35 REMINGTON, AN AMERICAN DEER CAMP RIFLE

This Remington Model 141 Gamemaster, chambered in .35 Remington and here paired with Remington Core-Lokt bullets, was author Jason Brooks’ first deer rifle, passed down to him from his grandfather.

Even at 114 years old, this 'brush gun' and its rather slow-moving bullets still get the job done on deer, bear and elk at shorter ranges.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY JASON BROOKS

As the story goes, first told to me by my father when I was around 12 years old, my grandfather had walked into a tavern to refresh after a long day of working in the logging camp. On the wall of that bar was a Remington Model 141 Gamemaster in .35 Remington. It was being offered as a prize for a pull tab game and after a quick glance at how many tickets were left, my grandfather realized he had enough money in his pocket to buy the remainder. After finishing his drink, he walked out of the tavern with his new deer rifle. e story doesn’t end there, but I never did ask what my grandmother said when he got home.

It is this rifle that my family still holds as a token of our deer hunting

The author’s grandfather (right) Roy Brooks and his hunting partner Hugh Smith after a successful day’s hunt near Republic, Washington. Both hunters used Model 141 Gamemasters chambered in .35 Remington.

history. Photos of my grandfather carrying it in the deer woods of northeast Washington state now rest in a dust-covered photo album, but that rifle still visits our yearly family deer camp. I used it to take my first deer at age 12 and was told the story of how it came into our family as my dad handed it to me before the hunt. is past fall, my now 16-year-old son opened his birthday present from his grandfather and I could see my dad’s eyes start to well up, knowing his father’s rifle was about to become his grandson’s gun. e only problem was, he had no ammunition for it and with today’s ammo shortage, I was a bit worried.

Looking on the internet and finding a few boxes of .35 Remington going for way more than I was willing to pay, it seemed the rifle would become more of a decoration than a deer rifle. Maybe it was divine intervention or just good timing, but on our way back from a whitetail deer hunt in Idaho last year, we stopped at a local sporting goods store and on the shelf were a few iconic yellowand-green 200-grain Core-Lokt boxes in .35 Remington.

THE .35 REMINGTON was first introduced as one of four rimless cartridges by the Remington Arms Company in 1906. Of the four – the .25 Remington, .30 Remington, .32 Remington and .35 Remington – it is the only one still being currently produced. It came out just after the .30-06 Springfield debuted in 1903, which was created as a cartridge for the US military. Remington

soon realized that it would not keep up ballistically with the faster military round, but it did well in the deer woods. Where the .30-06 was first made for the military, the .35 Remington was made for the hunter and marketed to compete with the .30-30 Winchester.

A much larger bullet, both in weight and diameter, the .35 Remington might not shoot as fast or as flat as the .30-30 Winchester, but it hits harder. Gaining popularity in the whitetail woods, the .35 was produced in the Remington Model 8, a semiauto rifle designed by the famed John Browning for Remington. But it was preferred by deer hunters in the Model 14, designed in 1908 to compete with the lever-action rifles that hunters were familiar with. e Model 8 semiauto wasn’t selling well and Remington did enough research to know the current lever-action rifles on the market had a strong following. Instead of trying to join the lever-action market, they came up with the Model 14, a pump-action rifle, allowing the hunter to stay on target and reload the chamber, unlike the lever-action, with which you have to remove one hand from the stock of the firearm. e .30 Remington was the cartridge that the company thought would take over the .30-30 Winchester, but when it didn’t, a strong marketing campaign began with the .35 Remington. It was hard to argue with a fat, slow, hard-hitting bullet that anchored a deer when hit, and with most deer hunts being for whitetails, the .35 Remington was perfect for the thick cover. Soon it was known as a “brush gun” – one that could shoot in heavy cover and knock a deer over.

In 1935, Remington realized profits were not up to what the company hoped. Gun owners were not buying the .30 Remington in the Model 14, which was a carbine, but the .35 Remington was one reason why hunters did buy the pump-action rifle. So Remington came out with the Model 141, which was cheaper to make than the Model 14, and had a few in the carbine barrel while transitioning the machining and tooling. But the most desired ones were the Gamemaster models with the 24inch barrel. is increased the ballistics slightly, but more importantly it created a craving for a “new gun.”

