Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles what are your "must have" books in a rifle library

Generally speaking, we might say there are four kinds of hunting/rifle books.

1. Descriptions of hunts, safaris, etc.
2. Reloading manuals
3. Fiction (Ruark, Hemingway, Harrison, other short stories, etc.)
4. Firearm histories, schematic manuals, shop manuals, encyclopedia-types

I'm specifically curious what y'all have or would highly recommend in the 4th category. So pretend you're putting together a library of 10-12 books to hand down to your kids or grandkids. What are you selecting?

Henshaw's The History of Winchester Firearms, Taylor's African Rifles & Cartridges, and Olson's Mauser Bolt Rifles come to mind.

I'm a gunsmith fanboy so here goes:

Firearm assembly/disassembly (all of them)
Gunsmithing Kinks (5 volumes)
Bolt action rifles - Dehaas

more...

Also have the Small Arms Patents 1855-1930 books 7 volumes

I'm a book hoarder. Have quite a few shop manuals and histories of firearms and firearm companies. But you've got my beat by a shelf's worth!

The Riflemans Rifle, Roger Rule. It is not a gun book library without this one.

I've been collecting these type of books for many years. Have accumulated in excess of 500. I wouldn't know where to start.......

Gungacks.

The Bolt Action, 2 volume set by Stuart Otteson

I used to read Water's Pet Loads a lot before the interweb took over.

If you don't have something by Finn Aagaard, you are missing out. I have found that a lot of writers were long on theory and short on experience or were pretty good at telling tall tales. Aagaard was as straight shooting as they come. He was exceptional.

Loading manuals, too many to list, from the 1950s to present.
Ken Waters Pet Loads
David Royals A Collector's Guide to the Savage 99 Rifle and its Predecessors, the Model 1895 and 1899

Cartridges of the World, I have 2 copies. One new and the other is absolutely falling apart.

I never could get over the 240 Page Super Pooper when I was a kid!! It still makes me laugh!!

Col. Whelen -The Hunting Rifle
O’Connor- Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns, Big Game Rifle, among many others.
Van Zwoll -The Hunters Guide to Accurate Shooting

Plus "The Remington 700, 25 years 1962-1987" by John Lacy and "The Ruger Model 77 Bolt Action rifle" by Ronnie Burke!

I liked Aagaard and Capstick.

My dad had a bunch of mil.book.club and gun books.
Proly 20 boxes of em in my storage unit.

Nobody reads the stuff anymore.

You should be able to score em dirt cheap used.
We have one used book store in town.

Used to hit a monster one 2.counties over
Freakin fire hazard

+1, I've got the 1990 NRA publication of Aagaard's, " Hunting Rifles & Cartridges". It's been read and reread a few times. Informative and a good read too.

Anything by JOC, EK, Ken Waters' Pet Loads, the annual GUN DIGESTs, books that focus on your specific areas of interest.

American Hunting Rifles-Craig Boddington
The Hunting Rifle-Jack O'Conner
The Rifle Book-Jack O'Conner
I even have a copy of Shotgun Digest-Robert Stack
and many copies of Gun Digest

Jack First, Inc. Gun Parts Book Vol. 1-3

Classics like Hatcher, Sharpe, Ackley, Madis, Waters. At least a couple by O'Connor and Keith. Taylor.