Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Another celebration of Savage Arms history - the 1903

Interesting gun.

Nice to see Savage pay some attention to their history, and to the 1903 to boot; though I thought the score was a bit overkill for the subject.

A 1903 with a scope on it? Someone didn't put a lot of thought into that. +1 on the music. Thought I was watching a reality show.

That engraving is rather poor, the first time through I thought it was a pony because of that tail and the heavier lines on the neck looked like it had a mane, I guess it's supposed to be a fox? Is that the best example they could find? The scope is a late 1930 ~ early 1940 Mossberg made for Montgomery Wards. I have never heard it called a half-pistol grip, all the Savage catalogs from the day just call it a pistol grip.

I don't think the gallery counter was very popular, I've looked for years for an example and have only seen one gun that 'may' have hade one, it had something mounted to it at one time on the front of the forearm and on the underside of the barrel. I don't think the 1903 was popular in galleries, a gun with anything easily removable, especially if it was the magazine, could be a problem. I think they would have had to invest in a lot of extra magazines to keep up when they got busy. The gallery counter was only in catalogs No 15 (~1905~) and No 16 (EARLY 1907). The model 1903 was chosen for exclusive use in all shooting galleries at the 1904 Worlds Fair.

A number of sources state they also made a run of 1000 1903's in 1922, I can't be sure of the 1000, but I do know they made some in 1922, I have one, #146955, that lettered as accepted at the warehouse on 5/26/1922 and shipped as part of the 'closeout order of remaining 1903's to Hibbard, Spenser & Bartlett of Chicago 5/27/1922". These have the duller blued receivers and crowned barrels.

It is indeed neat that Savage is doing these retro videos. I guess if they can't/won't revive any of the models that made their rep in the gun industry at least they acknowledge them. (Of course re-making some of those old models would be like Ford doing a run of Model A's. Ain't a gonna happen.)

Perhaps better background music would be appreciated, as long as it isn't a Loony Toons klezmer.

Didn't Ford make a run of A models in the 70's?

Maybe I'm thinking of the Shay replica's built on Pinto chassis's?

No, that was the infamous Mustang II.

Still ya gotta wonder how something along these lines could be made to compete with the Henry 22s, which used to be cheap.

Gene, yeah.. when I saw the engraving my first thought was "That doesn't look like Tue's work".

A lot of the rifles they have left in their inventory aren't high grade. Their 1920 is a wreck, for example - no checkering left, fugly refinish, etc.

But I'm just happy that after ignoring their history (publicly at least) for decades, they are at least trying.

And therein lies the crux of the biscuit.

"the crux of the biscuit".

I know what a biscuit is, and I think I'm solid on the crux, but the crux of the biscuit? LOL.

Synonyms: heart, center, core

You think that Savage would have some killer examples of just about everything thy made in their collection - unless they sold them all off during hard times. But still, they could find them in other collections if they took the effort. I'm sure the NRA museum would help them out.

Some of them went away in hard times and some went home with factory executives. Ron Coburn bought back all of them he could find while he was CEO.
I was concentrating on the prototypes and the 99 variations when I was at the factory while working on my book so I didn't pay much attention to the other models. The 99 variations were kind of sketchy although they had some one-off variations like the 30-06 prototype and a TD prototype.

From what I have heard the R&D collection was sold almost in it's entirety to gun dealer Peter Doud about 1988, he then resold the guns. A dealer I knew bought a number of the 22 caliber rifles and I got two prototype pump actions from him, he also had 2 prototypes for the Model 1911 bolt action, a clip magazine fed version of the Stevens 87M version with a stock that was modified from a bolt action to semi-auto, and a couple cut-away pump actions among others.

I'm pretty sure the 99CD prototype I got from Don's brother Dick was one of the Peter Doud guns. I wish I could have spent more time at the factory but I was on a tight schedule which seems to be the story of my life. i.e., a lot of missed opportunities.