Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: jayman448 on October 16, 2015, 11:08:41 pm
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My gramps recently gave me his rifles as he no longer hunts and i am just getting started. One gun is a model 94 winchester 30-30 with an octogon barrel. I decided to look up the cerial number and the darn thing is over one hundred years old. Shoots good too. Not all shot out. I love it. Im proud of it. But when in conversation i mention that ill be hunting with my grandpas old 30-30 and i actually got laughed at. What the hell is wrong with a 30-30? I got quite upset. Sure its not for huge yardages but itll do the bloody job!
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nothing wrong with it at all, unless you are hunting grizzly bear?
were the guys doing the laughing, the same guys that shoot bows with training wheels?
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Nothing wrong with it at all. I would proudly carry it. I was recently given a Win 94 32 special built in 1958 and am excited carry it this year. Prolly more deer killed in the past with the Win lever than any other.
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Absolutely nothing wrong with the 30-30! It has killed more game in north America, than any other rifle! I believe it was the first smokeless rifle cartridge. It can take any north American game animal, including a Griz, with proper round, 170 grain, and proper shot placement. Not my first choice, but it will kill one. But it is a great hunting round, and out to around 250 yd.s it is very effective! Use it with pride! It is a great rifle round, especially for brush. I am currently looking to find a good used 30-30 rifle, for brush hunting. I have a Marlin 45-70, but would still like to get a 30-30.
Wayne
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Used to be called the .30 Winchester Center Fire, is that stamped on the barrel? Marlin refused to put the competition's name on their guns and changed the caliber name to 30-30 for the 30 grains of powder in the standard cartidge. It's more than enough for the biggest deer they make in Canada, while maybe a little underpowered for a moose. Dat moose soaks up a lotta killin'!
I have been down at my local Cabela's looking to trade the Remmy 700 in .243 for a lever action .30 cal. Preferably something like you lucked into. At the distances I hunt, there is no need for "holdover". An iron sighted "dirty-dirty" is just the ticket!
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Its stamped 30 W.C.F
Steel nickle barrel especially for smokeless powder
Its a little worse for wear but i think its worth it (to me any ways) to try and get it properly restored one day. The stock is chipped off here and there and some one put a terrible home varnish job on the stock but i think its a really cool gun. But its my gramps gun, i could be biased
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I know very little about guns & riffles (bein' in the UK). But I do know know that guys that laugh usually know less than me and only understand money and the latest fashion.
All the gear and no idea.
To own a gun handed down like that is a privilege.
My brother restores old shotguns and the very old ones are greatly prized, he owns one that was made when Billy the Kid was alive!
Del
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I was at my friend's gun shop when a young fellow walked in with two 1873 Winchesters, one was pristine the other in great shape but the blueing was worn off, they had been his grandfathers guns. If I remember right they were an off caliber, not 30-30s. The kid wanted the rough one blued, and possible a refinish job on the pristine ones stock. He thought they were common rifles like a 94 Winchester. My gunsmith friend put them in his gun safe and wrote the kid a work order.
We talked later, I told him the kid didn't know what he had and doing any work on the guns would severely drop their value. The best of the two was probably worth over 10K, redoing the stock would have cut that value by at least 2/3rds. I never heard how this tale ended but have always wondered.
My gunsmith friend did have contact with a web of collectors who he alerted every time a special gun showed up in his shop. Fortunately he wasn't the kind of person who would take advantage of the kid and buy his guns for peanuts to resell them.
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I had a Marlin 30-30(not a Winchester) I hunted with for quite a few years. My longest kill shot ever was at a running deer I dropped and when I paced it of it was 228 paces from my stand tree. The 30-30 is a very effective hunting weapon for North America.
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I was in Colorado elk hunting years ago, everyone is useing .300 win mags and .338 one guy was useing a ruger no. 1 single shot .243, killed over ten elk with it at that point shot placement is key said all he took was standing head shots, don't take any abuse over your gramps 30 30 it will do the job
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A lot of Deer have been killed with the 30-30 but what some people may not know is that up here a lot of Moose have been killed by them as well. I know one guy killed a Bull Moose with one with a shot of more than 100 yards.
The 32 Special on the other hand was a bit of a dinosaur and it had problems the rifling
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30-30 is a fine weapon.. Lotsa critters fell victim to that cartridge..
