As you can see from my avatar, I live in NB, and my favorite time of year in NB is fall; Ruffed Grouse and Rabbit season! 
I have been hunting Ruffies and Rabbits for a few years now and have used both rimfire and shotguns to varying degrees of success. I have found however, that for the most part, the rimfire is good for the rabbits and ruffies who are sitting still, and the shotgun is better suited for picking off the running rabbits and is obviously the only choice for a Ruffie on the wing. The thing is, I hate to shoot a sitting rabbit or ruffie with a shotgun. No, it has nothing to do with being a sportsman, (I hunt to eat, so any available game is a go; sitting, running, flying or not) I just don't like to spoil any meat if I don't have to.
Bring in the Savage 24.
I looked around to see which model would best suit my needs and decided on the 24C. Depending on who you ask, the "C" stands for Compact, Camper or Canadian. I don't know that Savage actually meant it to stand for anything, but if it did, I'd bet on Camper. Turns out, it didn't really matter what it stood for because it looked like I wasn't going to be able to get one. They stopped making them years ago. I posted a want add in the EE anyway in the hopes that one would be found in the back of someone's safe and perhaps they'd be willing to part with it. Until then, I'd have to move on...
The next best thing that I could find was the 24F. (pictured above) It was the bigger brother to the 24C and came in many different caliber combinations including the one I wanted; .22LR/20ga. Ideally, I think a .22LR/12ga would have been a better option as 12ga ammo is more readily available, but 20ga is, IMHO anyway, the next best thing.
The modern 24F is a long, heavy plastic-y gun with a redundant cross-bolt safety. Not exactly the lightweight, trek through the brush for hours with your gun at the ready waiting for a ruffie to jump up and scare the crap out of you, kind of gun. Don't get me wrong, it's a great gun and I had many hours of enjoyment with it, but it just wasn't what I really wanted. But what could I do? A 24C was nowhere to be found.
Well, lo and behold, I get a PM from a nice guy on here (sorry, I cleaned out my inbox and lost the PM and can't remember who it was) saying that he knew a guy named Gene who had one for sale and gave me his phone number. Well Gene and I talked it over and came to a deal. Finally, a 24C was headed my way!
So the 24C arrives about a week later and it's in pretty good shape for its age, but not exactly what I had in mind. The fore-stock looked like it had been made in about 5 minutes by a monkey and then fitted to the gun by the same. It was loose, crooked and mis-shaped. The wood was finished in a typical fashion, stained and lacquered I think. It didn't look bad but I figured I could do better.
I took it all apart and first of all gave it a good cleaning. Then I sanded the wood and reshaped the fore-stock a bit and then re-stained it, finishing it off with a few coats of satin clear coat. Looks much better now.
To fix the loose and crooked fore-stock, I had to re-cut the back of it to square it up (it was off by about 10 degrees) and then (can you believe this) I had to glass bed it. The channel looked like it had been cut to accommodate a 12ga barrel. A few layers of fiberglass fixed it right up though. Now it's tight enough to let me use a standard sling swivel without it popping off when I carry it.
I had originally bought a clamping barrel band styled sling thingy, but the 20ga model was too small and the 12ga model was too big. Oh well.
So now I've got the gun looking pretty, I take it out to the range to see how it shoots. The .22 is surprisingly accurate allowing me to put five rounds inside an inch circle at 50 yards. While that my not seem too surprising for many of you folks, I have never been an open-sights kind of guy. I've always had to rely on a scope to be even a decent shot. It's obviously going to be accurate enough to make head shots on sitting rabbits.
Next, I try a slug through the 20ga barrel and am shocked to see it hitting about 2 feet low at 50 yards. That's not good. It's not bad accuracy-wise, putting the slugs into 3 inches easy, but the fact that it shoots that low means a lot of missed game. I fire some #6 birdshot to check the pattern and with its factory cylinder bore, it's a little wide for my liking.
So here's what I do to fix these problems. The barrels are held together at the front with a barrel band that has the front sight incorporated into it. It's a rather small sight and kind of hard to find so I decide to cut it off and have a gunsmith (Blue Mountain Sports) install a standard ramp and sight onto the .22 barrel. While there, I also have the shotgun barrel threaded for choke tubes. In the time that it took for this to get done, I cut the barrel band and ground down the spot where the .22 barrel rests so that the POA will be closer to that of the shotgun barrel. I had to take about 1.5 mm out for the barrels to line up properly.
I installed a green fiber optic rear sight from Williams and put a dab of fluorescent orange paint on the front sight to help it stand out. Much easier to see now.
I found the LOP to be a little short, so I removed the thin plastic butt 'pad' with its swing out brass door (this allows access to some pre-drilled holes that lets you store a few rounds of ammo) and installed a custom fitted 3/4" rubber butt pad. By 'custom fitted' I mean that I took an oversized one, traced out the perimeter of the butt and held it against the grinder until it fit properly. Kinda 'bubba' I admit, but it turned out well I think.
So yeah, now I have pretty much the perfect Ruffie and Rabbit gun. It's light, short, accurate and both barrels shoot to the same POA!
Thanks for reading!
Matthew
-------------------
Here are some extra pics and info that you might find interesting:
In addition to four extra inches of barrel, you can see where all the extra weight in the 24F comes from:
24F breach
24C breach
As you can see, the 24C has a nifty little tab that you can use to pop out .22 cases if they get stuck after firing. I find that this happens occasionally when using cheap dirty ammo after a few hundred rounds downrange.
