2019 New Year’s Resolution, Grandpa Albert’s 99
The Savage Model 99 Featherweight. “Alberts Gun”.
It seems like I have been asked 1,000 times “How did you get into the hunting business?” I’ve never been able to answer that. It seems like there is no simple answer. But after thinking about it 1,000 times after not really knowing what to say, I finally have the simple answer. It’s not what you know, it’s not who you know - it’s where you came from.
When I was three, my grandfather was beaten up by a gang of cowards when, in his authority as a town cop in a tiny Nebraska town of 600 souls, he was called out to a local bar to break up a scuffle. Back then, and especially in that sleepy town, there really wasn’t a need to take a gun. Civil disobedience was never more than telling old Joe to shut up and go home or face being locked up for the night to dry out. Not this time. That evening, not taking a gun would prove fatal. A gang of outsiders, “The Fletcher Boys,” appropriately called boys even though they were all of age, turned on my grandfather. They beat him up in a cowardly gang fashion, breaking countless bones, ribs, etc., and leaving him to die. He would have died right there if not for my courageous 160-pound Uncle Jim who single-handedly beat several of the yellow bellies to a pulp and into the hospital during the fray while many scared local “men” watched in fear. Grandpa died from his injuries ten months later after being in and out of the hospital. Many people have asked why I’m James and not Jim. Well, that’s easy. The man I was named after was that courageous Uncle Jim mentioned above. For that, I’ll be known as James as long as Jim is still walking the earth.
My grandfather was a hunter, a survivor. His 30.40 Krag once misfired while rested on his boot and the projectile plowed into the ground underneath him, but not before taking his big toe with it. He looked up and readied his rifle, not knowing where the shot came from and expecting a bolting buck to present a shot. When he realized that everyone else in the group knew it was his gun that fired, he looked down to see smoke rolling out of his boot. He didn’t go to the doctor but spent evenings cleaning the infection from the stump and removing aggravating bone fragments from himself. I’ve heard three of his kids tell this story on separate occasions over the last 40 years and everyone told it exactly the same, so I know it’s true.
I also heard it said that grandpa was a one shot hunter. He carried one cartridge in his rifle and one in his pocket. In a crowd of hunters someone once asked him why he carried a spare in his pocket if he was such a good shot. “Well I will probably have to finish yours off” was his quick reply.
Hunting wasn’t a thing in Nebraska back in those days. Grandpa was one of the guys that made it a thing. He saw the very first deer seasons after market hunting had taken its toll and the Pittman-Robertson Act righted the ship. He took advantage of it. He was poor, very poor, even by standards back then and in that rural community. When he wasn’t being a cop, he baled hay. So, he hunted for meat, but he also hunted for sport and for the precious family time that it created. After he shot his toe off due to the misfire of the 30.40 Krag, he promptly sold it and purchased a Savage 99F. That would be his one and only big game rifle until the day he died. After that, it would be the gun that my Uncle Steve hunted with. In fact, the only rifle I ever saw my Uncle Steve hunt with, and the gun that the rest of us would covet. It was of legendary stature in our minds, just like the old hunter who once toted it.
I never had the chance to hunt with Grandpa Al. I have only a couple of vivid memories of him. One memory was of being deathly afraid to climb down off of the top row of bales on the hay truck and into my grandpa's arms, with two uncles coaxing me that it would be ok. Another memory sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen while she cooked. I was on Grandpa’s lap, he was rolling a smoke in the small of his forearm when he said to me “You are Grandpa’s boy, aren’t you?” That’s it. That’s all I have. Or is it?
The years following his death were tense. My grandmother became the patriarch and cornerstone of our family. She now had to raise four of six kids that were still in the house. She planted a garden half a block long. She filled the basement with canned food and vegetables in order to survive. They still lived on venison as their primary protein. Aside from grandma, who had every reason to be, the rest of the family was pretty angry and tense for a time and yet grew very, very close in those years. We grew close even though everyone was trying to make sense of the insanity in their own way. Some members of the family wandered a little, but everyone else was always there to bring them back. I learned at an early age that there are cowards on the earth who would seek to destroy good people, including the law if given the opportunity and that the second amendment was created for protection from those people, whether kings, governments, criminals or both. But in that time I also learned about the grace of God.
