I love store brand guns - Ted Williams, J.C. Higgins, Glenfield, Western Auto, you name it and I've probably owned or still own one. They remind me of a time when a guy could go to Sears or J.C. Penney or Montgomery Wards and buy a good solid gun at a reasonable price.

Of course J.C. Penney didn't make the guns - they had a major builder make them and put the house brand on them. This tends to keep the prices down, another thing that appeals to me.

Here's my latest - it showed up on Facebook and was largely ignored by the AK/AR/XD crowd. Its the first I've seen - a Montgomery Ward Hawthorne Model 760, caliber .30/06. For the price of a Ruger LCP I brought it home.



It came with the rings but no scope, so I put this Nikon 2-7 on it.



Its been used, but not abused. The stock will finish up nicely, and it looks like a decent piece of wood. I'm sure this was somebody's deer and elk gun.



This is worth the price of admission - an FN Mauser Deluxe action. It is wonderfully smooth.



The bottom metal is actually metal.



Bolt knob is a nice touch.



It has iron sights, because in 1955 you'd have iron sights. And tail fins.



I'm sure the checkering is machine done, but it still looks good.





Men were men then. This is all the recoil pad a 1955 man needed.



And all this for next to nothing, because this is stamped on the barrel.



I just picked it up today, so I haven't shot it yet. I need a scratchy red flannel shirt and an appropriate chapeau, and maybe a pipe.

Anybody ever had one of these? Any other lovers of the unloved store brands?

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

Nice find. Looks good.

I don't remember J. C. Penney selling guns. Back in my formative years, in my home town, both Sears and MW had decent sporting goods departments with good selections of guns. The local J. C. Penney store was about the size of the Sears and MW stores, but it never stocked anything interesting, like guns or tools. Maybe Penney's stores elsewhere did.

I've heard of them, I've got one. Mine is marked differently, "Wards
Western Field model BNJ-757 30-06", but it looks to be the same
rifle. There's another thread on here about FN Mausers sold under the
Wards name. The action of your rifle is actually the FN "Supreme", the
"Deluxe" action was an earlier model like the one in the other thread.
The bottom metal is metal, steel actually. The barrel and the front
sight, which is aluminum by the way, is the same barrel that several
different models of the same rifle that were sold by Wards, Sears and
others have. Things were very different back in the 50s and 60s
regarding gun quality. Things like high quality machined steel guns
at very competitive prices with few frills were taken for granted. Guns
like Weatherbys with flamboyant features and lots of hype and
advertising and high prices were widely accepted as being better. The
consumer was the winner if he or she was savvy. There were lots of
very good centerfire rifles available at low prices if the buyer knew
what to look for. There were also lots of mediocre guns on the market
to snare the unwary. There is no doubt that some of the very best
rifles available were built on the commercial FN Mauser action.

I have a Montgomery Wards 30-06 mauser very much like Sig's......I bought mine back in the early 70's when I was leaving Indiana to go forth and live large, I also owned a Mossberg pump SGN from M/W's . I still own both. The 30-06, I topped off with a Weaver 4X12 and shot Montgomery Ward brand ( Federal) 150 & 180 gr sp's in it.
It was my primary hunting rifle for the next 30 yrs and I took 2 elk, 2 mule deer, several white tails and an a prong horn with this rilfe and those factory loads. I also killed a bunch of varmints with the rilfe shooting " accelerator"( 55 gr 22 cal bullet in sabot) loads in it.
I paid $150. for the rifle. It has served me well over the years. I learned to hunt with a JC Higgins bolt action tubular mag 16 ga ( which I still have).....over the years I have accumulated a number of house brand guns, Westernfield or JC Higgins and they have all been field guns and in some cases I inherited them after decades of serving as farm guns.
Returned to Indiana b-4 I retired in 08 and now the Mauser doesn't get used much. But it has a lot of history with me and I will never sell it.

A couple more pics with the stock off.

The usual mysterious numbers and symbols -



The trigger is a simple affair, adjustable but I won't mess with it as the pull is just right as it is -



And this is nice to see -

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

You have acquired a great rifle, at a bargain price IMO .....as I posted previously, I value mine......over the years I have built several rifles on Mauser actions. The house brand rifle has been my companion thru many years of hunting adventures. It is light, accurate and in general a well tunred out rifle. The Mauser action is one of the "classic's", I am sure your's will serve you well.

Very nice rifle. It's definitely a step up from the Western Field model 750A I just picked up. I'm beginning to learn a little more about these rifles and will be browsing the LGS looking for more of them.

__________________
Patriots Forever!!

I like to think of these as a Browning Safari at 1/4 the price.

__________________
Bill Bates

Appreciate the pics. Some quality firearms were produced for sale at Sears and Montgomery Ward. A friend shotgun sold through Sears made by High Standard seemed like a well made model pump but then Winchester supplied em with the Model 200 which was a model Winchester 1200 that did not seem up to par. Was no Winchester Model 12.

I could be wrong, but that looks for all the world like the rifles that Husqvqrna was building at the time. They used the FN action also. I have a couple of their rifles built on the FN actions, and I think they're one of the best deals on the market today. The Mauser action is still one of the best (and I know a couple of VERY high end rifle builders that won't use anything else) and FN built the best of the post-war actions. Terry Wieland speaks very highly of them in his book "Dangerous Game Rifles." I suspect you got a heck of a rifle for a heck of a price. If you ever have a custom rifle built up, use that action. You couldn't do much better!

