Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What was the Jack O'connor load?

Rovering you can do pretty much the same thing with 7828 and a 130 gr bullet.....but I didn't say that.

You can also probably do it with H1000. I just tried a bunch of .270 handloads in two rifles, a Model 70 with a 22" barrel and a Ruger 1B with a 26" barrel, for a magazine article. 64.0 grains of H1000 did very well with 130's, especially in the No. 1. And yes, 64 grains fits easily in Winchester brass, because H1000 is another "short-cut" powder.

Another good powder for 130's is Ramshot Magnum. Ramshot's maximum listed loads for 130's run between 63.6 grains for Nosler E-Tips to 65.8 grains for Sierra GameKings. I tried 65.0 grains with 130 Ballistic Tips, and it shot very well in both rifles at about 3050 from the M70 and over 3150 from the Ruger. It's a ball powder and 65 grains didn't come anywhere near filling the case, so a typical hot-rod handloader could end up with some super-zippy loads.

Back in the late 70's I developed a load for my hunting Bud using 62gr H4831 w/130gr Speer in his M700(22" bbl). 5shot avg velocity was 3112. Accurcy was sub moa. He was killed in a motorcycle wreck 6yrs ago so I still have a few of those rounds left.

Wasn't it Jack who wrote you could just dip the case full in a keg of H4831(mil-surp)and be good to go?

IIRC, he wrote that in the fifties or sixties, when I was beginning to be interested in such things. Likely published in Outdoor Life.

A lot of us thought the writing world had ended when JOC retired. Were we wrong? Yes. Along came Carmichial !

Kind of like I told one of my fellow command officers one time. "Those of us who think we can not be replaced by a younger, smarter, better educated, person are on an ego trip."

I've used the 62 gr. H4831 load in both Won. & Rem. brass with no ill effects. The last few years I've settled on 60 gr. It shoots 3050 fps in my 22" Mod. 700 and is just as accurate. Another load O'connor liked was 49.5 gr. 4064 with 130 gr. bullets. It gives virtually the same velocity in my gun and just as accurate.

Thank you, I was going to mention IMR4064 but didn't recall the charge weight and didn't want to "weigh in" to the thread without it.

IIRC, Jack said something along the lines of "if your .270 doesn't shoot well with a 130 grain bullet and 49.5 grains of 4064 there is something wrong with the rifle".

Some writer I forgot who checked the very scale O'Conner used and said it was out of calibration by 1-2 grains high. No idea if it was like that when he used it but I wouldn't doubt it. Someone else said he would put black tape over the digital clocks to avoid having to set them. He wasn't a tech-y.

I find the JOC worship pretty interesting. I'm not sure if he was a writer that hunted or hunter that wrote. Can't speak to anything other than wrapping up his poorly written biography, haven't read any of his actual work.

He was certainly both and those of us that spent undue time in our formative years reading the "Hook & Bullet" prose will always be enamored.

I even enjoy him more after crossing paths with those who knew him personally and cast new light on the man. I won't advocate Canonization but the world is a better place with Jack than without.

Maybe "worship" wasnt the right word, but the enduring influence is fascinating.

Hunting/ shooting evokes a lot of passion...

Look at the amount of ink spilled and bandwidth used by people trying to understand and learn it today.....then let's go back to the 1940's through the 1970's (when I guess he was most active as a writer),and recall that there was no internet....no printed medium except for the gun mags, and the Big 3 outdoor magazines.

You learned from people within your sphere of influence,or by reading and then trying, or by doing it by yourself and making all the goofy mistakes.

JOC's appeal was that he clarified a lot for a lot of people. He kept it simple and wove the shooting/hunting lessons into the stories.He was educated, articulate,and could write...rare in one package.

Plus his information and experience were first-hand, not gleaned from others. He spent his early years as a working stiff, largely broke,hunting the Southwest and Mexico on DIY hunts. He did not hunt out of the Southwest on his outfitted hunts until he was in his 40's.Most of the international stuff much later, when he was at his peak in popularity.

