Roy Weatherby; Developed Popular Big-Game Rifle

Roy Weatherby, who attracted fame and earned a fortune by creating the high-velocity weaponry that bears his name, died Tuesday after heart surgery at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. He was 77 and had developed complications from an earlier bypass operation that required additional surgery.

Although a lifelong hunter, Weatherby said in a 1980 interview that “I’ve always been a kind-hearted sort of fellow.”

He told of the time that trait was sorely tested when he had wounded a deer but didn’t kill it and had to watch helplessly as it disappeared into the brush.

“I knew it was going to die a painful, lingering death. . . . I felt awful about it. . . .”

Made Some Changes

The incident transformed Weatherby, who was then a 29-year-old insurance salesman, into the owner of Weatherby Inc., the South Gate rifle maker. He designed a high-velocity rifle that “dropped every animal where I hit him” on subsequent hunting expeditions. And “they all died instantly.”

The bullet Weatherby developed to go along with the rifle kills by shock because it retains its velocity at much greater distances and serves to destroy nerve centers and tissue, causing instantaneous death.

Weatherby wrote of his new rifle in Field & Stream magazine and the demand for orders put a quick end to his insurance career. He found himself opening a shop on Long Beach Boulevard near the firm’s present location.

Today the rifles, which can cost as much as $1,000 with engraving and custom stocks, are manufactured in Japan, although they are still designed and marketed by the Weatherby firm.

Started in Kansas

Weatherby traced his fascination with weapons to his boyhood on a Kansas farm. He saw an advertisement offering a Daisy BB gun as a premium for selling garden seeds. He sold enough seed packets to neighbors to claim the gun and was content with hunting as a hobby until that unsettling day with the wounded deer.

In 1956, to stimulate interest in big-game hunting and conservation, he created the Weatherby Big Game Trophy, considered a top recognition for hunters. In 1985, on the 40th anniversary of his company, President Reagan wrote that “stories like yours are encouraging and inspiring, for it is hard-working individuals like you who make up the backbone of this nation.”

Weatherby retired from the company in 1986 and his son, Roy Jr., is now president. His other survivors include his wife, Camilla, two daughters, seven grandchildren, one great-granddaughter and two sisters.

Services are scheduled today at 2 p.m. at Florence Avenue 4-Square Church in Santa Fe Springs. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the American Heart Assn. are asked.