Unpacking the history of a rifle, a caliber, a roll of paper targets

I bought the gun years ago; while working at a cement plant during the day, and reading Gun Digest and reloading books at night.

I was looking for something called a wildcat round because it had a ring to it.

It sounded like something that may be light and quick and would, in times of trouble, land on its feet.

On target would be a flat-shooting, peppy bullet that could knock down a coyote from a fair distance and an elk closer up.

What I found, at first — after much page turning by the light of a 60-watt bulb, accompanied by eyelid shutting and opening again like the blinds that rattled in the kitchen — was a name.

Like wildcat, the name Ned Roberts, had a good sound; and there was a time when the man himself carried with him a stellar reputation as a ballistician, firearms experimenter — i.e. a developer of wildcat cartridges — marksman and gun writer.

A picture of a lean Ned Roberts, baggy-eyed under a brimmed hat with a mustache like Rudyard Kipling, shows him seated in what appeared to be a New England backyard in the early 1900s. He holds a slender rifle with a long, spyglass scope. The black and white picture drips nostalgia, and the grit in Roberts’ eye had me kicking down to the local hardware store to idle over its rifles and accoutrements.

Maj. Ned Roberts and some pals had for many years experienced with .25-caliber single shot rifles, and the retired major had designed the .257 Roberts named for him in an effort to find a compromise between a flat-shooting, low recoil, varmint caliber and a bigger 30-caliber made for large game.

The cartridge attributed to Roberts was developed in the 1920s and marketed a decade later. For a time, it was one of the most popular calibers around, and a favorite for shooting pronghorns across big pieces of Montana and Wyoming, elk and deer in sloping Rocky Mountain cover, and coyotes over farm fields.

The hardware store clerk could pretty much order anything, he said, but on the shelf was one particular gun with a hand-checkered walnut stock, that along with a U.S.-made 3 to 9 scope would cost me a single paycheck.

I took it.

The firearm, a Ruger Model 77, in .257 Roberts was the first rifle I purchased. After 30 years it remains a favorite because like a lot of things, rifles start with a history lesson. As time goes on, around them smolder stories of friends and campfires, packs and climbs, ungulates, too many in places too far off to mention, hunts and scenery and what may pass as adventure.

The sling from the .257 was once loosed and used as a safety rope to lower myself from the side of a cliff I had scaled on a goat hunt. The gun itself became a staff. Its barrel is speckled from sea salt, something I have meant to atone. The finish on its stock is flaked, rubbed and the stock, tested.

My pal Boggsy refers to the gun as a 2-5-7 Robbie. And sometimes I do as well. We’ve been a lot of places together, so a familiar moniker seems apropos.

Winter we know, is a fine time to get reaquainted.

Maybe we’ll drive to the range for a boisterous and, hopefully, accurate conversation on paper. So on target, so direct.

Just me and the 2-5-7 Robbie.