ELUSIVE PERFECTION: THE CUSTOM RIFLE
On the surface, it would seem that the answer to getting your perfect big-game rifle is to find a good custom gunmaker and have one made to your exact specifications, tastes, and idiosyncrasies. This has been the answer for many hunters since as far back as 1850. In fact, at various times, in various countries, custom riflemaking has been the only answer.
In his 1952 book The Big-Game Rifle, Jack O’Connor began his chapter on having a custom rifle made with the words “Getting a custom rifle made up is beset with many pitfalls which the beginner can avoid if he exercises care and takes advice, but most of us learn the hard way.” In the sixty-five years since that was written, this has become ever more true. The pitfalls are even greater today than they were then. And, most of us still learn the hard way—if we learn at all.
The modern era of custom riflemaking in the United States began with the first sporterizing of the Springfield military rifle, shortly after it was adopted in its final form in 1906. The business really took off in the 1920s. That was almost a century ago, and since then there have been entire books devoted to the subject, as well as innumerable magazine articles. The standards of craftsmanship have risen, as have the costs, but if you compare today’s prices with those of the 1950s, taking into account the effects of inflation, there is not a vast difference between prices then and prices now.
One great truth stands out today, just as O’Connor wrote in 1952: “Hand labor is expensive, and no one ever became rich making custom rifles.” No fine gunmaker is ever fully compensated for his time, effort, and skill—not when compared to a trained man, paid by the hour, in a union shop, with vacations and overtime.
Our subject here is not just custom rifles, but custom big-game rifles, and there is a huge difference between the two. Some custom rifles today are not intended for hunting or, in some cases, even to be shot at a target. It’s not unusual to hear numbers like $50,000 as a base price for a bolt-action rifle, or $100,000. At one point, a few years ago, I heard of an American riflemaker who was planning to build the ultimate bolt-action big-game rifle, perfect in every way, a true “best” gun, and the asking price was to be, if memory serves, $180,000. This, you should know, would not have been a rifle built to your specifications, but to his. Not as a hunting rifle for you, but as a demonstration of how he thought a rifle should be built, incorporating his ideas of what constituted a proper stock, carved from an ideal piece of walnut, and his ideas of what sights and trigger a hunting rifle required. You, the lucky purchaser, might have found that the rifle suited you or not. It might have fit you, it might have the right weight and balance, the trigger might feel good. Or, all of the above might not. In fact, probably not.
Undoubtedly, the rifle would have sported an indescribable piece of walnut, cut from a five-hundred-year-old tree on a north-facing slope in the potassium-rich soil of the south Caucasus, or some such blather. It would have had an action milled from a grade of steel alloy costing three times the usual, and requiring machining costing five times the usual, and even requiring the making of special engraving tools by the last remaining specialty tool maker in a remote village in the Swiss Alps. The checkering would have been exquisitely cut at thirty-two lines per inch, with the diamonds at the precise angle which, after lengthy analysis, had been found to be the optimum for gripping the rifle while wearing mink-lined gloves. We could go on, becoming ever more fanciful, but you get the idea. And, in the end, the one thing I believe I can say for certain is that it would not have been a very good hunting rifle. If it had turned out to be a good hunting rifle, it would be pure unadulterated luck.
When Jack O’Connor was writing about custom rifles, and igniting every boy’s dreams in the 1960s, legendary names in stockmaking were Alvin Linden, Tom Shelhamer, and Adolph Minar. Barrelmakers were Bill Sukalle and John Buhmiller. The metal men were A. O. Niedner and Emil Koshollek. Many of these greats were dead even then, but up-and-comers strove to be mentioned in the same breath. As custom gunmaking evolved through the 1980s, with the establishment of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild (ACGG), and its “peer review” panels to determine who qualified for membership and who did not, the panoramic view of the forest was discarded in favor of microscopic examination of the trees, branch by branch.
Let’s face it: Checkering is put on a rifle to help the shooter grip it solidly. Polished walnut is slick, so it’s checkered. When you think of it, extensive checkering is not required. Just in two spots, really: the grip, and a small part of the forend. For a good grip and durability, you need something between eighteen and twenty-six lines per inch. Anything greater, like thirty-two lines per inch, does not provide much of a grip and gets very smooth, very quickly, with any real use.
