Been meaning to post about this 2018 Christmas gift from Mrs. GnR. It’s a minty 1957 (399XXX) Model 70 Standard, chambered in .270 Winchester. Getting harder to find these in all-original condition, as many have been modified in various subtle ways. This one is rumored to have fired less than 20 rounds. Acquired FTF, from a close friend (and member here).
Growing up when I did and reading all the outdoors books and magazines I could get my hands on, it was inevitable that I’d run into Jack O’Connor. I became a follower of his at an early age and came to believe everything Jack had to say about hunting, and the “Rifleman’s Rifle”, and how 62 grains of IMR4831 behind a 130-grain .277 bullet would drop a whitetail deer like Thor’s hammer …
I was a big Elmer Kieth fan too, and since he and Jack were often in conflict, I found myself in both camps, with no money, and needing at least twice as many firearms in twice as many calibers. My maternal Grandfather hunted in the mountains of WV for everything from vermin to whitetail deer. He was decidedly in Jack’s high-velocity camp and would hold forth on the virtues of speed while he instructed and then observed my reloading in his basement and then in ours. More recently (since the mid-90s), federal and sate politics had been nudging me deeper and deeper into the world of sporting rifles and higher (and higher) tech optics. All the while, this Rifle/caliber combination had remained at the top of my bucket list for the past 45 years or so, but it took Mrs. GNR to finally “pull the trigger”:
Growing up when I did and reading all the outdoors books and magazines I could get my hands on, it was inevitable that I’d run into Jack O’Connor. I became a follower of his at an early age and came to believe everything Jack had to say about hunting, and the “Rifleman’s Rifle”, and how 62 grains of IMR4831 behind a 130-grain .277 bullet would drop a whitetail deer like Thor’s hammer …
I was a big Elmer Kieth fan too, and since he and Jack were often in conflict, I found myself in both camps, with no money, and needing at least twice as many firearms in twice as many calibers. My maternal Grandfather hunted in the mountains of WV for everything from vermin to whitetail deer. He was decidedly in Jack’s high-velocity camp and would hold forth on the virtues of speed while he instructed and then observed my reloading in his basement and then in ours. More recently (since the mid-90s), federal and sate politics had been nudging me deeper and deeper into the world of sporting rifles and higher (and higher) tech optics. All the while, this Rifle/caliber combination had remained at the top of my bucket list for the past 45 years or so, but it took Mrs. GNR to finally “pull the trigger”:
