Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Who would build O'Connor's rifle?

JB,
Like the point of factory barrels in J O'C's rifles.

I think today's shooters have it pretty good. It is no longer rare to find a factory rifle that will put 3 shots into a nice neat 1/2 inch triangle.

There is more emphasis on bedding and barrel floating. The triggers have improved. Scopes are infinitely better than J O'C's day and the bullets are more concentric with yaw virtually eliminated from bi-metal projectiles. Even the powder is the best selection in history.

We are too critical and have it better than our forebears.

Jack only just missed out by a few short years, on the reintroduction of the Model Fetherweights. He may have got a customer shop version to upgrade the wood, but I quite like the rifles of today and have no interest in custom rifles.

Rather spend the dough on hunting, which is very limited in a regulated society.

JW

Winston Elrod for Model 70 ftw. in 270. Everything would be slimmed and stretched the way that he liked.

Todd Johnson for the model 98 mausers like he liked just as well as the Model 70s. The 98s would be American classic style as well but a bit heavier than the winchesters. They still would be elegant.

Both smiths are extremely good and probably not as well recognized by many people out there. Jack was great at finding talent.

Sincerely,
Thomas

There is a guy in Cornelius N.C. that built one for him years ago. His last name is Stuckbauer and he is still building really nice guns!

Fred Wells built rifles for Jack O Conner, he is missed also.

Mule Deer,

Excellent post as usual, but as I'm sure you know, many things were a lot different back when O'Connor was in his prime. For example, the custom 7x57 that he commissioned (pics in the O'Connor sheep rifle thread) that later became his wife's favorite was made from a Czech CZ-24, because back then it was still cost effective to modify a surplus military Mauser.

Although custom bottom metal was not for sale from Brownells back then, he often had it customized. For example, the bottom metal on that Mauser was modified, with the stock floorplate being hinged and a quick release button being built into the trigger guard. IIRC, he also had a quick release button built into the trigger guard (similar to the design on the Oberndorf Mausers and modern custom bottom metal) on a number of his M70s and FN Mausers as well, different from the stock floorplate releases.


He also did have custom barrels in some of his guns, I believe a number were made by Sukalle, and some of the stock barrels he used on his M70s were "turned down" to lighten them, so they were "customized" if not custom.

I suspect that, like many handmade things, the cost to do the same thing today compared to then significantly exceeds inflation.

StrayDog,

First, let me apologize I offended you.

Back in 1975 as a lad on 18 I was in Navy basic training. This being prior to military political correctness. We we're taught that to ASSUME would make an ASS of U and ME. So I am careful about what a writer who died 35 plus years ago might think of todays new rifles and new cartridges.

I don't know what Jack O'Connor would have to say about the Browning A Bolt II rifle or the 270 WSM cartridge. Ray Atkinson knew Jack as a mentor and family friend. The rest of us are assuming or guessing.

So I am going to agree to disagree with your reasoning. But that's just my own opinion...

a/k/a MK Benenson. Minor correction to BobinNH's post, the .375 that JOC gave to John Kingsley Heath was not a G&H, it was a standard grade prewar M70. I know because I bought it at auction in the UK when JKH sold it, and imported it to the US. It did have a G&H installed scope base which had been cut down to just over the stock line and a Redfield Jr. mount put on top. The quality of finish on the rifle was superb, even though it was a standard grade. I took it to Alaska for griz but did not get a shot, and sold it to an O'Connor fan.

I actually wonder if in this day and age O'Connor would be happy to buy a Cooper Custom Classic in .270 and just go hunting. Custom rifle are getting quite expensive and for a fairly reasonable price Cooper makes an excellent quality rifle that is beautiful and accurate.

Jlin222,

Yep, it was probably standard procedure in those days to just modify the bottom metal that came with an action. I have even seen very nice custom rifles on military 98's from the 1960's that didn't even have the floorplate hinged--though it was welded up here and there (especially the holes for the extra locking screws) and the trigger guard streamlined.

In fact one of the reasons (among several) that the 1903 Springfield was consideed before WWII a superior action to military 98's for custom conversion was the more graceful bottom metal--one reason many of Jack O'Connor's early custom sporters were on 1903 actions. In my collection of sporting rifles is a 1903 sporter made by Frank Pachmayr in the 1930's, and the bottom metal is straight out of the Springfield Armory.

As far as who would build Jack's rifles today, and the style he liked, I think they would be in the classic style he preferred, and also in one of the classic cartridges.

We have a saying, "Class never goes out of style," and a rifle built today to Jack's specs. and by one of his favorite rifle smiths would have just as much class today as it had back when he was actively writing and hunting.

It would cost more, but it would still be a work of art and a thing of beauty.

To repeat what I said earlier, I think O'Connor would do just as he used to do, that is, use various rifles in different calibers to hunt with, many made by the best craftsmen. I should have said "rifles" in my heading, not the singular "rifle".
I think he'd try some of the new stuff and hold onto the classic stuff.
An example of his ecclectic taste in rifles is when he related the story of driving somewhere along the Montana/Idaho border and seeing a wolf. As I remember, he shot the wolf with a slide action Remington in 25/20. It's been many years sin ce I read that story, so forgive me and correct me if I made mistakes in repeating it.

Fred

idahoguy101,

There is a difference between assuming and/or guessing and basing an opinion on some knowledge of the subject--and I don't mean knowing Jack O'Connor personally.

The opinions I have stated here are based not just on reading most of what Jack O'Connor wrote (I have a collection of O'Connor books that takes up about 18" of space on one of my bookshelves, and miscellaneous other writings by and about him) but a bunch of other books and magazines from the same era.

