Griffin & Howe is rekindling and reinventing a storied flame.
Pulling up to the spacious Hudson Farm facility in northern New Jersey to celebrate the Griffin & Howe Centennial, I was immediately impressed with the sheer scope of the operation. In addition to the huge showroom, there were meeting halls, what amounts to a small hotel, a full farming operation and—most intriguing—the Griffin & Howe Gunsmithing Shop.
While most rifle historians will be immediately familiar with the Griffin & Howe name—as their famous sidemount and customized rifles have received accolades for decades—many of the younger generation are likely unfamiliar. But what impressed me most while we hobnobbed under the huge tent erected for the 100th anniversary celebration was how a couple of relative youngsters have brought the brand seamlessly into the 21st century.
And, catching my eye immediately, was a unique rifle—the Highlander—blending a walnut stock with classic lines and a carbon-fiber barrel, but with steel sections to accommodate traditional iron sights.
That rifle at the Centennial celebration was—appropriately—chambered for .35 Whelen, but little did I know that just a couple years later we’d be putting a similar model in .375 H&H Magnum to the test in Zimbabwe.
High Class, High Expectations
The Highlander Safari is the larger-bore variant of the G&H Highlander, being offered in both .375 H&H Magnum and .375 Ruger. Like most rifles available from Griffin & Howe, plenty of options are available to the customer, as their gunsmithing shop is capable of just about anything your checkbook and imagination could handle.
At the rifle’s heart is the Defiance Rebel CRF action, attached to a Proof Research Sendero carbon-fiber-wrapped barrel and housed in either a premium walnut or synthetic stock. Dan Rossiter, stockmaker of excellence and manager of the Griffin & Howe Gunsmithing Shop, would bring along a beautiful, figured walnut stock variant on our safari to the Sango concession of the Savé Valley Conservancy, for both backup on the dangerous game species and to handle any plains game species.
Topped with a Swarovski Z8i 1-8×24 in G&H quick detachable top-mount rings, this rifle exhibited true versatility, performing wonderfully in a number of situations.
I readily admit having a strong preference for a controlled-round-feed (CRF) action in a repeater for use on dangerous game, and though the Mauser 98 and its innumerable clones are probably what come to mind when discussing CRF actions, there are other options. The Defiance Rebel is one, and I quickly came to like this action.
Using a “modern claw style” extractor to handle the cartridge without question, the Rebel allows the user to insert a cartridge into the chamber and close the bolt over it without running the risk of breaking the extractor. It acts like a push-feed when loading directly into the chamber, and as a CRF when loading from the magazine. This will turn a “three-down” rifle into a four-shot gun, and when the game is large and close at hand, that extra shot will be much appreciated.
Constructed of aircraft-certified 416 stainless-steel, the Rebel will surely handle the pressures generated by the pair of 375s, and the one-piece steel bolt cycles as smoothly as you could ask for. That bolt face handled the feeding and extraction without a single issue; during the course of our safari, we’d load, empty and reload the rifles several times a day, not to mention running the bolt during the course of taking an animal. I had complete confidence in that Rebel action.
A three-position Winchester 70-style safety allows the shooter to safely unload the firearm, and a hinged floorplate allows for quick emptying of the magazine; the Highlander Safari in .375 H&H held three cartridges in the magazine. A spring-loaded bolt release located at the left rear of the receiver allows the bolt to be removed for cleaning. The action also features a TriggerTech trigger timed to the action, and that trigger broke cleanly at about 2½ pounds, with almost no creep or overtravel.
The Proof Research Sendero carbon-fiber barrel certainly has a larger diameter than what any of us are used to seeing on a dangerous game gun, and being a .375-inch bore, it’s bigger than most. With a metal insert on the outside of the barrel for the island rear sight and at the muzzle for the hooded front sight, the Highlander Safari definitely has a unique barrel look.
Employing a 1:12 twist, the 24-inch barrel will take full advantage of the velocity potential of the .375 H&H Magnum, without being unwieldy in the thick bush. Accuracy was excellent, and this rifle showed sub-MOA groups with both soft-points and solids. Rossiter and I tried a few ammo brands, but we decided to listen to the rifle: It liked the Barnes factory ammo best, using 300-grain TSX expanding bullets and the 300-grain Barnes Banded solids.
The stock on the Highlander Safari is a thing of beauty, balancing wonderfully in all carrying positions, and coming to the shoulder almost effortlessly. I met Rossiter years ago, as a member of the American Custom Gunmaker’s Guild, and his stock design—in both walnut and synthetic—makes all sorts of sense for a do-all rifle like this.
The comb is a subdued Monte Carlo design, being carved for use with a riflescope, but the shooter can still make good use of the iron sights by driving the cheek down onto the comb. A proper Silver’s recoil pad takes the sting out of the .375 H&H—of which there isn’t much with this stock design—and there is proper hand-cut checkering on pistol grip and forend. I liked the balance of the rifle with the Swarovski scope onboard and loved the feel and balance with the scope removed. I could easily wrap my hand around the receiver and carry the iron-sighted gun for miles on the trail.
For the customer, plenty of bespoke options are available from Griffin & Howe, ranging from length of pull (their fitting service is nothing shy of excellent), to engraving and metal finishing choices (Rossiter’s brother, Chris, is the house engraver—and his work is stunning). If the metalwork of your rifle is to be engraved, the receiver and barrel shanks must be left in the white and clear-coated.
Color case hardening is available for the bottom metal, iron sights and bases, scope rings and bases, and pistol grip cap if so desired. The walnut-stocked variant tips the scales right around the 9-pound mark (sans scope or ammo), and you can shave off a half-pound by going with the synthetic stock, and both models offer the option of elite blackout Cerakote finish. The synthetic model comes stock with a Spartan magnetic bipod socket; that’s an option for the wood stocked model.
