By John Markwell | Contributing Editor
The Highline of Montana runs from Glasgow to White Fish and is both the historic Railroad and geographic area that essentially follows the Route of the original Great Northern railroad and todays Montana Route 2.
The area is also a destination for varmint shooters and we have visited here fairly regularly for close to 40 years. Over the years the prairie dog populations have diminished considerably but the main attraction for us has always been the gopher (Richardson’s ground squirrel) shooting.
June of this year found Nellie (the Heeler dog) and I once again in Malta with the truck camper, our main gopher guns and a pretty good pile of ammunition. Like all varmint shooting, busting gophers can be done with just about any firearm/ammunition combination that one enjoys shooting. However, for the sake of economy and availability (until recently) the rimfires, .22s and .17s, have always been the most popular. In fact, during boom years of gopher populations literal pallets of .22 Long Rifle are fired at gophers in Montana and elsewhere.
Since its introduction by Hornady in 2004, the .17 Mach 2 has been our favorite round for shooting gophers and we have accumulated several rifles and a couple of handguns so chambered. Luckily, we purchased .17M2 ammunition in volume way back in ’06 or ’07. It was a pretty large outlay of dollars at the time but has proved to be one of the smartest decisions we have ever made considering the current availability and price. We paid $289 per case of 5k (delivered) back when; the same 5K case today, based on the average prices we’ve seen, is $1,300. That’s $.06 versus $.26 per shot. We could not afford to shoot gophers at the latter price, especially when you add in the current price of gas.
For this years’ three-week outing we packed two rifles; a Kimber Classic Varmint and a Cooper Model 57M, both chambered for the .17 Mach 2 round and scoped with identical Leupold 4.5-14 telescopes with Varmint Hunter reticles. Two handguns also made the trip. The first being our well-worn Kimber 1911 Rimfire Target chambered in .17M2 as well as one of our current project guns; a 1985 vintage Ruger Single Six Magnum chambered for the .32 H&R Magnum revolver cartridge.
The 2022 gopher population has exploded. In talking to Kent, a rancher friend, prior to our June trip to Montana I asked if the annual gopher shooting contest had taken place? Kent’s response was “yep, and the winning team (two folks) shot over 700 in the four hours allotted”. After hanging up, we put an extra 4 bricks of Mach 2 out to pack in the truck; we would need the extra ammo.
The ranch where we shot for the better part of a week is just south of the Canadian border. It is a mix of crop land (wheat and hay) and grazing land. The gophers were everywhere! Using Kent’s Ranger side-by-side to get around, we shot the edges of the wheat fields either from prone or off of sticks. Ranges varied from really close out to about 175 yards or so. Shoot a while then move a couple hundred yards, shoot some more, repeat.
For a change of scenery, we also took the Ranger down into the big coulee north of the ranch house. This area is a mix of grass and sage with an intermittent creek in the bottom. Although we shot a goodly bunch of gophers in the coulee with the Kimber and Cooper rifles, the sagebrush allowed for shots with the handguns at reasonable distances. Our Kimber 17M2 1911 had been here before and once again proved to be affective gopher medicine. Shooting at running gophers, and occasionally hitting some, is where the 1911 M2 really shines. However, we mainly shot our current project handgun; the .32 H&R Magnum Ruger Single Six.
We have dabbled with single action revolvers on and off for over fifty years but never really warmed up to them. To be quite honest we never found the grip shape of the single action revolver to be comfortable in the hand and never found the roll of the revolver under recoil to be conducive to good shooting. Back in the early ‘70s we had a Colt convertible with both .22LR and .22 Mag cylinders. This was our only revolver at the time and was purely a utility piece that was affordable at the time for a newly married rural dweller. The Colt served as a .22-Long Rifle pest gun around our place and, using the .22 Mag., was called upon to dispatch a few hogs over the years come butchering time.
As our interest in Smith and Wesson revolvers and Colt 1911s grew the Colt SA was traded off. Sometime later, our old college roommate, who was serving with a mid-western police department, gave us a call. Bob was also the department armorer and firearms instructor. Seems the department was transitioning to the then relatively new Sig 226 auto loader and was trading in all of their service revolvers and confiscated guns to help finance the switch. Officers had the opportunity to purchase any of the guns at the trade-in price offered by the dealer and Bob wondered if I’d be interested in any of the guns, particularly those on the confiscated gun list.
