If you've ever lived near a reservation, you probably know what I mean. Rez guns are workaday guns that are usually patched together to keep them running. If you like project guns, living near a rez can be great.

Case in point:

I've always wanted a Savage Model 24 combo gun, but it never came to be. Now they bring ridiculous prices. Imagine my delight when my travels took me to a pawnshop near the Jicarilla Apache reservation.

There she stood in all her rez glory -



A Savage 24C in the eminently practical .22 LR/20 gauge combo. A deal was struck and for an outlay of about two hundred bucks it rode home with me.

Not a lot of rust by rez standards, and it came complete with this cunningly customized recoil pad:



Usually this mean no butt plate at all underneath. But this time it concealed EVEN MORE custom work:



Nice, huh? Now I'm thinking there is probably some ancient gold stuffed therein. Not quite:



Free ammo!!



One fine shotgun round and this interesting assortment of rare ".22 flatheads":



This awesome trigger guard may have to go - any idea if its factory? Doesn't look it:




Should make an interesting clean up project for the winter, and a fun gun to toss in the rig.

Anybody else like these guns?

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Nice find especially with that rare flat head ammo. I once saw an apparatus for placing a .22 shell in and filing off the round nose to a flat head, thus reducing the weight and creating more shock power with the flat nose. Always been trying to find one every since.........Oh, lots of Indiana turtles succumbed to a 24G in the various rivers as a kid. I wonder if you found this as the previous owner is with the great spirits after "forming" that ammo with blunt force trauma.

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Go big or stay home

I always wanted one of those Savages. Twenty two/20 gauge is a sweet combo.

Personally I'd like a .357/20 gauge. I don't know if they chambered one in that combination.

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Regards, Ron
USASA 1965/69

That my friend is 24C. Camper model with 20 in. barrels. Takedown version. Pretty hard to come by. Nice find.

Cooler than a fan, Brad. Hey, when I used to manage a gun store back before law school, we'd get all sorts of great Winchester lever guns in off the rez. Folks would want to trade them for something modern. We'd swap, and then sell the Winchesters to collectors back East through The Gun List (anyone remember that? before everyone had the int3rwebz?).

Custom flat head and other .22 ammo.

Way back in the day when “hood guns” were Raven arms .25’s and ABC, XYZ brand .22’s, I took a revolver chambered for .22 long ammo away for a kid. I had problems opening the cylinder to unload it. Finally got the cylinder open only to find out that someone had loaded it with .22 long rifle rounds, apparently someone had used a pair of “lineman’s’ pliers to cut enough of the head of the bullet off to get it to fit in the cylinder and just clear the forcing cone. Necessity is the mother of invention.

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Always Stay Strong!

Looks like he had access to an acu'rzr.
Paco's Acu'rizer Tool

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I always take precautions

Right you are - should have worn my glasses!

I think the flathead ammo created itself - there was plenty of back and forth room in the hole in the stock. Maybe the recoil of the 20 gauge was enough to squash them against each other.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Many, many years ago a friend had what he called his "$10.00" gun collection. He would pay $10.00 for ANY gun. The only requirement is that it would have to shoot...... at least once. He was a sales rep for some company and the Northwest was his area. You would not believe some of the stuff he would bring back from Alaska....

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Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

Very cool indeed!

When I lived on the Blackfeet rez I used to make it to the local pawn stores about once a month. I never found anything that called to me but there sure were a lot of 270's sitting in those places.

I have one of those combo guns. I grew up calling it a turkey gun. It is chambered in 30-30 over a 20g. It was kind of convenient to carry when the deer season and turkey season overlapped a little bit.

bob

I live near the Tulalip Reservation. Tulalip has a large two story casino with resort. They are much more richer than I. There's no pawn shop that I know but they have a Cabela's comming up.

Here is one that I heard came off a reservation in the dakotas. It`s a 44-40 winchester 92 made in 1902. It was stolen from me in 2002 along with some other guns.

I wonder if those "Rez" guns are reminiscent of the old west guns..

no gunsmiths would be easily accessed in those days, and a man would need to patch and repair with what was on hand... some might have even tinkered with their weapon to make it more usable to them..

Good stuff, thanks for sharing!

Savage 24's are handy guns.
The flat head 22's are made by putting the loaded round in a smooth jawed bench vise end to end in the jaws and gently closing the vise.
Hollow points work esier than solids, you gotta use what you have.

The soft lead bullet nose flattens out ,,,and generally the base portion pushes back over the mouth of the brass case a little too.
Sometimes it pushes back a little too much and they won't chamber. That's Bad Ju-Ju when trying to reload and a wounded snapping turtle is bearing down on you.

Best to turn your face away from the vise squeezing process when manufacturing these killer rounds.
There's always a chance the rim will collapes before the bullet nose does and one'll go off in the bullet makin' machine.
They're cheap though, so throw another in the vise and just squeeze a little lesser.

Hmm, another gadget that I feel oddly compelled to get...

WOW - Them's some SERIOUS flyin' fish

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In dog years I'm dead.