At the Range and in the Field
Griffin & Howe at Hudson Farm offers a full-service training facility, with classes for shotguns, handguns and rifles, and for the latter you can take your hunting or target rifle out to a considerable distance. Rossiter had the rifle trued out to 500 yards, with a ballistic turret so marked atop the Swarovski scope. The rifle showed sub-MOA accuracy out to that mark, and we felt we had things nailed down pretty well.
In Zimbabwe, with PH Mark Jansen on the Sango concession of the Savé Valley Conservancy, we each had a management bull and cow buffalo available, plus a small assortment of plains game. We had another G&H rifle—the Criterion in .404 Jeffery—on hand for the primary duty on the big stuff, with the Highlander Safari coming in as a backup for the buffalo.
When Rossiter’s bull didn’t exactly read the script and decided he’d take over a half-dozen shots, Jansen asked me to help put the bull down. Rossiter and I fired almost simultaneously, and the bull’s nose was soon in the dirt, with the death bellow following closely. That Highlander Safari performed perfectly, putting a bullet on the point of the shoulder from about 60 yards. We’d later recover that 300-grain Barnes TSX, well expanded and retaining 92 percent of its original weight.
A few days later, Rossiter would find himself 284 yards from the largest slab of eland bull I’ve ever seen in my life, and laying prone across his pack, put a TSX through the huge bull’s lungs. The ballistic turret made his life easy, and walking up to that bull reinforced the fact that a truly big eland bull is bigger than any Cape buffalo that ever walked. Our cameraman, Michael “Heffalump” Heffernan, was offered the opportunity to take a pair of impala rams with the Highlander Safari, making a pair of one-shot kills at 168 and 209 yards, respectively, once again proving the flexibility of the venerable .375 H&H Magnum.
To top it off, I was invited to participate in a management elephant bull hunt at the end of the safari, using the Highlander Safari for backup duties. The rifle had no issue putting a 300-grain Barnes Banded Solid into the bull’s brain at 15 paces. Death was instantaneous, with all of the meat neatly weighed and donated to the villages.
The Highlander Safari handled it all, from the small to the tall, the near to the far, with grace.
The Cost of Bespoke
The rifle we brought to Zimbabwe had a Grade 5 Turkish Walnut stock, handworked by the Griffin & Howe team. Time is money, as the saying goes, and the hours put into a custom piece need to be paid for. Without the walnut being upgraded, the Highlander Safari starts at $28,400. Our rifle had a 14-inch length of pull—to accommodate my longer arms—and that feature can easily be adapted to the customer, though other upgrades are obviously going to raise the price.
Griffin & Howe is working toward offering an “off-the-rack” stocked version, with a length of pull suited to the customer that will reduce costs. There is always the synthetic version—with stocks finished in Gore’s Sub Alpine, Open Country or Cover camo patterns—which sports a price tag of $11,750, again reflecting the amount of handwork that goes into a Griffin & Howe stock and metalwork.
I’ll be the first to admit that the carbon-fiber barrel is a non-traditional look on a bespoke rifle, but I will also testify that, after carrying that rifle through the ins and outs of a week on safari, I truly enjoyed the experience. I’ve been blessed to have used a number of custom/bespoke rifles over the years, and the G&H Highlander Safari sits among some of the best, especially in the stock design department. The action is slick, the trigger is sweet, and the G&H quick-detach mounts allow the optic to be removed and reinstalled without fear of losing zero.
If you’re interested in the custom rifle experience, contact Rossiter at Griffin & Howe, or stop by their booth at one of the outdoor shows and hold the Highlander Safari for yourself—I’ll wager you’ll be impressed. Rossiter has indicated that in addition to the .375 H&H Magnum and .375 Ruger offerings, they are offering the .35 Whelen chambering so long as the barrel blanks hold out.
Background: A Very Brief History of Griffin & Howe
Seymour Griffin—a New York City cabinet maker—was inspired by President Teddy Roosevelt’s book African Game Trails and wanted to use a .30-06 rifle like his hero. He liked the action of the 1903 Springfield, but the military stock left much to be desired, so he restocked it himself using a French walnut blank. In the 1920s, Col. Townsend Whelen heard of Griffin’s talents and introduced him to the foreman of the Frankford Arsenal, James Howe.
Howe collaborated with Whelen to develop the .35 Whelen, and that cartridge remains inexorably tied to the Griffin & Howe name. Griffin & Howe opened their doors in June of 1923, but Howe would leave by the year’s end. By the 1930s, the quickly famous G&H detachable scope side-mount was on the market, and G&H was selling not just fine rifles, but all sorts of outdoor gear.
The firm would make their most famous connection when they outfitted Ernest Hemingway with the .30-06 Springfield rifle made famous in Green Hills of Africa, and which inspired the fictional works Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber. Griffin & Howe would also provide rifles to the likes of Clark Gable, President Dwight Eisenhower and author Robert Ruark. After Griffin’s retirement in the late 1950s, the company declined until gunsmith Bill Ward acquired the assets, keeping the name alive through the 1970s and ’80s.
By 2015, Steven Polanish would assume CEO duties, and today, he has brought the G&H name onto the 4,000-plus-acre Hudson Farm complex, with G&H issuing new rifle designs in 2017. The complex offers training for handgunners, shotgunners and riflemen alike, as well as an enormous showroom full of premium firearms and gear.
Having celebrated their 100th anniversary, Griffin & Howe is most definitely back, delivering all the classic products as well as new, cutting-edge rifle designs. Brothers Dan and Chris Rossiter are among a crack team in the gunsmithing department, which is turning out some head-turning products.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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