Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Jack O'Connor .257 Roberts

It might take Bob awhile, but he'll find it.

Forget JOC, I think JB or Eileen should write an all inclusive article on the .257 Roberts, Modern powders modern bullets , modern guns....... From what I have read , her ULA is racking up an impressive resume. While JB and the rest of us still cling to larger more powerful guns and the factories keep building bigger stuff. She merrily kills stuff with a pop gun.
That being said I would like to see JOC's mauser. I hope it was built on a small or intermediate action ...... A Remington model 30 was probably a bit portly for a .257 Roberts

If you search Jack O'Connor's rifle sale at Heritage auctions, the Pachmayr one sold there a few years back, for $15,700 or there abouts. Warren Page's Ole Betsy sold in the same auction. This 257 kind of plain Jane for sure. With the description, there's some provenance, showing it being sold to a Mr Greevy, I think, just before O'Connor died. The sale was completed,by Eleanor, the rifle shipped after JOC died. The price it sold for in 1978 was $3,000.00. JOC's son, Brad said he was sure this was, in fact, his mother's rifle.

I just checked Addall books and there are 10 copies of JOCs 1952 Sportsman's Arms and Ammunition Manual there, for $6-$10 a copy.

Great Read

http://www.jack-oconnor.org/pdf/JackoConnor-Newsletter-1stQuarter-2013.pdf

You're in rare form this morning....well not all that rare actually

I have three hunts scheduled for this fall....Maine, Kansas, and Newfoundland.

You?

Better get to it Scott; you aren't getting any younger.

With all due respect to Mr. Buckner, he is not infallible when it comes to identifying O'Connor's rifles. Among other things, JO'C owned more than three rifles in .257. One that comes immediately to mind was an '03 Springfield with a Linden stock that had been rebarreled from .35 Whelan.

“Eleanor O’Connor’s Arizona Favorite – The .257
Roberts”
by ELDON “BUCK” BUCKNER

In 1934 the O’Connor’s moved from Flagstaff in Northern Arizona’s high country of ponderosa pine and snowy winters to Tucson’s desert heat and cactus. Here Jack became the first professor of journalism at University of Arizona while soon achieving recognition as a top ranked gun and hunting writer.
That same year Remington introduced their commercial version of a .25 caliber wildcat cartridge developed by eastern woodchuck hunter Ned Roberts. Developed by necking down the 7x57 m/m case, the cartridge was capable of pushing bullets
weighing 60 to 120 grains at then impressive velocities. Originally called the .257 Remington, the name was changed to .257 Roberts in honor of its inventor and introduced in Remington’s Model 30s rifle. Jack bought one of the new rifles for Eleanor to replace her lower powered .25 Remington and had it custom stocked and fitted with a new Noske scope. This rifle, with its 24 inch barrel and loaded with Jack’s various hand loads, proved very accurate and effective on Arizona whitetails (Coues’ deer) and desert mule deer as well as ideal for coyotes and jack rabbits. Jack soon had a .257 of his own, used it primarily as a varmint rifle, but shot a few deer and one bighorn ram with it. Eleanor used her Remington .257 with great effect on Coues’ deer, javelina,countless jacks and coyotes and in 1941, shot an impressive buck antelope during
Arizona’s first modern day season. The O’Connor’s did a lot of hunting for Coues’ deer in the rugged desert mountains of
Arizona and Sonora, Mexico in those days. They frequently used horses but such hunts always required a lot of through hiking too. Eleanor’s rifle proved to have one major drawback. At 10½ lbs., it equaled 10% of diminutive Eleanor’s body weight, similar to an average man carrying 18 pounds. When carried in a scabbard it tended to pull a saddle sideways. More often than not Eleanor would tire out at the end of a long day and Jack would have to carry both his and Eleanor’s rifles back to the horses or camp.
Jack was soon convinced that Eleanor needed a lighter rifle. In 1941 he swapped a standard Mauser action to a well-known Phoenix barrel maker Bill Sukalle for a shorter Model 93 Mauser action and had him fit a light 22 inch barrel to it. Sukalle trimmed down the trigger guard and tang, thinned and altered the bold handle for low scope mounting. A light Weaver 330 scope was mounted on Weaver B mounts and all shipped to Griffin and Howe in New York to be custom stocked. The finished rifle arrived back in Arizona in 1942 weighing just under 7 ½ lbs.
Eleanor christened her new rifle that fall on a running white tail buck at 300 yards. A few days later Jack’s 12 year old son Jerry used it to take his first buck on the Siebold’s ranch in the Canelo Hills near Patagonia. Eleanor’s little .257 saw lots of use during the 1940’s, with frequent Sonora deer hunts, where the limit was 3 per person each trip, spring javelina hunts, and numerous family outings for jacks and coyotes.
In 1946, at age 13, youngest son Bradford used his mother’s rifle to take his first deer on Major Healey’s ranch in the Huachuca Mts., as he related in an earlier issue of this
newsletter.
Eleanor’s rifle was used often until the O’Connor’s moved to Lewiston, Idaho in 1948. Eleanor was busy with four children and most of her hunting was for local pheasants and quail. The boys were both soon serving in the Korean War. Then, in the early 1950’s, Eleanor tried a lightweight custom 7 x 57built for Jack and promptly claimed it as her new big game rifle.
Eleanor’s .257 languished in the rifle rack until it was gifted to Jim Rikhoff’s wife Janet in the 1960’s. Even more petite than Eleanor, at 4 ft. 11 inches, she successfully used
the .257 on red stag during stalking ventures to Scotland.