Thanks Leroy
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My best 30-30 shot--
A chuck at 175 yds leaning on a fence post.
He still had the grass in his mouth. Didn't twitch.
Great bush guns.
Zuma
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In the 50's and 60's when I was growing up the 30-30 was pretty much the go-to rifle around here. The thousands of deer they got are still dead.
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I occasionally will hunt with the Winchester 30-30 my grandpa bought. He got it from a bear guide in Washington. The guide used it for years and my grandpa was told it's probably killed close to 100 bears.
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I went bear hunting back in the 80's with a co-worker (an ex-cowboy from Colorado), whos' only rifle was a model 94 "30-30" handed down to him from his grandpa. He staunchly maintained that "I've killed my elk every year, and a wagon load of deer with this rifle; and a guy doesn't need anything bigger". He was getting laughed at by the other guys on the job, and always took up the good fight with anyone that cared to argue the point.
Every Friday for a month, he cajoled one of us to help him bag this big blackie that he spotted up on the same mountain every time he went in to find it. He had wore out more than a couple of hunting partners with unsuccessful day long stalks. After hiking up 4 or 5 miles with him to an alpine lake, the bear was spotted yet again near the top of the same mountain. This only sighting was a brief glimpse through a parted cloud, in a rainstorm with foggy cheap binoculars. It was a long way up, but was indeed a big bear, and when I expressed some concerns about whether or not it was a blackie, I was assured that the bruin has been well identified in the past under much better conditions, and at any rate, we had come this far, so there was no turning back. Randy was obsessed like Ahab, and could literally run up mountains all day long without stopping. We spent the day busting brush to get around to the back side of the mountain, and then climbed over it from back to front, hoping we could come down on the bear from above. But at the end of the stalk, no bear was found.
As the rain turned into the first winter blizzard on the drive home, I listened to sad tales of how the bear always seemed to disappear into the mist and "that ravine" which was a narrow vertical walled canyon, choked with alders, that dropped straight down to the lake where we had began our stalk. A few weeks later and the job was over, we parted ways.
I did not see Randy until the following spring.He asked me if any of the guys from work had said anything about his new rifle. He chatted about his new 375 H&H bolt gun and plans for the upcoming fishing season. I asked him if he saw that bear again. He sheepishly conceded that he had gone back recently to look, and decided to just climb straight up the ravine to where the bear usually was spotted. It seemed easy enough he said , as the ravine was still filled with deep snow that covered the alders, and there was a good crust that kept him on top of the snowpack. He hiked up about two thousand feet, until he came around a large boulder, and surprised a brown bear sow at about 20 feet, she was reclining at the den entrance with two newborn cubs on her chest, sucking and soaking in the afternoon sunshine. He said that the cubs went flying as the bear jumped up at him. He did a 180 and started down the mountain, fast.
Well you are still here, so i see you managed to get back safe. "How close did she get" I asked? Damifino, he said, never looked back until I got to the truck, but I liked to crap my pants every time I punched through the crust and went up to my crotch in that sun warmed snow.
I thought that was a hell of an adventure, and asked if he finally retired that old 30-30, after all, he made it out in one piece, what was the problem, why did he need a new gun? Randy looked around to make sure no one else could hear. Hell no he said, but I need something in my hand when I went back to the boulder to get grandpas 30-30, I couldn't leave it there, it's been in the family since it was new.
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Great story :)
Del
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Awesome! Hunt with it proudly.
---Ford---
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Great story. I have 2 30/30 Winchesters, don't hunt with them anymore but for no other reason than I just don't gun hunt anymore. If I did that is what I would use. Love them guns.
Pappy.
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Its stamped 30 W.C.F
Steel nickle barrel especially for smokeless powder
Its a little worse for wear but i think its worth it (to me any ways) to try and get it properly restored one day. The stock is chipped off here and there and some one put a terrible home varnish job on the stock but i think its a really cool gun. But its my gramps gun, i could be biased
The beauty of that gun is in that it has seen the worst of the worst. If it were all gussied up you may be upset if you ding the stock, or scratch the barrel. I would rather have an old well loved gun any day.
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Winchester made a million 30 30 lever actions. & John Wayne wore half of them out killing bad guys. If it's good enough for John Wayne it's good enough for me. ;).
Nothing wrong with that round.