This checkering on a rifle made by Al Biesen is superbly done, as is the knurling on the custom-made steel grip cap. Biesen was an all-around man—equally good at working with wood and metal.
Checkering is not an art, it’s a craft. Classical music, sculpture, and landscape painting are art forms, and have no useful purpose except to be art. Checkering, on the other hand, is an industrial process applied to a tool in order to make it a more useful tool. The same is true of engraving. On a rifle, it serves the purpose of breaking up reflective surfaces, of retaining oil to prevent rust, and in some applications to make a slippery surface less so. Although it is not often admitted, engraving can also be employed to cover up mistakes or poor workmanship, which is not exactly noble. All of this could be accomplished just as effectively, and much more easily, with random file cuts or sandblasting. Admittedly, professional engraving approaches an art form more than checkering does, but at its roots it’s still an industrial craft. Blueing also serves a purpose, as does stock finishing. Both have protective value, and while there is good blueing and stock finishing as well as bad, they are not art forms in and of themselves.
Two superb custom rifles that were built for hunting. Top is a new (2009) .505 Gibbs. The magnum Mauser action was made by Fred Wells. Bottom is a John Rigby & Co. rising-bite double, in .450/.400 (3 1/4"). Every feature on this double rifle—including the engraving—serves the purpose of making it a perfect hunting rifle.
To clarify, as mentioned earlier, beauty in a rifle does serve a valuable purpose: A rifle that looks good, and looks expensive, is more likely to be well cared for than one that resembles a grimy old car jack. That’s why more high-quality rifles have survived through the ages in fine condition than utilitarian ones sold at the corner hardware store. Too much beauty, however, can cause its owner to be more worried about scratching his rifle than he is about creeping up on that big six-pointer. The rifle becomes, through excessive adornment, unsuitable for hunting. One definition of decadence is an object so refined that it cannot be used for its original purpose, which is why many of the so-called custom hunting rifles, turned out at great expense by the Guild-certified artistes, are decadent.
This decadence evinces itself in many forms. For example, it has been well known for a century that the best shape for a forend, in cross-section, is either round, slightly pear-shaped, or a slim (!) horizontal oval. Any of these allow the fingers to wrap around and get a solid grip without having to white-knuckle the checkering. On most custom rifles today, however, the forends are vertical ovals with flat sides. Why? Because they are easier to checker, on the one hand, and allow the checkerer a proper “canvas” to really show what he can do. Personally, I don’t much care what heights the checkerer is capable of; I do care what the rifle can do, and how well I can use it.
Since the vast majority of so-called custom stocks today are turned out to standard patterns on pantograph machines, the vertical oval has become the most common forend shape. Trying to get anything different is like pulling teeth. Since the average “stockmaker” starts with one of these pre-shaped stocks, and has no real idea how to carve a stock from a blank, you are presenting him with a major problem.
A beautifully crafted hunting rifle by Al Biesen, exhibiting most of the fine touches found on a top-notch custom rifle. Biesen refashioned an FN Mauser Deluxe action, reshaped the bolt, made a new shroud with a three-position wing safety, jeweled the bolt, knurled the bolt handle, and fitted the floorplate with an Oberndorf-style release. He carved the stock from a blank and applied his own style of inletted fleur-de-lis checkering.
This leads into the second trend which has been evident in custom gunmaking for several decades, and that is increasing specialization. These days, some stockmakers don’t checker; a checkering specialist does no inletting; a metal man won’t touch wood; the engraver leads his own life, off in the woods somewhere; somebody else is brought in to put custom scope mounts on the rifle. In the end, the rifle is the product of a committee, and like most committee products, it turns out to be a camel when you hoped you were buying a racehorse.
