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My first big game animal, taken a while back with my father's lever-action .30-30:

Very cool!

Thanks!

Didn't need the scope, as the range was about 40 feet.

But at that point my father needed it. He killed his last deer that same year, on opening day.

Looks to be a 1950's Marlin 336.

Basically, yes. But it's the Western Field store-brand version sold by Montgomery Wards--as is the 4x scope, made in Japan.

Yup. I've seen those before. There's a lot of guys that seek out those store brand guns. The Glenfields are especially starting to get pricey.

Have noticed that!

I started off with a Savage 99 in 300 Savage. My dad had one he got right after the war. it was used, but in excellent condition when he got it. It was the only CF rifle in our home until I got my 1st rifle, a M70 in 270 with a Waver K4. But I started with the old Savage when I was a very young boy. It had a straight grip and a crescent steel butt and seemed to be far too long in the stock to fit my dad, and of course it was too long for a small skinny kid like I was when I was 7-11 years old. I remember it kicking like a mad mule. It had a supper light weight barrel on it. I killed a few deer with it, but never could make myself like it. So I got a 270 when I was 12. About 1 year later my dad sold the 300.

Somehow for some reason I have missed the old Savage and I can't seem to understand why. I didn't like it. But for years I wanted to get another. Maybe just because of the old memories.,

Well I am happy now.

I traded for a M99 giving some AR15 parts for the rifle about 1 month ago. It was in "ok shape" but the stock was split, and someone had tried to re-finish it, and done a VERY bad job. They had taken the thing apart and had no idea how to put it back the right way. The spindle for the magazine was free-wheeling and the cartridge cut-off spring was totally missing. So it was a "single shot" when I got it, and the wood was bad enough I don't think it should have been fired. I am pretty sure the recoil would have finished the job.

I fitted a new stock, sanded it and did the finish. I re-cut some of the old checkering on the fore-end. Got the new cut-off (ejector) spring installed, re-set the spool spring the right way. Today I installed a Williams peep and a sling. I looked up it's serial number and the table says it was made in 1949. It's a standard 99 with a pistol grip and a standard barrel instead of the real like thin one like my Dad's old gun had.

WOW! It's a REAL good shooter with handloaded 150 gr Remington C.Ls. and "OK "with 180 grain Sierras. I got 1-1/8" groups with the 150s and I got 2.5 to 2.75" with 180s. Both are good enough for deer antelope or elk within 300 yards.
The 150s were excellent, and that was with 40 gr of 4064 and 150 gr Remington Core-Lokts. I will chronograph the loads soon. The book shows it will be about 2500. We'll see. I am happy with anything from 2300 or higher. My brass is Federal 308 Winchester cut down and re-formed to fit.

I wish I were not so old at times like this. I'd love to stack up a long tally of deer and elk with the rifle, but I have others I want to do the same with, and it's sad I will not have 55 more years to do it.

This is a great picture. What year? We must be close to the same age...1958 here

Born in '52. I was 13. The doe was almost as large as a Cape buffalo.

You are older a wiser and I see that doe is enormous.
I would like to see more folks post pictures like this. This could be me.

Yep, I always enjoy seeing them too! Especially if they post another hero-photo of themselves today.... :-)

MD, with a Western Field as a buy, I take it that your dad wasn't a gun guy. How did you get mentored into being one? Neat picture. Thank goodness that my own dad had a gun guy friend that gave me all his old gun magazines. Dad's idea of sighting in for the deer season was over the hood of the car and a cardboard box with a bullet hole anywhere was good enough.

It's kind of a long story.

Yeah, my father wasn't a real gun loony, but grew up with them on a Montana homestead, we had a few in the house, including a J.C. Higgins single-shot .22 rifmire, his father's old Stevens side-by-side 12-gauge, and a trapdoor Springfield .45-70, one of a case full he and a fraternity buddy found in the attic of the old fraternity house, apparently leftovers from the ROTC program.

He was an English professor at Montana State, and like many English teachers, did some writing, often for western history magazines. The first firearm I ever saw him purchase was a new Colt Frontier Scout .22. I was about five, and because of his interest in western history he'd always wanted a single-action Colt revolver. The check for his first article was just enough to buy it. I went to the store with him, and of course still have the Colt, along with the .45-70.

