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HIGH-VELOCITY FEVER

That his special relationship with Stevens rifles culminated in his being anointed “Godfather of Stevens Rifles” in the May, 1940, The American Rifleman by J. V. K. Wager would have been surprising to readers of his earliest articles, because Allyn, like so many of his contemporaries in the ‘teens, had been bewitched by high-velocity and firepower. The spell, in his case, had been cast by a Model 99 Savage chambered for the sensational new .250-3000 cartridge. Having learned through C. E. Howard, a Colorado friend who collaborated with Charles Newton in designing small-bore, high-velocity cartridges such as Savage’s .22 High-Power, that the .250 was “in the works,” Allyn arranged to lay hands on one of the first to become available in 1915.

That cartridge proved to be a revelation. All his previous shooting experience, which included a hard-worked Model 99 in .303 Savage, had conditioned him to expect a perceptible lag-time between discharge and bullet impact, but the .250 “just simply reaches out and grabs them before one can think,” he marveled in Outdoor Life in 1915, the first of at least seven pieces celebrating this cartridge. “I have never shot an arm which gives such an impression of power.” Constant practice on running jack-rabbits honed skills he enlisted in the eternal war waged by most cattlemen against their common foe, the ubiquitous coyote, and reloading expanded the .250’s versatility to include another hereditary rancher’s enemy, the prairie dog. By the Nov. 1, 1922 issue of Arms and the Man, he believed “I have done more really good shooting with my Savage .250 than with all the rest put together.”