I just joined and wanted to say how incredible this site is! I've learned an amazing amount of information in the last 2 days about these incredible rifles. Thank you so much for taking the time to make a gathering place for people who appreciate what these guns have to offer. So a bit about me.... My father had a beautiful Model 81 in 300 Savage that he bought in 1955 from his boss with a case of ammo for $75 (His wife said he had too many guns, luckily for my Dad!) I heard many great hunting experiences my Dad had in South Dakota with it. He said it was an incredibly hard hitting rifle and a fantastic brush gun. He created an obsession in me. I remember sneaking into the closet as a kid and pulling it out and dreaming of incredible hunts (to me as a kid, the magazine and barrel was how I envisioned a safari rifle should look like
) I never shot it with my Dad, but when I was 16, I snuck it out of the house and took it on a camping trip. I think my eyes popped out of my head when I went down range and saw holes all the way through good sized pine trees! I'd fired lots of shotguns, but never experienced anything like that. Years passed and when my Dad had a stroke and passed away, my brother and I divided up his 4 guns.... he got the Model 81 and the Nylon 66. I didn't fare badly, I got his A-5 Light 12 and the single shot .410 my dad worked the whole summer when he was 9 to earn $8 to buy with a box of shells. It was my first gun when I was 12 and my Dad and I had many incredible pheasant hunts with him carrying his A-5. Sentimentality won out of course, but there has been a hole about the 81 since. So 10 years later and I have a Nylon 66 and my Model 81 is on it's way. The internet is a wonderful thing to get me access to a rifle that looks to be in great shape, but I feel like I'm going to have kittens until it gets here!!! As you can see, I have a 40 year connection to these guns, and now I'm on the edge of owning my first! Thanks for reading my story and again, thanks for making this site!