In December, 1971, the Rikhoffs’ son Jimmy, age 10, used the rifle to shoot his first buck on Harry Tennison’s Texas ranch.
While researching for the gun section I authored for the O’Connor biography in 2001, I learned that Ron Troy, an O’Connor fan I’d met thirty years earlier, had acquired the
.257 from the Rikhoff’s. In 2007, Ron wrote to tell me he was selling the .257 through an auction house in case I was interested. I bought the rifle. Eleanor’s rifle has experienced a few changes through the past 70 years. When I received it, the metal had been re-blued, a different scope mounted, the stock shortened from its original 13 ¼ inches and the original trap door steel butt plate replaced by a thin, red, white line rubber pad. I promptly replaced the pad with a solid ¾
inch black one which increased the stock length to 12 ½ inches – about right for a youngster or petite lady. The original Weaver 330 scope and top mount had been replaced long ago with a Noske side mount base and G&H rings which held a Bushnell
Banner 4x, which I replaced with an early Lyman All American 4x with a post and crosswire reticle similar to the post in the original Weaver. With the heavier scope it now weighs 8 lbs.
The model 93 action does not have the added safety of a rear locking lug like the model 98, so Jack loaded Eleanor’s cartridges with then considered mild loads of 37 ½ grs 4320 or 39 grs 4064 behind 100 grain bullets; loads that are currently listed fairly stiff in today’s loading manuals. I finally took time to try Eleanor’s rifle in April 2012. Knowing how much it had been used, my accuracy expectations were not high. After carefully cleaning the barrel, bore sighting and firing a fouling shot, I fired three shots at 100 yards . The load was 40 grs 4064 behind Sierra’s 90 gr. hollow point, which gave no sign of high pressure. I was some surprised to find three holes in a tight cluster which measured 5/8 inch center to center. Other loads of 37 ½ grs 4320 and 45 gr H205 (now obsolete) behind two different 100 gr Speer bullets grouped within an inch. This past fall I used the 90 gr Sierra load to make an instant one shot kill on one of our ranch white tails – a lower neck shot as it stood looking at me at a tad over 100 yards.
As an off and on .257 Roberts user in both North America and Europe for nearly 30 years, I heartily agree with Jack’s 1977 concluding comments in the revised 3rd edition (Knopf, 1978) of his classic The Rifle Book, first published in 1949:
“Although the cartridge will eventually become obsolete, it will probably be loaded for quite a few more years and it is still worth getting a custom made rifle for it. The cartridge gives light recoil and muzzle blast along with good accuracy and I know of no better combination cartridge for varmints, deer, sheep, antelope and game of that Class.”