There have always been specialists, of course. Alvin Linden did very little metal work, but he collaborated with his neighbor, Emil Koshollek, who was a superb metal man, and the two worked so closely for so long they might as well have been one person. Al Biesen, the “genius of Spokane” who became Jack O’Connor’s favorite gunmaker, was an all-around man. He was equally good on wood or metal, excellent at stock shaping, inletting, and checkering, but could also overhaul an action and even make a completely new bolt shroud with a three-position safety. Over and above all of that, however, Al Biesen was a hunter and shooter who knew what a good hunting rifle should feel like. Since he was the man making the entire rifle, he knew where he could shave extra ounces, or where they should be left on in order to make the balance right. Feeling the rifle develop in his hands as he completed it, it could be made absolutely perfect.
Some custom-rifle buyers feel they can deliver minute specifications in order to get exactly what they want: “Well, I want a maximum weight of 7.25 pounds with the scope, so the stock cannot be more than such and such a weight, and the barreled action can’t weigh more than whatever, which leaves 1.4 pounds for the scope and mounts.” The craftsmen in question may in fact deliver exactly what you ordered, but if it balances properly, it will be wholly by chance.
As a magazine shooting editor, I have received letters, usually from teenagers, outlining the rifle they intend to order someday. They are always very specific. The barrel will be 23.25 inches long, with a rifling twist of one in 9.75 inches; there will be .425 inches of freebore, and so on. One of the lessons I have learned in having a custom rifle made is that if you are too exact, and shackle your gunmaker to a list of specifications, chances are you will get exactly what you asked for, but it will not be what you wanted.
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When Jack O’Connor was writing about custom gunmaking in the 1950s, there were relatively few really fine riflemakers around. There were two or three barrelmakers, for example; today there are at least a dozen, maybe more. It’s hard to keep count, and even harder to remember who is on top today and who is yesterday’s man. When O’Connor was writing, there were four main actions to choose from in building a custom rifle: the Mauser 98, Springfield 1903A3, Enfield P-17, and the Winchester Model 70. Today, with CNC machinery, there are many more actions, but none that I have seen are any better than three of those four. (I am not a fan of the Springfield, and it has all but disappeared anyway.)
New actions to come along include the Weatherby Mark V, and that company builds custom rifles in its own shop. Various small companies tried to design specialty actions that would improve on what was available, usually by going to three locking lugs and a low bolt lift, or making them magnum-sized to accommodate huge cartridges. A few names spring to mind, such as Wichita and Champlin. None of them went anywhere, and custom rifles built on them are now little more than curiosities. They certainly don’t command high prices in the used-gun market.
One of the most common alterations to a Mauser 98 is the addition of a replacement bolt shroud with a Model 70-style three-position wing safety. Several fine metalsmiths specialized in producing such shrouds for sale to the trade. This is a Granite Mountain action.
The all-time classic is the Mauser 98, and this includes a plethora of variations: Military K98s made in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and Poland; commercial actions made at Oberndorf (Germany), FN (Belgium), Santa Barbara (Spain), and Zastava (Yugoslavia, now Serbia); and American versions like the Granite Mountain and its commercial German equivalent, Prechtl. At this writing, the Mauser company itself has reentered the lists, with both a magnum and standard Model 98 action, modern in every way but authentically Mauser. These actions come in so many shapes, sizes, and levels of quality that entire books could be written on this subject alone. In a way, however, condition hardly matters if the action was well-made in the first place, as the majority were. In the hands of a good custom gunsmith, even a rough military 98 can be turned into a masterpiece if the quality is basically good.
The author in Botswana with a red lechwe. The rifle is a Dakota Arms .30-06, built on the Dakota 76 action. American classic stocks do not come much more classic than this.
The only action that really competes with the Mauser 98 is the pre-’64 Model 70, but these have now become scarce, and pristine specimens are high-priced collectors’ items in their own right. In the 1970s, as the cheap pre-’64 market dried up, a couple of custom gunmakers got together and designed an updated version of the pre-’64 called the Dakota 76. It was the brainchild of Don Allen, Pete Grisel, and Ken Howell, and Allen founded Dakota Arms to build entire custom rifles on it. As well, for many years, the action alone was sold, in the white, by Brownells. It was expensive even then, running around $1,500 when you could buy a Zastava Mark X Mauser (admittedly of inconsistent quality) for a quarter of that price. Around that time, you could still buy a pre-’64 for less than $500; military Mausers (depending on the vintage and sub-model) were even cheaper.
