by John Jefferson
A good friend from whom I had a deer lease for eleven years emailed me asking if I owned a .250 Savage rifle. I replied I had owned two, and still have one with which our entire family loves to hunt. It’s put over a thousand pounds of venison and other game on our dinner table.
He hasn’t replied yet, but it’s not for sale.
Most shooters are not familiar with it, but a few are. It became out of date and production after the Big War when the .243 Winchester and other small caliber cartridges became popular.
I found one in a gun shop in Leander that had a scratched up-stock but was priced right. I meticulously re-finished the stock and scoped it. I’ve turned down several offers, each higher than the one before, and seen envy in many appreciative eyes.
My first 16-year-old grandson sighted it in before deer hunting with it. With the first shot, he turned and said, “Gosh, I expected more kick from it.” But low recoil isn’t its only attraction.
When I began deer hunting with my first one in the ‘sixties, several people told me it was a “varmint rifle” at best – not a deer rifle. But a hundred-grain, .25 caliber bullet moving at 2,700 hundred feet per second is a stopper! We’ve never had a deer escape, other than one a family member blew a leg off of at a range longer than estimated. The bullet dropped several inches at that distance.
I never fired a shot at a deer with my first .250-3000, but it captivated me just looking at It hanging on the wall. The fact that it was referred to as “the SAVAGE” may have sparked my imagination a little. It was a beautiful rifle with a deep blue finish and finely checkered stock with a sharp Schnabel forend. That forend is an old German design which I later shaped onto a custom-stocked .30-06. That style’s not popular anymore, but I love its uniqueness.
It also had a tooled leather boot on the butt of the stock, and came with a matching, hand-tooled leather saddle scabbard. I inherited it from my father and grandfather, the latter of whom was E.D. of Texas Game and Fish Commission and had ranched near Lipan Springs in Tom Green County. I have a photo of him on horseback, and in my mind, pictured that scabbard and rifle hanging from his saddle. Both men passed before I could ask about its history.
I began hunting with it but never saw a deer. When sighting it in, the bullet holes were about five inches apart at a hundred yards and unsatisfactory. Upon examination, a pitted bore was the problem. Matching its appearance with a new barrel would have changed its looks.
And it was a piece of art.
Defacing it would have been like painting lipstick on the Mona Lisa. I later sold it along with the leather scabbard to McBride’s Guns.
JJ