I've been getting after it my whole life. Spend the entirety of your adult life never living one place for more the 3-4 years and you come to appreciate staying on the back 40.

My trips will be to my niece's 1st birthday party and a drive to Nashville airport to pickup my 4 1/2 year old niece for a 5 day visit.

I'm thinking I'll not suffer much.

bea175,

Thanks for posting that article.

I asked advice from JOC all the time back in the day. I was thinking of doing a 257 Roberts (which turned out to be a 25-06). Here is what "the Master" said:

That is glorious.

That was my mistake implying that Buck said Jack had 3 257's, I was going by his chapter "Jack's Guns-Favored Firearms over the years" in Robert Andersons book "Jack O'Connor." I don't think that was meant to be a comprehensive list of all of Jacks guns, just favored ones.

I did find reference to a custom Springfield with 440 Weaver scope in his book "Sportsman's Arms and Ammunition Manual."

One of the "coolest" letters I've seen. I blame JOC for both my love of the .257R and the loathing of the .270W!

Buckner's chapter in Anderson's book (which is generally quite good) also has a few errors, and some notable omissions.

Maybe you could start giving advice on the "birthday ideas for your niece" forum. I'm sure the girls there would love to have you around.

The Other O’Connor’s Rifle
Eileen Clarke
The story goes something like this: he was a hunter,
she wasn’t. So they married and he taught her how to hunt. And
shoot. But the first gun he got her was too heavy. She was only
5’2” and 110 pounds soaking wet, and it was the southwest US
where temperatures can bake. He finally got tired of carrying
both guns back to the house at 100
°
F, so he bought her a more
suitable gun.
In some ways it’s a universal story, except that it’s
Jack and Eleanor O’Connor, so both the 10 pound rifle (a Mod
-
el 30-S Remington in .257 Roberts) and the more appropriately
sized one are relatively famous. A Mauser Sukalle-Griffin &
Howe custom in .257 Roberts, with Circassian walnut stock
weighing 7
½
pounds.
Eleanor took a lot of deer, javelina, jack rabbits and
coyotes with the Sukalle, then her two sons shot their first deer
with it, and it eventually passed through several Rikhoff family
hands, but is now owned by Buck Buckner, among other things
an avid O’Connor fan. Both O’Connors.
When he acquired the rifle, he said it had been unused
for many years, and with all the shooting that Eleanor alone had
done, he worried the barrel might be shot out. Besides that, he
didn’t have a clue what load Eleanor had used. So he started
off with a good cleaning, and put it on paper. The little gun
surprised him with
½
-inch groups. Last fall he took a whitetail
deer with it. And last June I got to handle it.
I am several inches taller and a few pounds heavier
than Eleanor, but that rifle just felt perfect in my hands. I point
-
ed the scope directly across the valley, and it held rock steady
on my ‘target’ with, as you see in the photo above, only one
elbow firmly planted.
Story is that Eleanor was a slightly better shotgunner
than Jack, but that he was a better rifle shot. (Apparently both
were natural athletes. In college, she was better at golf, he bet
-
ter at tennis.) But she was no slouch with a rifle. According to
all reports she was a full partner in keeping the family well fed
and, having grown proficient on running shots with jack rabbits,
made more than one running shot on big bucks and amazed one
Mexican guide by taking 6 Mearns quail with the .257 by shoot
-
ing at their feet and letting the gravel act as buckshot.
That’s pretty artful shooting. And a pretty honest gun

You guys are the best. Wonderful stuff.

Bob, what part of Kansas are you going to?