Leaving Grandpa for dead on that bar floor wasn’t the smartest thing those Fletcher Boys ever did. Those punks picked a fight that they couldn’t have possibly won. Our hillbilly family and community had two choices in the years following: act on our anger and confusion, or forgive and forget. If we had chosen the first, those boys would have never been seen again or found. I wonder if they ever realized how close they were to disappearing for many years after. I wonder if they ever did get a good night’s sleep. At some point in the tough years following the incident, I remember the conversations. I remember seeing the pain. I remember vowing to myself that I would take care of it all one day and make it right when I was old enough.
What I couldn’t have foreseen was that my mother and father would give their lives to Jesus and all the pain would turn to love and forgiveness. Not immediately, but eventually. That love would spread through the family and pretty soon, although no one forgot, everyone made peace with what had happened. If you don’t believe in Jesus, I can tell you, you are not believing right. I can also tell you that if you don’t think believing in Jesus does anyone any good, I can tell you that it almost certainly saved the lives of the Fletcher Boys, which gave them a chance for redemption. Maybe they met Jesus before it was too late, maybe not. I don’t know. What I do believe is that without that event our family wouldn’t be what it is today, I wouldn’t be who I am today. God works all things together for good for those who love him. So that’s how I got into the hunting business. I was born into it.
In the years following, hunting would be the most cherished activity that we did together. We were brought up doing it, it was good, and we all excelled at it. Nobody who saw what we saw and experienced what we experienced could ever doubt these things: 1) Hunters saved wildlife in America. We are the only ones who cared enough to bring it back from nothing to something. 2) The grace of God. 3) The Second Amendment must be defended at all costs. I didn’t set out on a life mission to prove these three things to be true, but it has become a big part of my working life’s mission because I know it all to be true and I just don’t have much patience for those that don’t agree. They don’t agree only because they haven’t experienced.
For my 2019 resolution, I decided to do a vintage build in honor of my grandfather, Albert Anson. His favorite gun, a Savage 99 Featherweight and Weaver K4 scope. I have to be honest, I have never been a fan of the Savage Model 99. None of them, even in all of their renditions. My dad had one too. It was his go-to deer rifle. No doubt inspired to purchase based on the fact that my grandfather had one. I shot every single rifle that my dad owns, but I don’t think I have ever fired a single bullet out of the barrel of that one. I have never even had an inkling to. I can honestly say I would never have expected to own or shoot a Savage 99 until one evening in November 2018.
My 13-year-old son had just harvested a beautiful, old whitetail buck and we were on the way to town to check the deer in. My Uncle Steve lived in that town so I phoned ahead to see if he was around so we could show off our deer, swap some stories and maybe have him show us some of the Savage 99s that he’d collected. I needed to learn more about the rifle, and I knew he had them dating back over a hundred years.
That evening I was able to shoulder a bunch of 99s that would make a savage collector jealous. A 22 Hi Power, takedowns, octagon barrels. You name it. But I was unimpressed, as always with the Savage Model 99. They just were not interesting to me. Then Steve handed me one that seemed different. It had beautiful reddish wood with a simple oil finish, and hand checkering on the forearm and grip. It was in mint perfect condition, the color case hardened lever actually looked like color case hardening is supposed to look. It was nimble, light, balanced. I shouldered it. I immediately loved it. I could see myself hunting with this rifle. I envisioned a monster whitetail in the crosshairs of the old Weaver K4. “What is this one?” I asked. “It’s a Savage 99F .308. F for Featherweight,” Steve said. “It was your grandpas.” I actually couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that his rifle was in such good condition. It was a testament to how well Grandpa cared for a rifle that he maybe couldn’t have afforded. What’s more, I hunted with Steve decades ago when he carried that rifle after Grandpa died. We hunted in the thickest, steepest, nastiest acreage in the state of Nebraska on the Missouri river breaks. I have no idea how he kept it in such immaculate condition through all those years, but I guess that is also a testament to what the rifle and the man meant to him.
Right then and there I decided that I would build a rifle/scope combination just like my grandfather carried. I would ask Steve to accompany me in the fall of 2019 hunting old-school on the ground, still hunting just like we did back then. Additionally, I would ask my Aunt Jane, who had also built a Savage 99F like Grandpa’s to accompany us as well as my dad, who no doubt would be carrying his favorite deer rifle, a Savage 99 in .243 Win. My New Year’s resolution became more than building a rifle in honor of the grandfather that I never got to hunt with. It became that plus a family hunt where we could all reminisce and remember all the good that can come from evil, the strength of the human spirit, the grace of God and the great outdoors.
Stay tuned for the build information on my Savage 99F.