Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters No Ordinary Rifle, by Harry Selby

Has any one read the article "No Ordinary Rifle" by Harry Selby in the March, 2012 issue of the American Rifleman? With all of the Remington 700 bashing that goes on, some may find it interesting. The rifle is a Remington 721 in 30-06 Springfield. The scope it wore was a Redfield 4X. The ammo was Winchester 180gr Silvertips. This equipment was used on all manner of game to include lion and leopard. No high velocity magnum, no monometal bullets with plastic tips, no high power variable scope with a huge objective and turrets or dots. How did Mr. Selby ever manage?

He's a hunter. No doubt.

That and the good old .30-06 is up to most hunting tasks.

Smart move on his part. Silvertips aren't bad to "way overpenetrate".

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/harry-selby-remington-721-rifle/


A grand old rifle and a grand story told by a grand old hunter.

Great read!

+1, thanks for the link.

It was a great read. Thanks for the link.

Here is the picture in your link.

Is that a 721?

I don't recall me saying or the article saying that it was a 721.

It looks like Harry Selby holding one of his .22 rifles.

What is your point?

I read it and liked the article. Practical guy with a practical, working rifle that served him well.

DF

No that is not a 721, that is a picture of him holding a .22 rifle that he was given as a child. That photo is explained in an article he did on Bell's 7x57.

Thank you for the link as well.
A great story of an American rifle on safari, my 722 longs for such action!

I read the article just yesterday. Just confirms my decision to take my mauser 30-06 to South Africa in June. From Eland on down, should take care of it all.
Les

99,

Do you honestly think that little rifle could possibly be a Remington 721 or are you just trying to bait HHB?

Not sure of your motives here. You're sounding more and more like a troll. Hard to believe you're dumb enough to really think that .22 is a high powered rifle. The only alternative to being off the charts dumb, is being a troll. Neither is good.

DF

DF: Took you awhile to figure that out...but yeah...hes a troll...

I try to give posters the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, even a blind hog finds an acorn.

It really pizzes me off when a poster tries to talk down to a forum member that I happen to like, by arrogantly acting dumb, which is an ostentatious display of bad manners. Without low class, some of these guys would have no class at all...

DF

One thing I noticed was the successful use of the old 180 grain silvertip, a bullet that is often critisized here. I have found them very effective and still have a few boxes. I took them on a cow elk hunt this year (because I couldn't get the noslers to shoot well) and felt I would have have to have a perfect shot with them. Didn't fire a shot, all I saw were five bulls on a cow hunt. Last time I used them was 1978 on a moose, shot three, recovered two on off side hide, third went through. Don't know why I began to doubt them but I switched to noslers which were also very effective.

I have an old yellow Super X box of 338 Win Mag Silvertips....might have to shoot something with one myself!

I agree, a 30-06 with a 180gr bullet at 2700fps just plain works.

rbell,

One thing I've noticed about Silvertips is that the construction varied considerably over the years. The older models, made back when the ST was the "premium" bullet of Winchester ammo, seemed to have heavier jackets than later bullets.

One of the few true failures of any expanding bullet I've experienced was a 150-grain Silvertip from a .30-06, shot into the shoulder of a forkhorn mule deer buck at abouut 200 yards. The bullet broke the shoulder but didn't penetrate the rib cage, and I had to chase the buck down and shoot him again. The jacket of the first bullet was found lying against the ribs.

That was in the late 1980's, about the time I started sectioning bullets to see what the jackets looked like. The jacket of most Silvertips was quite thin by then, and got even worse during the short era of the so-called Silvertip Supreme, Winchester's so-called premoum bullet they introduced before the Failsafe. The Silvertip Supreme was pretty much a varmint bullet.

I dunno if the 180 Silvertips used by Selby are the same as those made today. If for some reason I might use them on game bigger than deer, I'd section one to see what it looked like first.