The author found Heineke's .400 Whelen rifle manageable in recoil despite its husky payload.

Whelen liked rifles--though he's credited with saying that only accurate rifles are interesting. His favorite may well have been the 1903 Springfield, not just because it was the service arm of his day but because it played a big part in the development of what we now recognize as a classic bolt-action hunting rifle. The advent of the .30-06 cartridge in the Springfield must have excited Whelen. He recognized in this combination a new kind of rifle, with potential that lever guns could never claim.

'I wanted to build a rifle the way Townsend Whelen would have ordered it,' says Nate Heineke. At thirty-three, the Laramie, Wyoming, gunmaker is generations removed from the Colonel, but he spent four years working at the Griffin & Howe custom shop in New York. He's also a gifted craftsman, a student of history and a stickler for detail. So when he embarked on this recent project, a G&H rifle on a Springfield action was an easy decision. 'Not only was this the pinnacle of sporting-rifle design during the late 1920s,' Nate says, 'it represents a personal investment of Whelen's. He introduced Seymour Griffin to James Howe!'

The 1903 Springfield action Heineke selected is a nickel-steel version. Besides fitting a new bolt handle and side-swing safety, Heineke installed a Recknagel trigger and shaped a new sear. The Lyman 2A aperture sight on the cocking piece complements a Weaver K2.5 in a quick-detach G&H side mount. Heineke fitted a twenty-four-inch Krieger barrel, rifled one turn in fourteen inches--after an ambitious contouring job. Octagonal from breech to fore-end tip then round to the muzzle, the barrel wears an integral, full-length rib slotted for an express sight and finely matted. An ivory bead front sight completes the picture.

Nate fashioned this rifle's stock from true French walnut and checkered it twenty-four lines per inch using a traditional point pattern. It has an oval cheekpiece, a horn fore-end tip and a Silvers recoil pad Nate covered with pigskin. Andrew McFarlane of Spearfish, South Dakota, rust-blued the metal, case-coloring the swivel studs and steel grip cap, as well as the bolt shroud, scope levers and safety. Converting an old bank into his gunshop, Nate found a set of copper plates used to print bank stationery. Mark Hoechst of Bismarck, North Dakota, incorporated that pattern into the 1920s-style scroll he engraved on the bottom metal. Dave Kiff of Pacific Tool & Gauge provided chamber tooling; Hornady sent dies. 'I had to ream necks after setting headspace,' explains Nate, 'because basic brass is thicker there than at the front of an '06 hull.'

Basic brass? This Heineke rifle is bored to .400 Whelen, a cartridge with a colorful history indeed. It is one of the latest attributed to the Colonel. The first was probably the .38 Whelen, referenced in a letter dated August 23, 1919, and sent to New York gunmaker Fred Adolph (a colleague of Charles Newton). The .38 Whelen apparently originated in the Dowagioc, Michigan, shop of A.O. Neiduer. According to Michael Petrov, the .38 Whelen was a .30-06 necked to accept 275-grain bullets for the .38-72 WCF--swaged into semispitzer form. Whelen described the round in the January 1923 issue of The American Rifleman. Then, in April, he lamented that Winchester was dropping these bullets. Shooters largely abandoned the round. It resurfaced during the 1950s as the .375 Whelen but in a crowded field of powerful cartridges.