By Mike Nesbitt | Contributing Editor
Have you ever bought a brand new .25-35? I just did.
It’s a new Highwall by C. Sharps Arms. You might say I just walked in and bought it but there was actually much more to it than that. Let me tell you all about it.
And if a new Highwall in a traditional early smokeless caliber might interest you, C. Sharps Arms also offers them in .30-30, .30-40, .303 British, and even the big .405 Winchester, plus some other and more recent smokeless flavors. There is a lot of history in the early smokeless cartridges.
My story actually starts a couple of years ago, so let me start this tale from the real beginning. In 2023 my partner and I stopped at the C. Sharps Arms shop and showroom in Big Timber, Montana, while on our way to the Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match. On the ‘ready rack’ and for sale in the showroom was a very pretty Highwall in .25-35 and that certainly caught my eye. The rifle was in the “Classic” format, with a crescent “rifle” butt plate, along with a half-round #3 weight barrel which was 26 inches long. To me, that rifle was a real beauty and while I didn’t buy it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
A Favorite Cartridge
The .25-35 cartridge has been a favorite of mine for years and I have had a modest number of them in Winchester and Savage lever action rifles. But those guns had ‘gone down the trail’ some years ago and I also had sold my reloading dies as well as all of the ammunition which I had for that caliber. My lack of accessories helped me walk away from the new rifle in the C. Sharps Arms showroom and we headed on to Forsyth and the Quigley match.
But the .25-35 rifle stayed on my mind. Because I’m a long-time user of the .250-3000 Savage, I do have a good supply of 100 grain .257-inch diameter bullets and a single shot .25-35 could use those very well. The pointed bullets for the .250 would certainly cause no problems in the single shot Highwall, with no tubular magazine to contend with or to even keep in mind. In fact, an article I had read many years ago gave recommendations for using handloaded 100-grain bullets in the .25-35 as a deer rifle and that story came back to mind with certain powers of suggestion. (That article “GUNS FOR DEER HUNTING” was written by Arthur H. Carhart and it appeared in the 1951 Shooter’s Bible which my father had. I think I read every page of that volume when in grade school.)
While at the Quigley Match, where most of my thoughts were directed to the new .45-70 Sharps I was using, and I shot poorly that year. But that didn’t stop me from noticing things for sale along the vendors’ row which is a delightful place for getting shooting-related treasures. A couple of surprising things were found, one which was a very nice, apparently unused, set of RCBS .25-35 reloading dies, and to add to that was a bag of new Hornady brass for the .25-35. Both of those items were on the “hard to find” list but, at first, I didn’t buy them either.
Of course, those dies and the new brass did a good job of chipping away any resistance I might have had and before anyone else could buy those components, I decided to buy the .25-35 Highwall and also bought those dies and cartridge cases. Then, after the Quigley Match had ended, we drove back to Big Timber to spend the night. The following morning, which was a Monday, we were back at the C. Sharps Arms shop right at opening time. The .25-35 was gone and I was told that it had sold on either the previous Friday or Saturday.
My disappointment was rather obvious and Pat Dulin said they’d be glad to make another one for me. However, that didn’t have the same “pull” as just walking in and finding the rifle. Perhaps some practical reasoning took over and I thanked him but did not submit an order for the new rifle. Instead, I took the .25-35 dies and cartridge cases home and stashed them in my reloading room, with no plans at all about using them.
Two Years Later…
Little thought was given to the idea of a new .25-35 for the next two years. Then, almost as if they knew when I’d be coming back, was another Highwall in .25-35 caliber. If anything, this one was even prettier than the other one and I must admit that I have forgotten which features the first one had. But this new one was outstanding with very fancy wood, a pistol grip, the ‘Classic’ crescent “rifle” butt plate and, once again, the 26-inch half-round #3 barrel. One option it didn’t have was a single-set trigger but that didn’t slow my thinking down at all. I was drawn to this rifle immediately but my gun-buying budget had already been severely taxed and I was simply not prepared for this .25-35. So, it stayed in the shop at C. Sharps Arms when my partner and I left for the camp at “Quigleyville.”
