Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT Remington 81 in 300 Savage

Mine has 3 on the bottom also. Think they are assembly stamps?

Never seen one of those, pretty cool. If pick one up it I ever see one for a decent price.

Here are the stampings on it. Not sure if they mean anything or not.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/galleries/17352347/rem-81-stampings

http://thegreatmodel8.remingtonsociety.com/?page_id=450


See if any of this info helps?

I got the date code but not sure of these stampings. Thanks

Joe,
Google.....‘Leroy’s Ramblings, Remington Barrel Date Codes’. They’re inspector stamps and assembly codes.

Ooh.. November, 1945. Cool!

Not sure how you came up with 45 Rory. Mine is stamped DTT. I thought that was September 1948?

I love mine. I have killed several deer and 2 antelope with it.

I load it with 180 grain bullets because for me at my age, the open sights (BIG bead and U notch) limit my range to about 150 yards. So I use the heavier bullet because the difference in trajectory is unimportant out to that range.
But so far I have no had problems turning deer and antelope into meals with it.
Maybe someday I'll go after elk with it, but I have not tried it with this rifle yet.

Sorry.. Mine is November, 1945. RPP.

When I was a little kid in the late 1940s in Northern California about 65 miles north of SFO, everyone who was anyone had a Winchester 1894 or 94 in .30-30. Nothing else would kill deer. There were a few guys who hunted deer with surplus rifles from WWII like Japanese 7.7s rechambered to .30-06, a few Krags, and that was about it. I knew a "City Guy" who had brought 336 "Sporting Carbine" in .35 Rem out with him from New Jersey, but never killed anything with it. Probably couldn't find ammo.

And then there was the local "cattle baron" who actually made his living doing precision dirt surgery with a Cat, saved his money and bought land and breeding stock (he ended up one of the Board of Trustees of the California Land Bank) and an 81 in .300 Savage. He'd got used to autoloaders as a sergeant in a Combat Engineer Battalion w/Patton and could afford what he wanted. He took one day off every deer season, shot his blacktail, and went back to carving and buying dirt and putting cows on it. We all thought it was a Death Ray!

Aside from sporterized Krags and Arisakas, the only bolt action I ever saw in the field until I was a senior in high school was a guy I met on a trail so far back in the boonies behind Fort Hunter Liggett (anybody serve there?) that even the Army didn't know where he was. He had a Winchester Model 70 (SCOPED!) in .270 and a nice buck. I'd only thought that happened in Sports Afield.

99s only began to catch on up there in the late 1950s when ordinary country people got jobs "in town" and had enough extra to actually buy outdoor magazines and do what all the wonderful Savage ads were telling them to do!

My kid memory doesn't recall 99's, or Remington 8/81's. Mainly Winchester 94's, Remington 760's, and a whole lotta milsurps. Now and then a Marlin 336. Of course that was in PA where then as now autoloaders weren't legal for deer hunting, so the odds of somebody owning a 8/81 was slim to none. Guys with a little jingle in their pockets aspired to M70's. The only 722's I saw were a few .222's in the hands of groundhog hunters.

I remember one frosty morning in Western Maryland my Dad and I stumbled onto a yokel dressed in a flannel shirt, bib overalls, and sneakers, hunched down behind a tree stump with some sort of Russian looking automatic rifle, bipod, flash hider and all. I was intrigued (naturally) but the Old Man herded me along. I thought "man-o-man, he sure had the capability to really mow down the deer". Sure enough later that morning I heard that gun roaring way down below from where we were. Pop steered us waaaay out around when we headed back out.

Man, all I recall are mostly Remington M700s mainly in 243, very few Winchester M70s in 270 and the newbie having to shoot a M94 in 30-30(first gun and caliber I was made to shoot my first whitetail with).

The Kreiger Conversion is fairly rare and sought after. The Model 81's run was from 1936-1950.
Kind of cheaper less fancier version of the previous Model 8 but the Model 8 was never chambered in 300 Savage. I don't know the manufacturing numbers by caliber, but I do know that I have never seen a Model 81 that wasn't a 300 Savage, although I know there were at least a few manufactured in the other Rem caliber family (30,32,35). Don't think there were any 25s made.

Rory, could this be the opening to another rabbit hole? Possibly another book?

Oh heck no! I've been intrigued with them ever since I saw Les and Don joking about the "pogo sticks" way back on my early days here. But I think one will be enough.

Les and Don's bantering about the 81 prompted me to snag one, at a small gunshow wherein there was nothing else that really caught my fancy. The price was downright cheap, so why not. It didn't take long for its downsides to outweigh its upsides, so away it went. Downside: Heavy in a weird kind of way, poor balance. Awful trigger. Weird recoil pulse. Not particularly accurate. Upside: Pretty neat.

Very nice find, most of them I've seen in the wild are pretty beat up, usually with cracked wood.

They're a neat looking thing, but I shot one in 30 and found it downright unpleasant for such a small cartridge. I can't imagine 300 being very much fun at all. If I ever came across an 8 in 25 for the right price I'd probably snag it, but the odds of that are slim to none with rifle prices being what they are these days.

I've been told, by the fellow who owned a .25 Remington, that it is impossible to find recoil springs for them. His needed replacing and none was to be had.

They are fairly heavy, but I find that makes them a steady platform for off hand shooting, similar to the M1 Garand.

You have to remember the context in which they were used during their day. They were a very useful tool for hunting the eastern forests, where the shooting was not particularly far, most likely offhand and usually at running game via the deer drive. Really their best asset to the men that used them in that time in my view was their durability, their reliability and their ability to get 5 shots downrange quickly.

My first buck that I killed with my old Model 8 came boiling out of a deer drive jumping as high and running as fast as any deer can go. I swung on him like a quail and dumped him with the 3rd shot. That is what deer hunting was back then and the Model 8 fit in that role very nicely.