Don Allen’s Dakota rifles were beautifully made. He was one of the masters of the “American classic” stock style, which eschewed Monte Carlo combs and extravagant features. American classic was the style developed by Alvin Linden and Griffin & Howe, and which became de rigueur on custom rifles in the 1990s. In many ways, however, Dakota Arms found itself facing the same problems that sank earlier companies like Niedner and Hoffman. This is exactly the problem Jack O’Connor laid out: Skilled hand labor is expensive, and no custom riflemaker is ever truly compensated for the work he puts in. Customers want the best, but insist that “the best” is overpriced. This is bad enough to deal with when you are working on your own, and you just hope your wife keeps her good job with its steady income and health benefits. For the owner-manager of a company, with a payroll to meet, it is something else again.
In California, Weatherby has encountered some of the same problems. The much older Pachmayr company survived by gradually moving out of custom guns into manufacturing scope mounts, recoil pads, and other accoutrements that riflemakers need. These can be mass produced and sold at a profit, with the Pachmayr name lending them cachet.
There are fads and fashions in rifles, and several small companies arose to fill the demand for specific types of rifles. A couple spring to mind.
As accuracy became more and more of a critical issue with custom rifles, Kenny Jarrett of South Carolina, a top-notch benchrest competitor, began building his “beanfield” rifles, intended for shooting whitetails across the soybean fields of the south out to four or five hundred yards. Initially, they were built on modified Remington 700 actions, which were noted for being inherently accurate, with Jarrett making his own barrels. For years, a Jarrett rifle was the last word in accuracy.
Another trend of the ’90s was toward ever-lighter rifles, eventually reaching the ridiculous. Still, there is a lot to be said for a light rifle for the mountains, or for hunting whitetails in the woods, and Melvin Forbes set up his Ultra Light Arms company in West Virginia to make “ultra-light” rifles. Forbes modified the basic Remington 700 action to shave weight, along with developing his own line of composite stocks designed for light weight combined with strength. He eventually sold the company to Colt, then went back into business for himself several years later, producing essentially the same rifles.
Eventually, it seemed as if every barrel company wanted to be a rifle company, as did every maker of actions. Many of the allegedly accurate rifles that were offered in competition with Jarrett’s proven product were based on Remington 700s. I say allegedly because claims are easy to make but hard to prove. For some reason, they are much easier to disprove. Funny thing, that. Having shot a good number of these rifles over the years, I find my dominant memory is that the vast majority were surprisingly unmemorable.
Kenny Jarrett originated the guarantee of rifles that would shoot half-inch groups, and his rifles lived up to that. The condition was that Jarrett would do the load development for whatever cartridge you chose. When he arrived at the half-inch goal, he would provide you with loaded ammunition. The guarantee applied only to his rifle, his load, his ammunition—which is fair enough. By the late ’90s, Remington 700 actions were becoming rather ramshackle, so Kenny invested in a massive CNC machine, designed his own action, and began making them himself. He also branched out from beanfield rifles to dangerous-game rifles, stalking rifles, and rifles with wooden stocks rather than his usual composites.
Dakota, Jarrett, and Ultra Light typify the more expensive specialty rifles that came onto the market through the 1980s and ’90s, taking the place of the traditional custom rifle as those became more and more expensive—and also as they moved away from being hunting rifles, toward being merely show pieces. All three of these companies produced some fine rifles for their intended purposes. But all, I found, also had some shortcomings. In the case of the Jarrett and Ultra Light rifles, I have never been an admirer of composite (i.e., fiberglass, kevlar, carbon fiber, and so on) and am becoming less so as I get older. This is not merely a matter of taste or aesthetics. Composite stocks are certainly stable, and not prone to absorbing water, or drying out and warping. They are also strong, and don’t crack or break. Right there, however, you have exhausted their virtues. They were right for Kenny Jarrett, in seeking maximum accuracy, and also for Melvin Forbes, in reducing weight to the absolute minimum. But this is the reason you will find neither a Jarrett nor an Ultra Light in this book. They simply don’t feel right.
This walnut stock was cut on a duplicating machine, using a pattern drawn from a hand-carved stock made by Siegfried Trillus. It was then inletted, checkered, and finished by Todd Johnson.