What Facebook page do all these great guns show up on?

I follow 2 Colorado pages. I think almost every area has them - I followed a couple in New Mexico when I lived there.

Black plastic rules all of the FB gun trading pages I see. ARs, AKs, Glocks, and XDs are the usual fare. When an older gun shows up it usually sits for a while.

It can be amusing, though. A guy posted a really nice Model 34 with the box at a decent price, and specified no trades. After a couple of lowball offers somebody offered a raggedy Marlin 336 for a trade, which was politely declined. Then there followed a stream of comments expressing disbelief that the seller wouldn't trade "a .22 for a 30/30"!

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

I remember J.C. Penney's selling guns in their catalogs as did Sears and many others. Western Auto stores carried guns as did many big chain department stores.

Here is an interesting list of which company's guns were marketed as "house brands" :

http://www.nramuseum.com/media/94093...ver%20list.pdf

Best,
Charles

I wrote a little about these M/W 'Hawthorne' M760 rifles in another thread on M/Wards rifles. Neat to see one appear so quickly.
I think it was High Standard that actually built these for M/Wards and may have put their (H/S) bbls on them.
FN bbl will usually have some marking on the bottom to indicate FN or Belgian mfg or proofing.
(Marlin was buying FN actions too about the same time and bbling them with their bbls, stocking them up in Bishop stocks. Later using Sako actions also.)


The checkering is hand done. That was the standard of the day back then. Most of the work post war & into late 60's was by freelanse checkering workers on projects like this and was done at prices like $1 or $1.50 /stock. They worked remarkably fast. Some factorys still had checkering and 'custom shop' type wood workers employed but they were fast becoming obsolete for over the counter type firearms. Instead being used for special order models w/ upgraded options.

The J. C. Penny's inside one of the oldest and best known malls in Washington sold guns well into the 1980s. You walked through the lower level corridor, up the escalator, then as you got off the escalator you were looking right at the gun counter. They still had store branded guns built by the big U.S. factories but IIRC rifles built on Mauser actions were already a thing of the past.

I've had a few store brand long guns and I like that one. I think Bill Bates described it best: a Browning at 75% off. I doesn't hurt that I'm old enough to think .30-06 is a great cartridge.

Back in the 60s and 70s the Nordstrom store in downtown Seattle had a nice gun department with old broomhandles and Lugers as well as new and used S&Ws and Walthers.

When I moved to Alaska in 1977 the Anchorage J. C. Pennys had a Large gun counter with lots of Smiths and Colts.

The Anchorage Payless and Pay and Save chain drug stores had large gun counters and often had large sales on guns and reloading components. I remember buying $69 Ruger 10/22s just because they were on super sale back in the 80s.

These are not a store brands but some of the lower tier gun makers brought out rifles to compete against Browning's Safari Models and the one below is an H&R 300 Ultra Rifle in 243 that has a Sako action and a custom stock by Fajan that was checkered at their factory. They also made similar rifles with FN Mauser commercial actions as I have two with one in 270 and the other in 30-06.

H&R 300 Ultra rifle in 243


H&R 300 Ultra rifle in 30-06

That is a very interesting find and the type of thing lots of the newer gun folks don't know about. Looks like a quality piece for sure. I'm sure that has taken its share of game. Thanks for sharing

Yep,a lot of gun for the money....and I think that I'm seeing enough overcuts on the checkering,to tell me that it was done by hand,and not by machine.

Congrats to the OP. I think you got a nice rifle in a great caliber. My first shotgun was a hand me down Monkey Wards SxS in 16ga. It had the Rynite stock and forearm. Actually shot quite a few pheasants and my fair share of quail with that old girl.

Talking about odd gun retailers. Bought a French Berthier 07/15 rifle years ago at an auction. The gun itself was covered in rock hard cosmoline and old newspaper, Spanish newspaper as it turned out. I suspect it made it's way from France to Spain for use in the Spanish Civil war.

Anyway, the neat part was the rifle came in it's original shipping carton with the address of some woman in a town in Kansas. The shipper? Spiegels. I never even know they sold guns let alone milsurps. The carton is long gone but I do recall the lady in Kansas had no zip code on her address nor did Spiegels. That with the fact that it was shipped to what looked like a residence I suspect it was before 1963. Kinda neat.

P.S. Still have the rifle. Took forever to get her clean but we've been to the range and she'll be one I keep for ever.

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BCCI Life Member #2068

Check out the rifling. Some of the monkey ward had micro rifling, like marlins.

I think mine does - there sure are a lot of grooves in there. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow.

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

The barrel on my Wards rifle has multi groove rifling also. It seems to
be the exact same rifle as yours except for the barrel markings and the
stock walnut is darker. I will try to take some pics of mine and get
them on here. The house brand FN Mausers are some of the best used
hunting rifles available at the going prices but the word is starting to
get around and prices are slowly climbing. I've seen some of them
listed on GB at ridiculous prices just like any other classic quality
rifle.

The throats on those micro grooves are more prone to throat erosion than regular barrels. Works fine on 30-30s but 30-06 is a little to much heat for those tiny riflings. If it was mine I would just not rack up a huge round count, probably last a couple lifetimes shooting deer but if you go down to the range and blast away, accuracy will be at risk. If you reload check your seating depth.