The Stevens was a really cheap gun, one of those that homesteaders kept over the door to kill a skunk or scare off a drunk. I don't even remember my father shooting it--the little hunting he did was for deer--and I am sure my grandfather didn't shoot it much either, as he wasn't much of a hunter. My grandmother was a hunter, and I must have gotten the gene from her, as I was always fascinated by both hunting and guns. My father let me take the Stevens bird-hunting, and I shot it enough over the next decade that it finally started falling apart, and wasn't worth enough to repair.

My father didn't hunt for many years, partly because my grandmother was a really lousy cook, so he didn't like deer meat. But eventually one of the students in his freshman English class, a guy named Norm Strung who'd moved to Montana from New York largely for the hunting and fishing, talked my father into going deer hunting. My dad didn't have the .30-30 at the time, so borrowed my grandmother's .257 Roberts from his brother. (My grandmother had passed away by then, but my uncle liked to hunt deer, so he got the .257, which his wife used some.) My father put a cheap 2.5x scope on it and shot a forkhorn mule deer at 250 yards. He always was a good shot, due to growing up on the homestead and meat-hunting during the Depression, and shot the little Colt a lot, which made killing a deer with a scoped rifle pretty easy.

I wasn't old enough to get a Montana deer license then, but was a couple years later--which is when my father decided to buy the .30-30. (I suspect he always wanted a traditional lever-action, just like he wanted to Colt.) Our neighbor across the alley was a fellow English professor who was something of a rifle loony, and did some home gunsmithing, "sporterizing" a 1903 Springfield with an after-market stock and Lyman receiver sight. (He was also the first person I even knew who owned a Remington Nylon 66--which my father thought was a travesty, since "guns don't have plastic stocks." He may not have been a rifle loony, but did have some firm opinions about guns.)

Anyway, I needed a big game rifle, but my father was also firmly believed kids should pay for their own stuff, like guitars, guns and cars. At the time Mosin-Nagants were cheap enough for me to afford one on my paper-route money, and the neighbor helped me sporterize it. Killed a few varmints that summer, using the iron sights, with handloads put together on a Lee Loader, also a paper-route purchase. Took it deer hunting that fall, but never got a real opportunity. (My father, however, did take a mule deer doe on opening day--the last deer he ever shot at, because he'd already had one bad heart attack, and died from a second three years later.)

It came down to the last week of the season, and Norm Strung offered to take me to a ranch where he had permission to hunt, and my father offered me the .30-30. Early that morning, while we cruised around the ranch, I spotted the doe in an opening on a timbered hillside maybe 600 yards away. Norm let me out, then drove slowly off.The doe had since disappeared into the timber, but I entered slowly where she had been, and shot her between the shoulder and base of the neck when she stood up from her bed, looking at me.

Norm was my primary mentor in hunting, guns and profession. He became a full-time hunting and fishing writer, eventually a staffer for Field & Stream. He was something of shotgun loony, but not really a rifle loony. Big game was basically meat to him, but he LOVED hunting birds. I love hunting both big game and birds, and while shotguns don't have the same attraction as rifles (partly because they don't come in as many chamberings) I have some pretty nice ones.

But I was mostly a hunting and fishing writer (with a little western history) until the 1990's, when I started submitting more gun articles. Editors liked them, and gun writing became most of my job.

I’ve got a bunch of lever guns and always wanted to write, any suggestions?

Looks like the first step is, go hunting with Norm Strung.

Good story... very candid.
I am sure a guy with a handle like Shrapnel would have some good stories and close scrapes...give it a go!
My uncle was my great influence, when Jack was in his heyday and milsurp powders were used in great quantity.
Long gone and still my personal hero.
John, keep writing and us entertained.Cheers

That’s tough to do when he won’t leave the cemetery...

Exactly. Not much hope for you.

Kirk,

Am guessing you want to write for money? (Samuel Johnson, a famous British writer, said, "Only a fool writes for anything but money.")

I have a pile of advice, some of it even halfway good.