Both he and Warren Page had vastly more hunting experience in more places,and on more types of game,and with more cartridges than Keith ever did. I suspect that the magazines they wrote for had bigger circulation and bigger budgets.

Today, even people who don't know, or won't admit it,have been influenced by him. Just look at the number of lightweight(7-8 pound), mild recoiling rifles in use today....they are the result of his ideas and promotions o what a BG rifle should be. He is know for using a 270, but he also had the Big Bore experience as well,so he knew what he was talking about.People sensed this.

I'll add a few points to Bob's excellent points:

There really weren't gun magazines as we know them until after World War II. American Rifleman was about it, and back then AR was more technical and devoted to match results than it is today.

As I recall, Outdoor Life had the largest circulation of any of the hunting/fishing/shooting camping magazines until Field & Stream overtook it a couple decades after WWII, and even then F&S didn't beat it by much. And OL was THE outdoor magazine selected to be sent to overseas troops during WWII, introducing O'Connor to millions of servicemen.

The largest-circulation magazine Elmer Keith ever worked for was American Rifleman, which was a smaller and less influential than either OL or F&S in those days. Keith eventually quit AR to work for Guns and then Guns & Ammo, both much smaller shooting magazines started after WWII. Eventually G&A's circulation became medium-large, but even at its peak it never matched the numbers of Sports Afield, the smallest of the so-called Big Three outdoor magazines.

O'Connor's influence on hunting firearms at the peak of the Big Three period, roughly the 1950's through the 1970's, could probably be compared to major sports columnists in big-city newspapers back then. Of course, those newspapers have also lost considerable circulation now, and many have even disappeared--along with real writing. Instead we're in the era of sound bites and controversy, whether on the Internet, radio or TV.

O'Conner was also a really talented writer. From just a pure literature standpoint, I enjoy reading O'Conner hunting stories in much the same way I enjoy reading Hemingway hunting stories.

I have to admit I was intrigued from a purity standpoint, maybe even boredom. I grew up as a Field & Stream kid and couldn't tell you the name of one person or article that left an impression on me like JOC did on previous generations. In fact, I swore off most of it. At least until I discovered Steven Rinella.

So, seeing that some of you grew up with JOC's works in hand, what would be your recommendation for a fella that just finished his biography?

I was too young to have grown up with O'Conner, but have had a few cocktails with his biographer over the years, though never read the book. I would recommend a book called, "the Lost Classics of Jack O'Conner" or something like that, which was a collection of his stories published a few years ago. I enjoyed each story in the book.

Thanks for pointing out that title. I will be getting that book once I locate a source.

The Lost Classics is OK, but has two major problems: it doesn�t contain O�Connor�s best work, and two of the stories selected obviously weren�t his, even though the editor claims they were written under pseudonyms.

For a single introductory volume I would suggest The Best of Jack C�Connor, since it includes hunting stories from throughout his career. Other good books are The Hunting Rifle, Game in the Desert Revisited (a slight revision of his very first book), and Sheep and Sheep Hunting.

If you�re still interested after those, his autobiography, Horse and Buggy West, is a lot better than the biography you read, and there�s also The Last Book, written about the gun-writing and hunting business but with orders from O�Connor that it not be published until he was dead, since it named some names. Both are rarer and more expensive than the others.

Mule Deer is dead on on the Lost Classics. I talked with Bradford about the article of Jack shooting his first Dall Sheep on Black Rapids Glacier in the Alaska Range. He said that there was another Jack O'Connor who had the same name that Jim Casada put in the Lost Classics book. Jack never hunted in Alaska for sheep. He did hunt Brown Bears in South East and on Kodiak but he never hunted sheep in Alaska.

Jack O'Connor 2 book Collection of hunting on Three Continents is a good book. I would argue that if a person has access to the Ken Amber Gun Digests through the years that you get a lot of great articles. Sheep and Sheep hunting is still the book that I have worn out two copies of.

The biography was horrible. I'll keep a look out for some of the titles mentioned. Guess I'm on an old school kick, just started working my way though John Noslers book.

I read this somewhere too.