Long-Range Handguns

Varmint Loads for Single Shots

- Layne Simpson

I grew up on a farm and one of my father’s friends who also farmed, picked up a few extra dollars repairing guns in a small building behind his home. His shop was only about an hour’s bicycle ride away, so I occasionally visited him. In those days, single-shot rifles in .22 Rimfire made by Stevens, Hopkins & Allen, Page-Lewis and others were both abundant and cheap. I never asked what inspired him to use those actions for building what he described as “long-range pistols,” but he was quite good at it.

In addition to shortening the barrel to 15 inches or so, he heated and reshaped the tang (or tangs) of action and fitted a grip made of black walnut from a tree he had removed from his back yard many years before. His crowning achievement and the one he was most proud of, was a handgun in .30-06 on a 1903 Springfield barreled action. I never got around to shooting that one, and while I never actually owned one of his .22s, he often loaned me one to bump off a few cottontail rabbits and grey squirrels.