Also—and this is my major complaint about composite stocks—no one has managed to produce one that has exactly the right dimensions in every respect, from length of pull to grip circumference to the cross-sectional shape of the forend. Those that don’t look and feel like they came from a discount toy shop are usually oversized, clubby, and unergonomic to an astonishing degree.
The overwhelming virtue of walnut is that it can be shaped to exactly what you want in every respect, which means it can be made to fit like a tailored suit. Composite stocks, conversely, are made in moulds, and what comes out of the mould is all you are going to get. Because most are hollow inside or honeycombed, they can’t be shortened, lengthened, bent, shaved, or trimmed to fit. And for reasons that completely escape me, no maker of composite stocks has seen fit to find a really good rifle stock to use as a pattern, even in order to arrive at a one-size-almost-fits-all standard.
A decade or so ago I got two H-S Precision rifles to test, and even took one to Africa. They were okay—I wouldn’t give them any more than that—but my particular complaint was their stocks, which were composites. The forends were too big around, as were the pistol grips. Fine for shooting off a bench, maybe, if that’s your taste, but barely adequate for hunting.
The stock of a good hunting rifle should never get in the way of the shooter, and stocks can intrude in several ways: by positioning your trigger hand in the wrong place, by forcing you to stretch your finger to reach the trigger, by preventing you getting a firm grip on an oversized forend, or forcing you to raise your head to see the sights. When a stock really fits you, you pick up the rifle, everything is immediately in place, and you are hardly aware the stock is even there.
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In the 1960s, during the heyday of custom riflemaking, when every corner gunsmith fancied himself a riflemaker, and surplus Mauser 98 actions were dirt-cheap and readily available, an astonishing number of custom rifles were produced. As Jack O’Connor noted, the term “custom rifle” covers a mulititude of sins and, were the truth known, probably 95 percent of those rifles ranged from merely mediocre to absolutely dreadful.
Some were aesthetically so bad they defy description, and you wonder if they were cobbled together by a troll under a bridge. Others functioned, but only barely, and if you hit something you were aiming at, it was purely by accident. However, what concerns us here is not the sad majority but the remaining—and surprisingly good—five percent. Not every corner gunsmith was a cretin or a “bodger,” to use the English term. Many were, in fact, knowledgeable riflemen and hunters, and knew what a good hunting rifle should feel like. As well, they did not need to be stockmakers because, in those halcyon days, there existed two companies that could supply very nice semi-finished wooden stocks to fit just about any rifle you could name. These were E. C. Bishop & Sons, and Reinhart Fajen, both of Warsaw, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks and the largest concentration of black walnut trees in America.
Reinhart Fajen, in particular, supplied a wide range of styles, from American classic, to Weatherby-style California, to wilder-than-wild thumbhole stocks. These were semi-finished, not drop-in, and required final inletting, checkering, and finishing. But if you wanted a nice, usable stock in a design that wouldn’t frighten the horses, they were available.
This is Ted Blackburn’s replacement bottom metal for the Mauser 98. Blackburn was an excellent metalsmith who produced components for custom gunmakers. His bottom metal included a floorplate with an Oberndorf-style release inside a graceful trigger bow. Blackburn Custom Gun Metal is now a division of Swift Bullet Company.
Another source of semi-finished stocks was Herter’s, of Waseca, Minnesota, and the Herter’s catalogue provided me with many long hours on many cold winter evenings, admiring the color photos of stocks and exotic woods. I don’t know anyone who ever actually bought a Herter’s stock, or had one installed on a rifle, but I do know a few who had Bishop and Fajen stocks. Fajen also provided a custom service, using either its own semi-finished stocks or, so I understand, starting from a blank of your choosing. It’s safe to say that the custom-rifle industry of the 1960s and later could not have existed without Fajen and Bishop. After years of studying Fajen catalogues, I think I could pick out a Fajen stock on a gun rack at thirty paces, and if I was forced to voice an opinion, I would say they were surprisingly good even by modern custom-rifle standards. The men who worked for Reinhart Fajen seemed to understand what a good hunting rifle stock should be (as well as target stocks, which they also offered) and this benefited several generations of hunters and buyers of economy custom rifles.