JUST AFTER THE release of the Remington Model 141 Gamemaster was another Remington invention that would complement the .35 Remington and that was the Core-Lokt bullet in 1939. is new way of locking a lead core to a gilded metal jacket made for an expanding bullet that retained most of its initial weight. e 200-grain CoreLokt and the .35 Remington became one of the most popular deer rifle and cartridge combinations in the history of hunting. Even today, as we found with those boxes of the iconic yellow-andgreen Remington-labeled Core-Lokts for our family’s .35 Remington, it was the same bullet that my grandpa used 70 years ago, as well as the one I took my first deer with nearly 36 years ago.

Firing a 200-grain bullet a scant 2,080 feet per second at the muzzle and with a ballistic coefficient of .192, don’t expect this rifle to cross any Western canyons or be gravitydefying by any means. e ballistic coefficient alone tells you that this round does not fly far, but the roundnose bullet hits hard with 1,921 foot-pounds of energy. Indeed, it is designed to be a brush gun, and it does just that at short distances.

Hornady also commercially loads the .35 Remington in their Leverevolution ammunition line. Using a 200-grain bullet with a Flex Tip in the FTX bullet, it creates a higher ballistic coefficient and increased velocity of up to 250 fps faster than traditional roundnose bullets. Hornady’s .35 Remington load zips out at 2,225 fps at the muzzle with 2,198 foot-pounds of energy. When zeroed at 200 yards, the bullet still drops a whopping 17.5 inches at 300 yards. Again, this is not for long-distance shooting but it also hits with over 1,700 foot-pounds of energy at 100 yards – plenty for deer, elk and black bear.

One reason why Hornady loads the .35 Remington is because the cartridge is still being used in modern production rifles with, of all things, lever-actions. e .35 Remington can be found

When he was 12 years old, Brooks took his first deer with the pump-action .35 Remington.

B&T INDUSTRIES, LLC

B&T Industries LLC was founded by two Kansans – one with an idea, the other with capital – motivated to bring an innovative idea to the shooting sports. Their business principles are based on taking a novel, common-sense idea, manufactured from the most applicable materials, assembled by Americans and sold at a fair price.

The idea that founded B&T was inspired by a prairie dog hunt in 1997 when a good friend to the business forgot to bring his sandbag, resorting to a time-honored, field-expedient solution: putting dirt in the sock he had been wearing.

In January 2000, after the trials of prototyping and testing, the Accu-Shot Monopod was patented and introduced to the market, becoming the “sandbag of the 21st century.” As a lightweight, mechanical device, it provides elevation adjustment and eliminates muscle fatigue to acquire the best possible sight picture.

In 2005, B&T did the same thing with the bipod to support the front of a rifle. Atlas Bipods have blazed a trail of patented features such as multiple leg positions – including the novel 45-degree position – and the ability to pan and cant. Their feature-rich bipods are designed to maximize their strength-to-weight ratio while providing the strength and durability shooters demand.

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Standing the test of time. The .35 Remington (left) compared to the .30-06 Springfield, both of which are popular deer cartridges and came out within a few years of each other over a century ago. Both are still being made today. in Marlin’s popular Model 336 and Henry’s Side Gate Lever Action models, along with barrels for the ompson/ Center rifles and handguns, as well as other manufacturers. e case on the .35 Remington is 1.920 inches with an overall length of 2.525 inches. It is beltless and shoots a bullet with a .358-inch diameter. e fat case has a base diameter of .458 inch and a shoulder diameter of .405 inch, with a max pressure of 39,900 pounds per square inch.

It might not be the fastest – heck, it might be one of the slowest – big-bore rifles to ever hit the deer woods, but it is one of the oldest. For good reason, the .35 Remington has been around 114 years and one of those reasons is because it knocks down deer quickly.

From some tavern near the logging camp to our family’s deer camp, the .35 Remington will once again be carried afield this fall, with ammo designed around the same time the Model 141 came about. Both will work well together, just as they have for decades. 

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