serial #469067, 300 H&H, 26” barrel with a bright excellent bore. The metal surfaces on this attractive custom rifle are neatly engraved with wide open flowing scroll with fine background punch-dot shading, showing near full coverage on the receiver with very nearly half of the top surfaces of the barrel covered; the floorplate with a folky game scene of a walking bear. The metal surfaces retain about 98% post-engraving blue of excellent quality, showing a few scattered handling marks here and there, a small area of light oxidation and perhaps a few very light pinprick pits on the underside of the barrel ahead of the forend tip. The bolt body and extractor are neatly engine turned, remaining mostly brilliant, with some light operational wear on the surfaces of the bolt. The bolt handle itself is polished bright and shows the same open flowing scroll with some very coarse checkering on the top and bottom of the knob. The rifle is stocked very 1960s, with a pronounced Monte Carlo showing a semi-rollover comb in an attractive grade of screwbean Mesquite showing some lovely grain figure. The stock itself rates very fine to near excellent showing the expected light dings and handling marks that come from a field-hunted arm. It shows a horn pigsfoot style teardrop pistolgrip cap, set off by a white and black “lightning bolt” spacer, a near identical forend tip which also appears to be of horn, utilizing the same spacer, and again on the Herters Grand-Luxe Olympic Model recoil pad which gives a 14” length of pull. The grip and forend panels are exquisitely checkered with open flowing carved foliate scroll accents with nice stippling within their recesses. The original factory silver bead front sight with hood is intact as-is the folding Lyman rear sight, the left side of the receiver has been drilled and tapped post-engraving for a Pachmayr pivoting telescopic sight mount with 1” rings. The rifle is unmarked, the identity of the engraver and the stockmaker may never be known, this is a very late 50s-early 60s-looking gun, following the fashion of Roy Weatherby’s mid-century modern styling that defined “fancy” rifles right into the 1970s. A wonderful and versatile chambering, this rifle needs only a set of quality optics to be complete. (3D9100-803) {C&R} [Richard “Stretch” Kennedy Collection] (1200/1800)
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