Senior Correspondent John Dunn charts a well-travelled heirloom
Back in the mid-to-late-1960s when gun laws were far more relaxed and you didn’t need a Permit to Acquire to buy a firearm, my father came home one night with a break-action Model 24 Savage over-and-under combination gun in .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (.22 WMRF) and the long-cased 3″ .410 Magnum shotshell. For a young rabbit hunter like me, starting out with a Lithgow Model 1 in .22RF and an old Harrington and Richardson Model 1903 12-gauge, the Savage was like Christmas come early. In retrospect, it was probably even better.
At the time the .22WMRF was still a relatively new cartridge, having been introduced in 1959.That was enough to ring my bells, quite apart from the fact I’d never seen a combination gun before. Sadly it wasn’t for me, as the Old Man was an active bunny hunter himself in those days. He reckoned the Savage would be ideal for rabbits around the hills of the Illawarra (NSW) coastal-fringe country where we lived at the time. The rifle barrel had more reach than a .22LR and you never knew when the shotgun barrel would come in handy.
In practical terms that proved to be more or less correct, though he found the factory-fitted sights were too coarse to make the most of the rifle barrel’s potential accuracy. To remedy that shortfall, he fitted a low-power 2½x Karl Kahles scope with a post reticule in Hillver mounts, which provided a clear aiming point every time and consequently allowed the WMRF cartridge to shoot to its full potential at longer ranges.
He then inlet a red cedar comb into the buttstock to bring his shooting eye into alignment with the scope and never looked back from there. Though it couldn’t deliver benchrest accuracy, the Savage would always shoot Minute of Rabbit further out than an a .22LR could and that was all he ever asked of it.
For the next couple of decades the Savage was the only firearm the old bloke used on a regular basis. He shot it well and never spoke of it ever letting him down, though I doubt he’d have said anything even if it had. It became a fixture in his gun cabinet, lovingly cared for and jealously guarded. Sometimes he’d let me use that Savage provided it went back to him cleaned and oiled, something he always checked.
After I left home in 1972 I subsequently owned and used several other Savage combos of my own, as well as a .222/12-gauge combination made by Brno. I liked them all and, looking back, there’s no doubt they were stepping stones to the single-shot rifles which have dominated my hunting ever since.
As he aged, the Old Man’s interest in firearms and hunting began to wane, largely due to mobility issues. He took to collecting antiques and tinkering with clocks and while he eventually sold his collection of muzzleloaders and other firearms, the Savage remained. That was probably because it reminded him of how good things had been rather than having any real need for it any more. Several times I offered to buy it but he wouldn’t bite, and when I told him if he didn’t leave it to me in his will I wouldn’t speak to him again, he just smiled and carried on.
By the early 1990s I was supplying him with rabbits and venison whenever we went to the coast to visit. As we packed to come home from one such trip, he quietly presented me with the Savage in its suede leather case and his instructions were quite specific. He expected me to look after it, use it as I needed to then pass it on to my son Paul when the time came. Under no circumstances was I to sell it. We shook hands on the agreement and the Savage came home to live in my gun safe.
I never used it as much as the Old Man had but trusted its’ reliability. I shot a lot of rabbits with it and for a long time it was my go-to choice for feral cats and fox whistling. The rifle barrel coped with longer shots and the shotgun was perfect for stopping the odd excited animal which wanted to run right over the top of me.
More often than not it was stashed behind the seat of my work vehicle, where it was easy to reach if I’d to put down injured wildlife. It also saw use on wild dogs and pigs trapped during feral animal control programmes. The extra grunt of the WMRF made humane kills easier without the need to approach animals too closely and increase their stress levels un-necessarily.
It also shot its share of meat goats and, once only, a fallow doe that was struggling with a broken leg. The last larger animal I took with the rifle was a footrot-infected goat, something I recounted in my Jumbunna column of the October 2010 edition of this magazine. Since we moved into town to live, the Savage has languished in the gun safe, unused and superannuated like me. Through a process of natural progression I’ve become the Old Man of the family, and while I’m comfortable with that I didn’t think it would arrive so soon.
I’ve slowed down and a lot of my former interests are no longer as important as they used to be. Knifemaking has all but replaced firearms as my primary distraction and less than a handful of single-shot rifles remain in my gun cabinet. Until recently, so did the Savage.
About 18 months ago I decided it was time to pass it on in accordance with the Old Man’s wishes, though unfortunately my son didn’t really want it. He likes to fish but hasn’t hunted since he was a teenager. He doesn’t have a shooter’s licence these days and his interest in firearms hovers around zero. Much the same applies to my grandsons whose world is radically different to the one I grew up in. They have interests far removed from mine and while I understand and encourage their choices, it saddens me to think they’ll never know or experience so many of the things I have as a hunter.
Nevertheless, the question remained about what I should do with the Savage. I couldn’t sell it as I’d promised I wouldn’t, yet the time to pass it on had arrived. Then I found a solution. My long-time hunting mate Graham Fifield introduced all his grandsons to hunting and fishing, one of whom is particularly committed. At 13 years old, Noah has been hunting with his Pop almost since he could walk. When it comes to putting meat or fish on the table, he has a depth of experience and competence a lot of adults would envy. Graham has taught him well.
When I thought about it, I reckoned he was the sort of young bloke the Old Man would’ve liked the Savage to go to, especially when his grandfather and I go back as far as we do. I talked to Graham about my idea and he thought it was a good one and, on speaking to Noah’s mum Larissa, she agreed.
As I write this, the paperwork to transfer the Savage to Larissa’s licence is in train. I expect the young bloke will put it to good use just as I did and I hope, somewhere down the track, he’ll be able to pass it on to someone else who’ll appreciate it as much as I have. The Old Man would approve, I’m sure.