Inspired by Mr. Keith

In 1983 I lived out in California for a few years and had a good neighbor and friend who liked guns and hunting like I did. This particular year we decided we wanted to go on a big game hunt somewhere in the wilderness. I immediately thought of all the Elmer Keith articles I had read and said we were heading to the Bitterroot-Selway region to go elk hunting! With that part settled we went about booking a hunt in that area for the next season. Our next goal was rifles. My friend decided to go the custom route and had a Sako 338 built. I had a hankering for something more exotic, a 35 caliber wildcat. Mr. Keith was very fond of the 333 caliber and I liked medium bores too but there wasn't much in 35 caliber. I happened on P.O. Ackley's books and saw the 35 Whelen and the 35 Brown-Whelen. I liked the improved or Brown version so I settled on that. I found a gunsmith who would rebore my old 1903 Springfield and chamber it for the Brown version and sent my rifle off. After months of waiting my rifle came back and I ordered dies to fit the new chamber. I started by using .270 cases as the basis for my Whelen cartridge since they were a tad longer and the fireforming would shorten the neck a bit. I won't go into all the tedious steps to make a wildcat from scratch but I used all the tricks I could find to ease the process. I used temp sensitve paint for the annealing so the temperature was correct and I patiently loaded up test rounds to fireform and then countless loads afterwards to find the best load for my rifle. I ended up using a 250 grain bullet and a safe load of 4064 and as a second load 4350.
Later on when the commercial 35 Whelen was out I started using the loaded round and firing it in my rifle to get cases, a lot simpler than before! Back to my story. Once our rifles were up and running we spent a lot of time at the Angeles shooting range to get them sighted in etc. My friend was often miffed when my Brown-Whelen would knock over the steel pigs at 200 yds and his 338 would only rock them! It still does have a lot of punch. We went on our hunt that fall and sadly, for me, I didn't shoot an elk. My buddy, however connected with a fine bull on the last day so we were not skunked. I saw so much wildlife and almost got run over by a bull moose that came charging out of the timber after me, I later found out they were in the rut and very protected by the state. I had some of the best times of my hunting life on that trip so I never count it as a bust but a life experience worth savoring.
A note about the rifle. It is a 1903 Springfield with a 3 position safety off of a Winchester 670 bolt and has a hand laid up fiber stock with coarse texture finish. The scope is an old style Baush & Lomb 2 1/2 to 8 variable with adjustment in the base. I also have a fixed four power that is a back up scope and fits this base. Outdated perhaps but still quite functional. I used to have some of the targets shot when the rifle was sighted in, but they are lost to time .. it frequently shoots to less than 2 inch groups at 200 yards and I had several 1 inch groups at 100 yds with the handloads, plenty accurate for a hunting rifle. The only downside is it weighs in at 9 pounds with a full five rounds in the rifle, a bit heavy after a full day climbing up and down steep slopes! Hope you enjoyed the story, Chris