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Author: Grumpy
I took this photo myself. Those Alaskan brown bears can become absolutely enormous.
I spent my last three years in the Army stationed at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. For a substantial portion of that time, I was the operations officer for a CH-47 Chinook helicopter unit.
I picked flight crews and assigned mission responsibilities. That also meant I got to do some really cool flying all across the last frontier. If you were paying taxes back in the 1990s, sincerely and from my heart, thank you for that.
Megafauna
When you encounter moose while flying out over the vast Alaskan muskeg, they typically either ignore you or run. These things are as big as Clydesdales and quite deadly up close, but they’re herbivorous ungulates. They don’t hunt people for food. Alaskan brown bears, by contrast, will gladly make a meal of you.
One fine day, I was piloting a Chinook helicopter north to south just east of the Salcha River on the far side of Eielson Air Force Base. We were flying nap-of-the-earth right above the trees at maybe 160 knots (about 185 mph). In this configuration, I serendipitously happened upon an absolutely enormous cinnamon grizzly bear.
I wasn’t trying to molest the wildlife. He just happened to be right in my flight path. I popped the cyclic back and cleared him by scant feet.
A CH-47 tops out at 50,000 pounds, and it makes the devil’s own racket. Most animals are rightly terrified of it. In this case, my flight engineer reported that, as we passed over this big gentleman’s head, he stood up on his hind legs and swatted at us. Human beings are not the apex predators in this space.
The Monster
In 1923, along the Unuk River near Cripple Creek north of Ketchikan, Alaska, a young fur trapper named Jess Sethington struck out to make his fortune. He packed a .38-caliber revolver and a .33-caliber rifle for personal protection and subsistence. He was never heard from again.
For years afterwards, trappers reported a particularly large bear in the area that regularly stalked them and molested their camps. The bear was unique for the strange groaning sound it seemed to make. Locals named the beast “Old Groaner.”
Old Groaner operated mostly at night and showed little fear of man. Several prospectors and trappers had fired at him, but none had connected in the dark. With all this in mind, in November 1935, two grizzled prospectors struck out into Old Groaner’s territory to stake a claim, accompanied by their dog.
The Attack
One of the miners ventured out alone with the dog and his rifle to post signage establishing his claim. Setting his rifle aside to erect the sign, he was surprised when his dog rushed past him barking furiously. Grabbing his weapon, he saw a massive grizzly swat the dog away effortlessly and charge. With no time to shoulder the weapon, he fired from the hip instinctively. The muzzle was mere inches from the animal at the time.
The impact threw the man backwards, but his shot had connected. As the bear struggled to rise, the prospector gauged his angles and shot the enormous beast two more times. Old Groaner was done.
The Aftermath
The massive bear’s paws were more than ten inches across. However, that wasn’t what made the animal memorable. Once they got the big bruin dressed out, they found its jaw and skull to be grossly deformed. This accounted for the weird groaning sounds.
The two miners dug three .38-caliber pistol bullets out of the animal’s jaw along with a pair of .33-caliber rifle rounds. It seems that Jess Sethington had connected five times before the monster bear killed him. That was the sole physical evidence of Sethington’s gory demise that was ever discovered.
This was my bear gun while I was stationed in Alaska. It took a BATF Form 1 to build it legally, but when stoked with sabot slugs it was easy to carry while offering some proper downrange thump.
Ruminations
Alaska plays home to some 140,000 bears of all sorts. That’s an estimated 100,000 black bears, 30,000 brown/grizzly bears, and a further 4,700 polar bears. However, Alaska is a really big place. If you split Alaska in half, Texas would be the third-largest state.
Despite the space over which these animals are distributed, they are hardly rare. Attacks on humans are quite unusual, but I met two men during my time there who had been mauled while out hunting. I never left the confines of the Army post without a serious gun. More often than not, that was a registered short-barreled 12-bore stoked with sabot slugs. I still felt underequipped at times.
An adult male brown bear can reach 10 feet long and weigh 900 pounds in the summer. What purportedly determines whether you survive a violent encounter with one of these creatures is the relative size of your head to his jaws. If he can get his teeth around your skull, he will pop it like a grape. If not, you only get scalped.
There is an amazing series of books that were required reading for those of us planning to spend any time in the bush, titled simply, “Alaskan Bear Tales.” There are three volumes, and you can find them on Amazon. Be forewarned, these stories can be pretty gruesome. However, they serve as a reminder that there are some places where man is not always at the top of the food chain.
