Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors WOW 99'er's

Do you guys just collect 99's or those ugly guns too?
<br>Anybody in Jersey?
<br>.358 man that's big, you should see mine all grey, dinged up living behind the seat of my truck.

You really shouldn't be shooting any .358 99. They are just plain unsafe. You should have it checked out thoroughly by ME. I'll send along some dollars bills so you can buy one of them there bolt operated thingymajigs.
<br>One of these days I'm going to find a .358..... sigh......

you can come shoot mine and it'll help you decide maybe you don't want one so bad. a nice 77rl with a little pad on the butt will be calling.

While I don't collect rifles I have accumualted two Savage 99's. They are my favorite hunting rifles. I have other rifles for shooting but when I need to fill the tag it's the 99 that I take. Both are .358W's.

Although I've never shot a .358 I understand they are quite the recoil beast.
<br>Do any of you guys load the .358 down so it not so bad?

I have been curious about loading rounds to sub-sonic levels for work that may be close to areas that may be a little gun shy. Seems like at short ranges a good subsonic round may be just the ticket for deer herd reduction.

I load cast bullets alot. Had the idea that you could use the very heavy cast bullets for the .357Magnum pistol.
<br>Thought you could get them in something like 180gr or so. Load these over a small charge of IMR SR 4759(say 10-12gr) and you would have a load that shoots about 1200fps and is very mild on brass,shoulder,and wallet.
<br>If you gas check the bullet you could go on up to about 1500fps and have a fair short range hunting load?
<br>Very economical.

Hey Moon,
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<br>Yeah, I used to shoot a couple loads built around 158 gr .357 JSPs. If you're interested I could look it up. Real easy on the shoulder but not much good for anything but paper and plinking. Sight settings were too far off from normal loads to use if I was sighted in for 200s or 250s.

The .358 is a recoil beast??? No way! Now substitute a '4' for that '3' and you have a 'recoil beast'! I load for a 99 and a BLR using the 158gr pistol bullet (plain wheelweight lead) at 49gr of IMR 4064 for a light load and 250gr Hornady SP in front of 39gr of IMR 3031 for a heavy load. The recoil of the BLR is less because it is ported (and speaks loudly) but even the heavy loads in the 99 is not all that bad. Steve95

Thats just it. I've never fired a .358.
<br>Now a 375H&H or a .338Lapua Magnum I can talk about.
<br>The old 577/450 Martini-Henry ain't no cream puff either.
<br>One of you guys need to let me "borrow" a .358 99 so I can conduct some "research" on recoil!

you know where to find it. i ain't sendin it to ya.

With a a scope my 99 weighs 8 lbs. I load the 180 gr bullet to 2700 fps so it should be the same as a 30/06.
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<br>The 250 gr bullets kick a lot harder. Since I only hunt deer and black bear around here I think a 180 or 200 gr bullet is just right.
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<br>I have not bothered with reduced loads for the .358's. These are rifles for getting game. They are always ready and sighted with the #1 load. I have other rifles for exerimentation and plinking. But I shoot these rifles at the range on a regular basis and always with the hunting load.
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<br>I hold all rifles like this with my left hand on the forend between the bag and the rifle. This really soaks up the recoil and they are not bad to shoot at all like that. I don't give a hoot if the group is 1 moa or 1.5 moa. As long as it's sighted in then it's ready.