Quote:
|
While not a comment on the original topic, was there not a time when there were newly manufactured commercial, sporting versions of military rifles marketed? I don't think there were commercial Krags but I'm pretty sure there were commercial sporting versions of the 1903, and all sorts of commercial Mausers manufactured. Not sure, because I've never read anything about them, but there may have been sporting versions of the Lee-Enfield. Either that or sporterizing military rifles has been done since before 1900. Likewise, there were sporting Mannlichers, perhaps the most desirable of all of them. But no doubt there were more sporting Mausers than anything else and in all sorts of calibers. I wonder how many of them were in 8mm Mauser?
|
A Springfield NRA Sporter is a scarce and valuable rifle. There were so few made that to say they exist is pretty much a technicality. Not something to go hunting with any more. Certainly there were numbers of nice sporters built on Springfield actions by independent gunsmiths; one of the first for Teddy Roosevelt. Col Townsen Whelen used his pull at Springfield Armory to get some very nice rifles in collaboration with his gunsmiths.
There were nice sporting rifles built on the Lee-Speed .303. By the time the SMLE was in service, British sportsmen had moved on. The original Romanian Mannlicher was very popular there for a while. I think the British sporting market had gone largely to Mausers by the time the Mannlicher Schoenauer with flush rotary magazine came out.
There is no end to the variety of Mauser sporters. I have seen nice hunting rifles on the 1888 Commission action and Haenel rifles with the '88 bolt over a flush magazine of their own design, more complicated than the Mauser box. Except in Sweden which stuck to the '94-'96 design, the next big seller was the '98 Mauser. I don't think there were many sporting versions of the Belgian and Spanish Mausers 1891-1895.
Of course I generalize, you can find about anything over the 70 years or so that a Free American could mailorder a rifle.