Two days later, when the C. Sharps Arms crew arrived at the Quigley camp, they brought the .25-35 with them. So, I had to look at it again. But then I saw how other people were also looking at it and expressing high levels of interest. That was the last straw, I bought it!
This rifle, when purchased, had a buckhorn rear sight to go along with the nickel-silver front blade. I like the bright blade, especially for shooting in the woods, but that buckhorn rear sight had to be replaced. In order to shoot the new gun right away, I simply took a short-range Vernier sight off of my Low-wall in .44-40 and mounted it on the Highwall .25-35, thinking how that would do for some shooting before I got another sight, which could then go on either of those two guns. That, however, was a real disappointment because the short-range Vernier sight could not be adjusted low enough and my first test shots simply went over the target.
So, a good search was made for an appropriate sight that would be lower than the Vernier tang sight. That search led me straight to Montana Vintage Arms, and their sight selection in my opinion is the best. At first, I looked at one of their sporting tang sights but then my choice changed to their Combination Rear Sight which is a copy of the old Marble’s Flexible tang sight. I’ve been using the Marble’s sights for years, so long ago that they sold for just $7, on old Winchester Model ‘92s and ‘94s plus the Savage 99s. I liked the Marble’s sights, which were introduced in 1903, because they were “spring loaded” in the upright position instead of locked and if the rifle was dropped or bumped accidentally, the sight might just move a bit instead of being bent. And when the sight was delivered, it very quickly was put on the rifle.
Simply judging by the looks of that rifle with its new sight, that was the best sight to get. It really “looks the part.” The Winchester Highwall, of course, was a black powder rifle that very easily remained in the Winchester catalog well into the smokeless powder era and this C. Sharps Arms version falls head-first into that realm when chambered in one of the very early smokeless powder cartridges. That Combination Rear Sight is adjustable, of course, but it is not generally intended for target work where it would be re-adjusted between targets. My intentions for this rifle, with its MVA rear sight, were to sight it in at perhaps 100 yards and then leave the sight alone, to use the rifle in the woods as a hunting gun. (Whether I go hunting again or not does remain to be seen but that’s what I’m planning for.)
About the Ammunition
Some ammunition was loaded using 100-grain Speer “Hot-Cor” bullets, over a charge of 25 ½ grains of IMR 3031 powder. That might be expressed as a mild load, certainly not a max load, and I was not interested in milking all of the velocity possible out of this rifle or cartridge. When five rounds were fired, they were speed checked at about 2,350 feet per second which is just a bit faster than the old factory load using a 117-grain bullet at 2,300 fps.
I have to say, those .25-35s with the pointed bullets reminded me of the old Savage .22 High Power. That was just a flash from the past.
And the Highwall .25-35 with those loads; what a sweet rifle to shoot. If the gun has any kick to it, I really didn’t notice. The sweetness and lack of recoil will certainly be on the plus side of things which will put this gun high on the activity list for more shooting.
How does it shoot? So far, I have only one target but that is a target I’ll brag about just a little bit. It is a standard 100-yard target which was fired at mainly to see if the new rear sight was low enough to put the bullets on the target. Yes, the sight was certainly low enough. The silver front sight was held at 6 o’clock on the bottom of the black, and five shots were fired without using a scope to spot those shots. So, I don’t know which order the holes in the target appeared and did not see the group until I went downrange to retrieve the target. But when I saw the group, I was certainly pleased.
Those five shots all printed low and left in the black, about at 8 o’clock, all clustered into 1 ½ inches. In the picture it might look like only four hits but the bullet hole furthest to the left is a double, completing the five-shot group. This means the sight can be raised slightly and the front sight can be tapped just a bit to the left in order to bring the group closer to the middle. That will be done later and the group fired clearly shows me what I needed to know, the rear sight was a very good addition to the gun.
That delighted me so much, there was no point in doing any more shooting right away. What I’ll do is to make up more of those loads, give the sights just a little bit of attention, and then go back to the range for some enjoyable shooting. And you can expect a follow-up story to report my progress.
Now, looking back over the two years since I missed getting that first Highwall in .25-35, the time span seems to be much shorter. That’s typical of looking back… And the future looks much brighter and I’ll be looking for excuses to use this rifle more. Maybe a lot more…