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Clever use of the trees & leaves
The “out-of-print” .256 Winchester is an excellent performer in John’s T/C Contender.
In the early 1960s there was a great deal of interest in long-range, small-bore handgun cartridges. Remington introduced the radical (at the time) XP-100 bolt gun chambered in .221 Fireball. Smith & Wesson contributed the ill-fated .22 Jet, and Marlin brought out a modernized lever-action rifle chambered in .256 Winchester Magnum.
Both of the latter two cartridges were based on the .357 Magnum necked down. The .256 was at least prototyped by Colt — in 1963 they produced a brochure showing four .256 sixguns — a Colt SAA, a Buntline Special and a Python, all priced at $125 each, plus their $89.95 .357 Magnum.
I have no idea how many, if any, were actually produced and sold as they simply couldn’t get it to work right; case setback with the cartridge case jamming the cylinder was the problem.
Marlin’s Model 57 .256 Levermatic was a modernized, box-magazine short-throw levergun.
Ruger Hawkeye, Marlin Levermatic
Ruger made the .256 work in their single-shot Hawkeye “revolver.” Instead of a cylinder, Ruger went with a single-shot breechblock fitted to a Blackhawk frame. The cartridge is a good one, however, the Marlin Model 57 Levermatic did not go over well perhaps because it was too modern-looking a departure from the traditional Marlin levergun. The Levermatic was hammerless and designed with a short action and very short lever throw which takes some getting used to for those of us raised on standard (and far smoother) Marlins and Winchesters.
Although the operation of the action is nothing to get excited about, the Levermatic shoots quite well with the .256 — a modernized version of the old .25-20.
It was made to be scoped and gives me excellent results for three shots at 50 yards using the Speer 75-gr. JFN over 14 grains of IMR 4227 for just under 2,300 fps and a group of 5/8″. The Hornady 60-gr. JSP over one more grain of the same powder gives the same muzzle velocity and the same accuracy.
John’s preferred powder? Alliant 2400.
John’s Contender Concoctions
Thompson/Center also chambered their Contender in .256. Mine has a 10″ bull barrel and is topped with a Burris 4X LER, my scope of choice. I do not know of anyone offering .256 Winchester brass today, however, I’ve always tried to keep a good supply of all pistol brass on hand and have often purchased brass found at reasonable prices long before I ever had any gun to accept it.
Since the .256 Winchester is based on the .357 Magnum case, I surmise you could make brass from the latter, but I’m guessing cases made thusly would need to be inside necked reamed. Fortunately, I have enough brass so this should never be a problem. Dies are available from RCBS and with the .256 being a bottlenecked case, only a full-length sizing and seating die are required.
My powders of choice for the .256 are the same two I use for most handgun loads — Alliant 2400 and IMR 4227. Hornady, Sierra and Speer all offer .25 caliber bullets in the proper weight range (60-75 grains). Accuracy is excellent with all loads I have used with three shots at 45 yards. They all average under — well under — 1″. Factory loads from Winchester use a 60-gr. JHP that clocks out just under 2,500 fps from the 10″ Contender barrel and places its shots in 7/8″.
My favorite loads include the Hornady 60-gr. JFP over 14.0 grains of 2400 for 2,440 fps. One grain more gives me just over 2,500 fps with both loads grouping 5/8″ for three shots. The most accurate load I’ve found is the Speer 75-gr. FP over 14.0 grains of 2400 (3/8″ at 2,250 fps).
John’s favorite bullets for the .256 Winchester are the Hornady 60-gr. FP, Speer 75-gr. FPFN and Sierra 75-gr. JHP.
Bottleneck golden oldies: The .256 Winchester (right) is a modernized version of the .25-20.
Missed Opportunities
The plan behind the .256 Winchester was to come up with a 2,500 fps small-bore sixgun load. It was an excellent idea. It’s unfortunate the engineers on the project did not do all the homework necessary to make this cartridge work in a revolver chamber. My friends Gary Reeder and J.D. Jones learned how to make bottlenecked cartridges work in sixguns, so you have to wonder why the original engineers couldn’t figure it out.
The Contender-chambered .256 Winchester is an excellent choice for small game and varmints as is the Marlin Levermatic (which is certainly more powerful than my old Marlin 1894 .25-20). The cartridge itself is quite potent for such work and — combined with its accuracy potential — gives everything needed.
This cartridge should not have died.
