I remember the rifle you speak of vividly. I've been a subscriber of Petersen's since the very early '80s and still have most of the magazines. A lot of them are in storage but I probably still have the magazine with that rifle. It was indeed a Ruger 77 with a Chet Brown synthetic stock in that old school, splotchy camo pattern. He said it was his favorite "rattling rifle" because it was very "inconspicuous". I love his articles from that era.There was one he wrote on sidearms for the hunter that I must have read 1000 times and one where he, Finn Aagaard, Boddington and Dunlop Farren hunted feral cattle along the Rio Grande that fascinated me at a young age.

If you do a search for hunting books by John Wooters, on Amazon there are a number of them. Also addallbooks where you put in the authors name and a book title, will bring them up too. Might also put in Magazine articles by John Wooters, as that might also bring up a number.

Read in an article where the serial number on the model 88 was 5303. Every time I see an 88 for sale i check the serial number. I have no interest in level actions but if I ever find that one it's going home with me. Growing up in East Texas, Wootters and Bob Brister were always my favorite writers as they were also from there so the settings and characters were always familiar.

Originally he called it "Wooters Tooter".

His article on the 25 Copperhead really was the main influence for building my 25-204, that and one other on the 25 Kimber(can't think of the author right off).

I remember reading one of his articles on deer hunting in a GUN WORLD magazine article about '62 or '63. As I recall, there was a photo of a highly sporterized 7x57 '98 Mauser with a full stock and probably a 20" barrel. Also a photo of his Remington pump rifle. He was hunting heavily wooded country in East Texas. I wouldn't list him among the best of gunwriters, but he was quite knowledgeable and I read his material for years. Of course back then, I read everybody, even Askins, Cooper, and Nonte.

Wooters was one of my favorites and a main reason why I subscribed to Petersen's Hunting for decades. His Buck Sense column was can't miss.

The only complaint I ever had with Wooters was his criteria for general purpose deer cartridges. He tended to steer his readers away from the lower end of the power scale. He often stated that the 243, 250 Savage and 257 Roberts were marginal cartridges and he described them as "experts cartridges". I never agreed with this assessment.


He was a truly great gun writer and I loved his stories on the deer camps he frequented growing up.

It wasn't just Wooters. Gary Sitton was no fan of the 6mm's for anything bigger than coyotes, though I remember an article by Payton Miller where he and Sitton had to use borrowed .243s because their .270 and '06 were delayed by the airline. Both cleanly dropped nice bucks and sang the praises of the .243. After that, Sitton never had a good thing to say about the 6mms.

The .30-30 was also considered "marginal" by many writers, UNLESS it was used in a Contender pistol and then it was a great 300 yard deer slayer...

I was also a fan of Gary Sitton. He was a talented writer and could be quite funny at times. Before he began publishing articles under his real name I believe he wrote many under the name "Jacob Bowers". Not sure why he did that but the writing quality was just as good.

Indeed he downplayed the role of the smaller calibers for big game. He often claimed that hunters might take irresponsible shots at trophy game with less than optimal cartridges if presented with the opportunity.

But Wooters and Sitton weren't alone in this regard. I can recall reading a Boddington article where he was recommending the 338 Win for northern whitetails claiming the larger bodied deer required this type of power.

I guess maybe we were all wrapped up the magnum mania back then to a certain degree. I can't even imagine using anything more powerful than my Roberts or Swede for deer sized game at this point in my life.

You do bring up a great point with the 30-30 Contender example. How many writers poo-poo'd the effectiveness of anything smaller than a 338 Win on large game only to tell you in the next paragraph how wonderful the 44 Magnum pistol was as a bear stopper?