There were several guns of interest on the list and I bought a few, most notably an Old Model Ruger Super Blackhawk in .44 Magnum. This single action was turned over to Hamilton Bowen and was re-worked in to a pretty cool custom single action field piece. To help pay for the project we traded Hamilton a S&W take-off barrel and a rare book. We have shot the gun some and still have it but the old plow-handle grip frame just never did much for us and the trigger guard just hammered our middle finger. So, the gun has languished in the gun safe for quite a few years.
Fast forward about 40 years and the .32 H&R Magnum cartridge has reared its ugly head and a S&W Model 631 DA revolver has led to another long overdue single action revolver project. The .32 H&R Mag. is a pretty neat and under appreciated cartridge and we’ve enjoyed using the S&W 631 as a woods loafing gun for several years. However, a magazine photograph of a custom Ruger Single Six Bisley revolver really got our attention and reinvigorated our interest in the single action revolver. To make a long story as short as possible here’s what transpired.
A New Model Ruger Bisley Single Six revolver in .32 H&R Magnum was acquired and turned over to a gunsmith for conversion. That revolver has been in the works for two years now with assurances that it will be finished “soon”. Running out of patience we purchased, on a whim, another Single Six in .32 H&R. This is a 1985 gun with a 4 5/8-inch barrel. These older Single Sixes are said to be “built right” by those who know more than I do. We were determined to turn this gun into a usable fun gun in a reasonable amount of time. The project has proved to be a real learning experience and has led to new friendships with a couple of single action aficionados; Fermin Garza and Ronnie Wells.
Fermin crafts custom front sights for Ruger single actions and was featured in a previous Gun Mag piece on gold bead front sights. Fermin led us to Ronnie, who manufactures after-market grip frames, hammers and triggers for Ruger single action revolvers. Since our newly acquired Single Six .32 had the old plow handle grip frame, which we greatly dislike, Ronnie’s grip frames were of considerable interest.
Ronne is a brilliant CNC guy and makes a dazzling array of different grip frames for Ruger single actions. In fact, there are so many variations his website is pretty intimidating. Go to RWGripFrames.com and have a look. Many of the designs and modifications are the products of input from serious Ruger single action users. Many of these folks spend time on the SingleActions.com website, which proved to be another source of information for us to delve into.
We had many long conversations with Ronnie on the phone about his designs and decided to get a modified Bisley styled grip frame called the Potatojudge Jr. (designed by another customer). Our hands are not overly large (they fit perfectly on an Officer’s sized 1911 grip) and we figured the fit of the PJ jr. would be pretty close. More importantly the design of the grip frame keeps the knuckle of our middle finger from making contact with the rear of the trigger guard upon firing the revolver. This is not a really big deal on a revolver with the recoil of the .32 H&R but it could be if the gun were shot a lot over time. Ronnie makes frames in brass, stainless steel and aluminum and, wanting to keep the weight of our project to a minimum, we chose to go with aluminum.
Ronnie fitted the PJ junior grip frame to our Single Six and fitted a pair of stabilized walnut stocks to the frame. The polished finish on the aluminum contrasts nicely with the blued revolver and the grain of the stocks just sets the whole works off. For a minimally modified SA revolver the over-all look is quite stunning. Since this was to be the subject of a GunMag.com piece, Ronnie also fitted one of his versions of the old Colt lightning grip frames to the revolver which we have yet to try.
We are writing this as we sit out a storm in our truck camper in Trafton Park in Malta, MT adjacent to the rodeo grounds. We have been shooting gophers for 5 days up near the Canadian border on the ranch of a friend and the value of the PJ jr.’s positioning of the middle finger’s knuckle away from the trigger guard has proved to be one of the most valuable features of this new grip frame for the Ruger Single Six. We’ve fired close to 450 rounds of our handloaded .32 H&R Mag ammo (125-grain Keith bullet by Rim Rock over a charge of 3.6/3.7-grains of Winchester 231, for a velocity of 971 fps) in five days of cruising the range land of northern Montana and our middle finger’s knuckle hasn’t suffered a bit. Not to mention that the over-all comfort of the Potato Judge jr. frame when firing is like night and day when compared to the original Ruger single action grip frame.
The firing grip remains solid thru the recoil (no rolling in the hand) and there is no readjusting the firing grip between shots. We need to thin down the stocks some as they are a bit thick for our hand but, for now, they are working out just fine. Riding in a Diamond-D Guide’s Choice chest holster the semi-custom Single Six is comfortable for all day wear whether in the Ranger or while hiking the sage brush. The rig is not in the way when shooting a rifle off of sticks but comes off when going prone.
It’s quit raining this morning so we are loading up and heading north to shoot some more; maybe for a few more days. It’s hard to beat time spent on the Highline with Guns, Gophers, and RW Grip Frames.