Out of all this emerged the occasional rifle you stumble across at a gun show, or on the rack at an out-of-the-way gunshop, or in someone’s garage. It’s like finding a champion show jumper pulling a milk wagon. Every so often, that unknown, unsung corner gunsmith would put together a rifle that was just right. I mean, just right. It doesn’t happen often, and you need luck to find one, but pick up such a rifle, put it to your shoulder, and you will immediately know—sort of like that setter puppy that leapt into your arms and demanded, with a great deal of face-licking, to be taken home. You may end up kissing an awful lot of frogs before you find a princess, but they are out there.
There have been several trends over the past twenty to thirty years which have had dramatic effects on the custom-rifle business, over and above the influence of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild and the ascendance of the artistes. One was the Gulf War of 1991. It marked a turning point in the attitude of Americans to the military and, by extension, military weapons. After Viet Nam, the military was not widely respected. Those who were interested in military rifles were viewed with some suspicion, if not downright hostility. After the Gulf War, the US Army was once again an institution to be respected, and this only increased after September 11, 2001, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the other conflicts in the Middle East. Out of this came two particular trends: one was a fascination with rifles like the AR series and other military semiautos; the other was the cult of the sniper.
Snipers are now admired like Hollywood celebrities. Movies are made about them. Overweight wannabes dress like them. Guys who have never hit a target farther than fifty yards are buying sniper rifles and taking shooting courses, dreaming of decking an elk at 1,200 yards. Such long-range shooting at any legitimate game animal is unethical, and cannot be made so by any amount of expensive equipment. It violates the fundamental rule of fair chase, which is to get as close as possible, in order to place your first shot where it needs to go in order to effect a clean, quick kill with no unnecessary suffering. As long as the wind blows and the sun causes heat mirage, this is simply not possible at long range. The answer is not to buy a bigger rifle or more powerful scope, it’s to creep closer. Stalking is most of the fun of hunting anyway, unless you are someone who simply likes to kill things.
The forend of a stock hand-carved from American black walnut by gunmaker Siegfried Trillus. Trillus cut the tree down himself, sawed it into blanks, and seasoned it before making the blanks into rifle stocks. Trillus’s forends tapered into a horizontal oval that was slim and comfortable to grip. It is one of the best shapes for the forend of a hunting rifle. This one is a .450 Ackley built on an FN Supreme action.
Another trend which has affected both riflemakers and rifle buyers has been the influence of benchrest shooting and the worship of pin-point accuracy at all costs—sacrificing weight and handling characteristics in favor of shaving an eighth of an inch off a three-shot group. Benchrest shooting as we now know it really took off in the late 1940s (although it originated much earlier) and it became the big non-traditional shooting game of the next thirty years. Theirs is a search for pure accuracy, and nothing else matters. Rifles used in benchrest are absolutely useless for anything else, but that doesn’t matter, because they are not required for anything else. The one-hole group became the Holy Grail for several generations of shooters. As one who admires accuracy in any rifle, I would be among the last to denigrate benchrest or belittle the contribution that benchrest shooters have made to the game, including improvements in factory hunting rifles. One can, however, go too far.
Benchrest shooters learned a lot about proper bedding of rifles, and that benefited everyone. They discovered things heretofore unsuspected about bullet construction and methods of manufacture, and that was also good. Makers of both bullets and primers strove to improve, and these improvements trickled down to us peasants out hunting deer. Two benchrest discoveries did not help, however. First, benchrest shooters discovered that big, heavy, awkward stocks made of fiberglass gave them a firmer foundation, along with such refinements as pillar bedding, and soon hunting rifles were being made with stocks with wide, flat forends, fat buttstocks, and beefy, steeply radiused pistol grips. These were more stable when shooting off sandbags, but were a serious hindrance in the field. The second discovery was the improved ignition qualities to be found in short, fat cartridges like the 6 PPC, with near parallel walls and steep shoulders. After the 6 PPC dislodged the .222 Remington as king of the benchrest game, it was only a matter of time until there emerged a family of hunting cartridges with the same shape and general characteristics. Rick Jamison, then of Shooting Times, originated the line that later became the seemingly unending parade of Winchester Short Magnums (WSM). The original short magnums were belted cases such as the .308 Norma, .338 Winchester, and 7mm Remington, in the early ’60s, but no matter. The new ones became the short magnums, and the claims that were made for them were many—some barely credible and others ballistically impossible.