Here is a shot of the case colouring: (this was taken before the wood was re-finished; you can see how rough the back of the fore-stock was)
Hunting gear shot:
A picture of the muzzles, showing the newly installed modified choke tube and front sight:
I have been hunting Ruffies and Rabbits for a few years now and have used both rimfire and shotguns to varying degrees of success. I have found however, that for the most part, the rimfire is good for the rabbits and ruffies who are sitting still, and the shotgun is better suited for picking off the running rabbits and is obviously the only choice for a Ruffie on the wing. The thing is, I hate to shoot a sitting rabbit or ruffie with a shotgun. No, it has nothing to do with being a sportsman, (I hunt to eat, so any available game is a go; sitting, running, flying or not) I just don't like to spoil any meat if I don't have to.
Bring in the Savage 24.
I looked around to see which model would best suit my needs and decided on the 24C. Depending on who you ask, the "C" stands for Compact, Camper or Canadian. I don't know that Savage actually meant it to stand for anything, but if it did, I'd bet on Camper. Turns out, it didn't really matter what it stood for because it looked like I wasn't going to be able to get one. They stopped making them years ago.
I posted a want add in the EE anyway in the hopes that one would be found in the back of someone's safe and perhaps they'd be willing to part with it. Until then, I'd have to move on...The next best thing that I could find was the 24F. (pictured above) It was the bigger brother to the 24C and came in many different caliber combinations including the one I wanted; .22LR/20ga. Ideally, I think a .22LR/12ga would have been a better option as 12ga ammo is more readily available, but 20ga is, IMHO anyway, the next best thing.
The modern 24F is a long, heavy plastic-y gun with a redundant cross-bolt safety. Not exactly the lightweight, trek through the brush for hours with your gun at the ready waiting for a ruffie to jump up and scare the crap out of you, kind of gun. Don't get me wrong, it's a great gun and I had many hours of enjoyment with it, but it just wasn't what I really wanted. But what could I do? A 24C was nowhere to be found.
Well, lo and behold, I get a PM from a nice guy on here (sorry, I cleaned out my inbox and lost the PM and can't remember who it was) saying that he knew a guy named Gene who had one for sale and gave me his phone number. Well Gene and I talked it over and came to a deal. Finally, a 24C was headed my way!
So the 24C arrives about a week later and it's in pretty good shape for its age, but not exactly what I had in mind. The fore-stock looked like it had been made in about 5 minutes by a monkey and then fitted to the gun by the same. It was loose, crooked and mis-shaped. The wood was finished in a typical fashion, stained and lacquered I think. It didn't look bad but I figured I could do better.
I took it all apart and first of all gave it a good cleaning. Then I sanded the wood and reshaped the fore-stock a bit and then re-stained it, finishing it off with a few coats of satin clear coat. Looks much better now.
To fix the loose and crooked fore-stock, I had to re-cut the back of it to square it up (it was off by about 10 degrees) and then (can you believe this) I had to glass bed it. The channel looked like it had been cut to accommodate a 12ga barrel. A few layers of fiberglass fixed it right up though. Now it's tight enough to let me use a standard sling swivel without it popping off when I carry it.
I had originally bought a clamping barrel band styled sling thingy, but the 20ga model was too small and the 12ga model was too big. Oh well.
So now I've got the gun looking pretty, I take it out to the range to see how it shoots. The .22 is surprisingly accurate allowing me to put five rounds inside an inch circle at 50 yards. While that my not seem too surprising for many of you folks, I have never been an open-sights kind of guy. I've always had to rely on a scope to be even a decent shot. It's obviously going to be accurate enough to make head shots on sitting rabbits.
Next, I try a slug through the 20ga barrel and am shocked to see it hitting about 2 feet low at 50 yards.
That's not good. It's not bad accuracy-wise, putting the slugs into 3 inches easy, but the fact that it shoots that low means a lot of missed game. I fire some #6 birdshot to check the pattern and with its factory cylinder bore, it's a little wide for my liking.So here's what I do to fix these problems. The barrels are held together at the front with a barrel band that has the front sight incorporated into it. It's a rather small sight and kind of hard to find so I decide to cut it off and have a gunsmith (Blue Mountain Sports) install a standard ramp and sight onto the .22 barrel. While there, I also have the shotgun barrel threaded for choke tubes. In the time that it took for this to get done, I cut the barrel band and ground down the spot where the .22 barrel rests so that the POA will be closer to that of the shotgun barrel. I had to take about 1.5 mm out for the barrels to line up properly.
I installed a green fiber optic rear sight from Williams and put a dab of fluorescent orange paint on the front sight to help it stand out. Much easier to see now.
I found the LOP to be a little short, so I removed the thin plastic butt 'pad' with its swing out brass door (this allows access to some pre-drilled holes that lets you store a few rounds of ammo) and installed a custom fitted 3/4" rubber butt pad. By 'custom fitted' I mean that I took an oversized one, traced out the perimeter of the butt and held it against the grinder until it fit properly.
Kinda 'bubba' I admit, but it turned out well I think.
So yeah, now I have pretty much the perfect Ruffie and Rabbit gun. It's light, short, accurate and both barrels shoot to the same POA!
Thanks for reading!
Matthew
-------------------
Here are some extra pics and info that you might find interesting:
In addition to four extra inches of barrel, you can see where all the extra weight in the 24F comes from:
24F breach
24C breach
As you can see, the 24C has a nifty little tab that you can use to pop out .22 cases if they get stuck after firing. I find that this happens occasionally when using cheap dirty ammo after a few hundred rounds downrange.
Here is a shot of the case colouring: (this was taken before the wood was re-finished; you can see how rough the back of the fore-stock was)
Hunting gear shot:
A picture of the muzzles, showing the newly installed modified choke tube and front sight:
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