Took my wife to Houston today for a dental appointment. To kill time, I dropped by the Carter's Country Katy Freeway store for old times sake. When I lived in Houston, they never had much on their used rack that interested me. But today, this pre-war 99-R 250-3000 spoke to me. Unaltered, very good overall condition, perfect bore, Kollmorgen 7/8 tube scope in a Stith mount, $600. Just ordered dies, can't wait to work up a good load (suggestions welcome):

Fla: You did yourself proud with that buy. Very lovely rifle. Only caveat is if it has the 1:14 twist barrel that Savage used until the late 1950s, you will find some bullets won't want to stabilize. This usually happens at about 100 grains. Boattails or all-copper bullets, which tend to be longer than their flat-based lead-and-copper cousins will be the worst offenders.
Also, when Ray Atkinson sees this he might try to buy it off you!

Thanks Bill, I'll take that into account before I buy bullets! I'll probably go with old school 85 or 87 grain flat base spitzers.

Nice!

you might want to check out the twist, Savage changed the twist to a 1x10 sometime before 1950 and most, but not all Rs have a 1x10 as do the EG models.Maybe you'll get lucky..

That said, My old E shoots 100 gr. bullets at an inch average for 3 shots every time and its a 1x14...The 100 gr. Speer shoots best in a 1x14 because its a short bullet. The 87 gr. Hornady is a good deer bullet btw. I have shot quite a few deer and deer size animals with 87 and 90 gr. bullets and if you slip one of those speedy little pills behind the shoulder of anything up to 300 pounds it will make damn few tracks and mostly instant kills..Its an amazing caliber. I shot 4 or 5 elk with mine and only one made 20 yards, the rest dropped at the shot. I used the 100 gr. Rem. Corelokts back then. Dad used whateve he grabbed off the shelf and shot about 50 elk with his 99..He didn't know better!