Having never owned a 99 before, I’ve never hunted with one until today...300sav.
I hiked into a hole to watch a saddle, hoping one of the bigger bucks that use the area on a regular basis would walk by..... didn’t happen. I did see several small bucks and a bunch of does throughout the day, but nothing I wanted to take home. It’s early yet, I’ll place my bets on the rut....


The 99 sure is made to carry comfortably with its narrow rounded action. Hope I can put it to work pretty soon.

Nice shootin iron. Good luck!

Very nice! Great pictures too, and with a Lightfoot mount. Sweet..

Great pics! Thanks for the show!!

You keeping hunting that ground and you'll be tagging a big blacktail!

Good luck! Hope you get a big one.

I think all my 99s are cursed. Everytime I hunt with one I don't even see a deer or bear. It I take my grandfather's M70 .270 I get what I'm after. Probably just the luck of the draw I suppose.

FB2,

I followed your successful bear hunt - that was an exciting read to say the least!
I need to buy a bear tag and spend some time on them. I’ve never really wanted to shoot/eat one and have walked away from several on this property in the past.... I need to give it a try.

There’s some dandy blacktails on this property for sure. The hard part is staying off the trigger!

I know that one well. You wait all year for hunting season, it's time to HUNT!

Nothing like harvesting a nice buck with a classic rifle. I've hunted with nothing but vintage rifles for the past 56 seasons.

stay the course.

You guys that can hunt deer with your 99's are lucky. I can only dream of doing so. I'd like nothing better than to hunt deer with either of my 250's or 300 Savage 99's. Iowa DNR reg's during firearm season (other than muzzleloaders) is slug shotgun or a number of limited straight wall rifle calibers, no bottleneck's. I have used my Marlin 94 Cowboy lever gun in 44 Magnum. Will drop them, but range is limited. That part is ok as most of my ambush sites I hunt in are 40 yards or less. Having three 99's that could drop a deer, but not being able to hunt with them reminds me of my high school years. Going to school dances and wanting to be with one or two of the prettiest girls there, but they always had boy friends. "Oh the pain of it"!!!!!! At around the 50th class reunion we were sitting around talking about the old days, dances, dating, this and that. One of the girls I really liked asked me why I never asked her out. Told her I was to bashful to ask and figured she won't.. She advised she would have gone out with me. Advised her "Now ya tell me"!!!!!!!!!!

I never thought about it. I shot my first deer with my Dad's Rem pump 30-06. He won it in a raffle in 68. Then I bought a 50's Marlin 336 in 35 Rem, used it for about 20 years, and it's been Savages ever since, and the newest of them is a 1950R in 250 and the oldest is a 1912 HP.

Same here, only thing I've popped with a 99 is coyote, since I didn't pick up my first one until well after I'd moved away from a rifle deer state. The icing on the cake is I live less than 2 miles from Indiana, where any of them would be deer legal on private property. My sister in-laws's family own several hundred acres across the state line about 4 miles from my house, but they don't let anyone hunt it. 😕

Good luck on your hunt Blacktail99. I think you'll be very satisfied with the results when you do drop the hammer with the old 300, the rifle's a beauty.

Savage940C- check your Iowa regs this year. True, you won't find the .250 or .300 legal but you could use a .358 or .375 if you could find one or the other. May be an opportunity for American ingenuity!

Blacktail99.....? I’ve been rebadged! Lol...... At least it’s a cool handle !

the first hunt i had with a 99 was when i was about 1972, i killed a buck with my 300 over the decades i have had many. they are a great gun. and that is a nice 99 you have,,,,,,,,,,

Nice rifle, Mr Fireball2 got me hooked on 99’s, sold me a nice 308 cheap. It’s been multiplying since then. They are really fun to hunt with, accurate beyond my expectations. I wish I had discovered them earlier in my life.

Good luck, get a big un!!

Oops... we were talking about 99s...slip of the keys 😬

Not true any longer. The DNR made changes this summer to include many bottle-neck cartridges from .35 cal cartridges to .50 caliber cartridges now with a minimum of 500 ft-lbs of energy, including the 35 Rem, the 358 Win, 35 Whelen and up. However, illogically, your 250 and 300 are still not legal along with a whole passel of traditional deer cartridges.

https://www.iowadnr.gov/Portals/idnr/uploads/Hunting/huntingregs.pdf

See page 38

Heard the DNR is contemplating adding new calibers, hadn't seen the final results. Thanks for posting. Wish Savage had issued a 99 in 35 Rem back in the day, esp in the older Pre War R's and such.

Randy, 99guy, has one. Talk to Chris, he can build you one.

You could always give JES a call and that 300 could be your new 358!

300 magazine is too short for 358, unless you use stumpy pistol bullets.

I was fiddling around with rechambering experiments in the 300 I eventually just sent to get rebarreled in 250. I did come up with one I called 358 Short, that fed ok, but because of the shoulder differences and the rotor, only 2 or 3 rounds would go into the magazine and feed reliably. It was just a 358 Win with the shoulder pushed back a bit, then the neck shortened down considerably. COAL came in between 2.580 and 2.595 with 200-225gr bullets.

Case capacity was a bit more than a 35 Remington, but considerably less than standard 358. Basically it would have been +P 35 Rem.

Whether a 99 magazine will handle 358/308/243 length cartridges is only dependent on the serial number, not on the current cartridge. If the rifle serial number is 900,000 or higher or starts with a letter, it will handle the longer cartridgers.

Under 900,000 and it won't handle a 358/308/243 length cartridge.

So you can have a 1965 99E in 300 Savage that could be converted to 358 Win.. but you could never convert a 1945 99 in 300 Savage to it.

Good point. I was referring to the older, shorter action that limits you to 2.600"

Blacktail- we are waiting on that .300 to bark

I certainly can agree with the fact that my '57 99F .300 Savage is an ideal one handed walking around rifle, but alas that isn't the way that most of us hunt these days. I wish that I was young and spry enough with a big enough woods to hunt to go tracking like a Benoit brother, but I'm a stand hunter these days and my 99 has been relegated into a #2 position behind a bolt action. There are only two things that I've had an issue with: #1 the lever safety seems counter intuitive forward to safe and back to fire. And #2 that steel lever gets cold holding it in a November deer stand. Much as all the forum fellows here like those 99's, what really convinced me that I needed one was that picture in Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine of the guy in a black cowboy hat with a Savage 99 and a gargantuan big buck on his flat bed truck.

If you powdercoat metal it doesn't feel cold in winter. True story.