Roy Edward Weatherby was born to Kansas farmers in 1910 and grew up living hand to mouth, like so many farmers do.

The economic crash and the dust bowl had been the ruin of many farmers, and California was the West Coast torch of opportunity. So in the early 1940s, he and his wife, Camilla, moved to Huntington Park, California, where he took a job selling insurance.

When a Utah mule deer hunt resulted in a lost animal, Roy’s wheels began to turn. With the hope of prosperity in his mind and a farm boy’s work ethic in his heart, he bought a lathe and a drill press and started designing cartridges and making rifles in his basement.

His cartridges were all based upon modified or whittled-down and modified versions of the old .300 H&H Magnum case. These featured the Magnum belt and trademark double-radius shoulder. The .257 and .270 as well as the .300 Weatherby Magnums were his first efforts.

Word got around, and eventually Roy opened up a gun shop in South Gate sometime in 1945.

One day, Gary Cooper walked in. Roy sold him a rifle and, quickly enough, Gary’s friends wanted a “Weatherby rifle,” too.

Other Weatherby fans of note included John Wayne and Roy Rogers, as well as world-renowned hunters Elgin Gates and Herb Klein.

At first Roy cobbled rifles together out of surplus military actions as well as the occasional Winchester Model 70. While these were completely satisfactory for such chamberings, Roy knew that he would eventually have to design his own action to be competitive in the gun market.

Together with Fred Jennie, an engineer, Roy designed the Mark V, which in 1958 came to be the centerpiece of Weatherby’s rifle production.

As business grew, he added more cartridges to his lineup. Not only were they making the rifles, they had to load the ammunition for them. Due to the high velocity of his cartridges, regular cup and core bullets seldom had the integrity to hold up.

So Roy began offering the then-relatively new Nosler Partition bullets to big game hunters desiring a projectile designed to hold up to the biggest game on earth.

Additional cartridges and rifle designs have continued to flourish and today, although Roy passed on, his dream lives on.

Ed Weatherby picked up the torch of the family business after his father’s death in April of 1988. Today, Weatherby’s rifles are proudly made in Sheridan, Wyoming.

While my own experience with Weatherby is limited, I love the original cartridge designs and styling of their rifles. Not just a status symbol, these rifles really are on the level. My personal favorite Weatherby calibers are the .257, .270, .300 and .340 Magnums.

The .338-378 Weatherby and relatively newly released 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnums and their ponderous cases are the epitome of power and speed in their calibers. These, among others, are some of the finest, highest-velocity hunting cartridges available.

Regardless of whether you’re a fan of Weatherby’s products, you’ve got to respect all the hard work and persistence which turned Roy Weatherby into a household name.

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