Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Let me start by simply stating that I hate you people.

I’ve done very limited reading in this forum, but I’ve done enough that the Savage 99 bug has bitten me, and I hate you people for it. Just what I need; another gun.

As a potential buyer, I’d like to get up to speed as quickly as possible on the differences between the F and EG series rifles.

Any other tips or advice you could provide me on purchasing my first Model 99 would be appreciated.

Almost forgot, I’m not a collector and will be doing limited whitetail hunting with the rifle. Will probably scope it and would prefer a 300 Savage chambering.

Differences between the 99F and 99EG:
1) Barrels - the EG will have a 24" medium weight barrel (except early non-300 Sav EG's), the 1950's 99F will have a 22" featherweight barrel with a rear sight boss.
2) Stocks - the 99EG will have schnable forearm, the 99F will have a rounded forearm and extra wood drilled out of the buttstock under the buttplate to lighten the gun.
3) Checkering - the 99EG will have forearm checkering consisting of a triangle on each side, the 99F has wraparound checkering.
4) Availability - the 99EG was made for 25 years and there's a ton our there, the 1950's 99F was made for 4 years, harder to find. Though there is another 14 years of postmil, tang safety 99F's also.

Much easier to find 99EG's if a 300 Savage fits your needs. Easier to find a 99F if you want a 308. All 99F's will be factory drilled for scope bases, most 99EG's won't be.

99EG:



99F:

And beware.. if you think you're catching the bug now, wait until you get one. They don't like to be alone, and you'll start finding more and more in the safe.

Great information and thank you for the pictures.

If you don't mind, I'm going to send you a PM shortly.

ETA: What is a sight boss?

Feel free. Or email to Calhoun @ savagelevers.com (remove the spaces) if that's easier.

Sight boss, he runs the sight.
Seriously, the F barrel is thin. Savage added a thick spot for the rear sight dovetail.

For post WWII 99s, at the next gun show you go to pick up a circa-mid 50 Shooters Bible and look at the Savage ad. That will show you the difference between the EG, F and R. Some say rifles made after about 1960 are not as good. For prewar guns that’s a bit of a different kettle of fish as the model designation for the F and the introduction of the EG make that it’s own topic of conversation

Hunting on stand, either will work well. The F is slightly lighter, is model marked under the sight boss and doesn't have the schnabel fore end.

Hard to go wrong with an EG. Plenty available in 300. Most will be D&T (non factory)

Decent EG coming up in a few days,

https://www.proxibid.com/Guns-Milit...n-Rifle/lotInformation/73854730#topoflot

Very nice R (?)

https://www.proxibid.com/Guns-Milit...n-Rifle/lotInformation/73622374#topoflot

99F in 300 has got to be about the best hunting rifle ever built.

I’ve always considered the post war F pretty much the epitome of 99 design between 1945 and the end of production. And they all were factory drilled for scope mounts so that’s a nice little extra.

Also a good choice. The EG got factory drilling for scope mounts sometime after 1955/56. I had a circa-1957 EG that was so it happened sometime before that.

Late 1954, actually.

This is what I thought, but wanted confirmation.

My take: the 99 was/is an excellent hunting rifle, certainly in the top ten of all time. But, where it really shines is in the hands of the hunter who doesn't sit on his butt in a tree stand or a blind all day, the guy who covers some territory while seeking Br'er Whitetail. Some are better than others in that regard, especially if unencumbered with optics (my all-time fave is the aperture sighted M1899H, I wouldn't have done it with a scoped R). The butt hunters are served well with a lot of other choices too, which for that purpose may well outshine the 99. The 99 had a lot of thought go into it to make it a companionable tool for the still hunter, who was the most common guy in the woods back then.

I wonder if it would enjoy the same popularity if it were freshly introduced today, in an age when few guys roam the woods for miles and to whom the ideal deer rifle is a scoped high velocity bolt gun? (And those same guys who when they do strike off on foot insist on lugging those same rifles.) The same could be said for the M94 and 336. Mind you, I'm speaking to what I've observed here in the jungles of northern Appalachia, and hypothesizing about if none of these light ergonomic lever guns had never before existed but all of a sudden appeared now.

Just food for thought. Let's nobody get their panties twisted in a knot!

I agree, at least for the upstate Pennsylvania woods in which I hunt, which is why my primary hunting rifle is a 99F in .300 Savage.

Can't think of anything bad to say about a 300 F.

To Gary's point, deer hunting has changed dramatically from 1955 to 2023. Nobody carries a rifle all day today. They carry it from their truck to their tree stand. The 99, the 94 and the 336 are dinosaurs now, but they had a great run.

Here in Utah, that hunting method would result in 0 deer.

Here, the best method is 3-5 guys in a line abreast, working from the top of a hill down through the trees (or tall oakbrush/sagebrush), with a couple more out on the flanks slightly forward of the center drivers. This almost always works, and we would switch positions until everyone had their kill.

Or finding where the deer go down to water/feed and return, and be there before dawn or just before dusk (building a stand there just results in the deer making a different path).

The last 2 methods that are distinctly less-successful is finding an open area and waiting for something to cross the clearing, or solo walking through brush & trees. The last almost never works, I have seen my Father working up towards a small stand of thick saplings where we could see a buck from the road (where we were in the truck)... as he got to the stand and began circling it, the buck circled it ahead of him... until it was behind him and then it snuck off to another stand.

The first two I took were with a 1948 Win94 (.32 spcl) in sparse aspen (both driven to me by someone else) and the 3rd (with a .243 whose model I don't remember) while walking beside a creek just after dawn between the feeding area and higher up on the mountain.

That is exactly what happened to me, bought a 308 from Roy. He warned me, He warned me, He warned me.

They do seem to reproduce. I started with one about 5 years ago... currently at 3, soon to be 4 if I can hunt down what I'm looking for. 😁