You do not have to know a writer personally to make some reasonable deductions about what he would think of, say, synthetic stocks or the .280 Ackley Improved. His opinions are there, in print. Perhaps they are not specifically about some of the things available today, but they don't have to be.

To me, the most astonishing thing on this thread is how many people apparently think that most rifle history began in the year 2000--and hence there wasn't any cartridge flatter shooting than the .270 Winchester when O'Connor was hunting.

The other strange assumption is that because O'Connor liked a flat-shooting round such as the .270, he would automatically prefer one that was even flatter-shooting. This must arise from the common notion that more is always better.

But as I pointed out earlier in this thread, if O'Connor had wanted to do most of his hunting with a faster, flatter .270 or 7mm round, he would have done so, since the .270 Weatherby and 7mm Remington Magnum were both popular and available, especially the Remington.

I also kind of doubt that he would have been satisfied with a factory rifle like the Kimber 84 or Cooper. After all, the original Winchester Model 70 Featherweight was very much a result of O'Connor's writings, but he wasn't satisfied to hunt with a Featherweight unless it had been restocked and otherwise remodeled.

These are not just assumptions, such as assuming that O'Connor would have loved the .270 WSM because it is "better" than the .270 Winchester. They are reasonable deductions gleaned from reading most of his writing, often over and over again.

Idahoguy,
I can agree to disagree. I went through basic training a full decade earlier, so I have had longer to unwind, we've already served and the rigidity of some of the black and white rules can now fade into gray areas so we can have a little fun.
O'Connor wrote in a style of teaching how and why he favored certain equipment, and after some of us absorbed so much of it, it is fun to speculate about the hows and whys he taught would apply today. I truly believe he would be proud of his students for remembering a portion of what he taught rather than being offended.

StrayDog & Mule Deer,

I am not a O'Connor scholar, and, of course, never met the gentleman.

With an eighteen inch file on Jack O'Connor I nominate JB to right another O'Connor biography. I'll defer to you, JB, on the subject. prefer leaving what I call the "assuming and/or guessing" to better folks than I. Agreeing to disagree is fine with me. As I said, "it's just my opinion"...

I appreciate the 24hourcampfire for it's general civility. I've been exposed to many ideas I'd never considered before just from reading here.

smilidon...I defer to you and your first hand experience.... I thought it was a standard grade 375 remodeled by G&H.

I,too,am continuously astonished by this..

...among the more popular and often-discussed cartridges mentioned on here,there is not a single one that is truly "new",and most have origins dating back to the 40's,50's,and 60's.....some substantially earlier.The WSM's are one example;the Rem Ultra Mag's are another....and the genesis of the 375 Ruger is older than dinosaur excrement.

Being well read,and at the height of his career,I seriously doubt O'Connor was unaware of the wildcat experiments of Roy Gradle and PO Ackley; the OKH series,and the 30 Newton....and guys have been necking down and blowing out 404 Jeffrey brass for decades....to say nothing of such bread and butter stuff like the 257,270,and 7mm Weatherby which have been around since the 40's or so..

..O'Connor himself had a 275H&H; it along with the 276 Dubiel drove 175-180 gr bullets at over 2900 fps(sound familiar?)

Let's not forget the 460 G&A based on a 404 Jeffery case designed to give 2400 FPS witha 500 grain bullet and it was done in the 60's

The Howell line of Wildcat cartridges also based on the 404 case goes back a bit as well

Also Roy Weatherby's cartridges goes back I believe to the 50's

Yup....

jwp,

Actually, Roy Weatherby developed his first cartridges in the early 1940's. The very first was an "improved" version of the .220 Swift called the .220 Rocket, if I recall correctly.

But the first Weatherby round as we know them (double radius shoulder on a belted case) was the .270 Weatherby, which Roy developed in 1943. When he started the actual Weatherby company in 1945, the .257, .270, 7mm, .300 and .375 Weatherby Magnums were the line-up. They are old enough for Social Security now, but the .257 and .270 are still the fastest commercial cartridges in their bore diameters.

After thinking about all this a little more, I am actually not too surprised that so many younger shooters think that the last decade or two was when all "super-fast" rounds were developed. After all, not many shooters actually study the history of rifles, even just American hunting rifles. The vast majority of shooters probably don't even own a book of any sort on hunting or shooting.

Instead most get their information from their shooting buddies. A smaller number do read magazines and log onto the Internet, but many shooting magazines are only there to promote new stuff. There are exceptions, of course, but the largest-circulation shooting magazines usually treat older rifles (anything made before, say, synthetic stocks became common) as historical curiosities rather than useable firearms, implying that anybody who'd actually hunt with a pre-'64 Model 70 Winchester is doing so out of nostalgia rather than practicality.

The Internet, of course, is the source of instantaneous information, so tends to concentrate on right now. It also tends to be full of some of the most outrageous misinformation on the planet, due to the fact that most people are full of misinformation. But that is counteracted by lively dialogue and occasional bits of real, up-to-the-minute info. And of course books and magazines often contain misinformation.

But the fact remains that with modern electronic communications to supplement the good-old-boy BS leagues, most shooters are pretty much unaware of the evolution of shooting beyond, at most, 25 years ago. And even that would be stretching things for many....

JB: Good perspective....guess you are right...I'm guilty of assuming people have access to older sources of information...or even care....

..then again, if the Internet is ones' only source of info,well...."Houston,we have a problem".....