The one thing that can be said for them, without fear of contradiction, is that they do not feed easily from a conventional staggered magazine. Logically enough, the longer a cartridge, and the more pronounced its taper, the more easily it will feed, and the great .375 H&H is a classic example. Short, fat, and parallel, however, is a recipe for noisy, difficult feeding. Sales of most of the short magnums either started slow and tapered off, or never went anywhere at all, and the majority have fallen by the wayside with few manufacturers chambering them, and even fewer making ammunition or brass.
The combination of benchrest stocks and pseudo-benchrest cartridges, along with general adulation accorded to sub-minute of angle (MOA) accuracy, led to a broad trend toward heavier, more awkward, less ergonomic rifles. At the same time, German and central European optics makers, catering to the desire for sniper-type riflescopes, gradually persuaded American hunters that if a scope did not have a 30mm tube it was virtually useless. Since 2005, big European scopes with 30mm tubes and high magnification ratios have dominated the high-end scope market, and that includes custom big-game rifles.
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Much as it pains me to write this, I believe the great age of the custom hunting rifle is over. Neither the demand nor the supply is what it once was. On the demand side, there is increasing focus on semiauto rifles of the AR class, and military-style sniper or long-range rifles. More and more deer hunters hunt from stands, and do as little walking as possible. In other kinds of big-game hunting, there is more driving in vehicles than there is walking or climbing, and very little hunting is now done on horseback.
Whether some young people will grow into an appreciation of traditional hunting rifles is another question, and one that no one can answer. Even if they do, there will never be the mass interest that existed with the post-war generation of hunters in the 1960s. The basic materiel required to build a mid-quality rifle (functionally good, but modest in appearance) is no longer there. Fajen and Bishop are long-since out of business, the supply of good military Mauser 98s has dried up, and while there are more barrel makers than ever, you need an action on which to put a barrel.
Finally, while there are a number of top-notch riflemakers in the mould of the old custom guys, they are so expensive as to preclude any but the wealthy. The last time I looked, you could still get a rifle from the David Miller Co. in Tucson for $50,000, but how many of us can do that? Not many. There used to be a large number of gunsmiths around the country who could do basic gunsmithing, but who were also quite good at putting together a decent custom rifle for a reasonable price. Many had emigrated from Germany or England after the war, and from other parts of Europe in the 1950s. These men are dead and gone. While a few Americans learned from them, and carry on the trade, they are few in number compared to the old days. Graduates from gunsmithing schools today favor careers either making sniper rifles or accurizing and customizing Colt 1911s and AR-15s. And the skills they acquire at most gunsmithing schools are not the skills of a real gunmaker anyway.
This Al Biesen .270, built on an FN Deluxe action, was made for a client sometime in the 1980s. The author bought it in 2016 for considerably less than its original price. Such rifles are out there, and they are worth searching for.
Suppliers of gunsmithing tools and raw materials, like Brownells, publish massive catalogues every year, but more and more these are directed at drop-in and bolt-on parts for 1911s, ARs, Ruger .22s, and Mini-14s. Anyone who knows a good riflemaker who can fashion a great stock from a walnut blank, or barrel an action and fit it with a claw mount, keeps it a secret because they don’t want them overworked, with lengthening delivery times.
There is, however, a major silver lining to this cloud, and that is that if the gunmakers are fading away, so are their old clientele. As the owners of custom rifles die off, their heirs are putting their collections on the market. And, since many young shooters have little interest in bolt-action rifles, some custom Mausers (even made by big names of the past) sell for a fraction of what they cost originally, never mind what it would cost you to duplicate the rifle today, starting from scratch.
If the golden age of custom-riflemaking is past, the golden age of used-custom-rifle buying is upon us.
Dakota Model 10 single-shot rifle, custom stocked by James Flynn.
