Here’s another take on last week’s GGP of the Mauser Sporter 7x57mm rifle. This one (also from Collectors Firearms) is more conventional-looking, and chambered for the unusual 8x60mm S cartridge:
And the action is likewise quite lovely, with a polished knob bolt (rather than the butterknife) and conventional scope rings. Still with the full stock and double set triggers, though.
As for the 8x60mm S cartridge: it’s basically a lengthened casing derived from the military 8x57mm cartridge, and was created to circumvent the Versailles Treaty restrictions on the production of military chamberings — the thought being that hunters and their clubs could become ersatz reserve units for the Wehrmacht. (I know, stupid, but that’s gummint for ya.) So DWM simply changed the cartridge while keeping the bullet (the “S” denotes .323″) — and the longer casing meant more gunpowder, ergo a more powerful cartridge. As such, the 8x60mm is very close to the .30-06 Springfield in terms of performance.
So why buy this rifle, when the cartridges are hard to find? Actually, one might think that the 8×60 S is rare, but it isn’t — quite a feat given that it was made solely for pre-WWII German hunting rifles. True, you do have to look around for them, but they’re made in quantity by Serbia’s Prvi Partizan company, and in keeping with PPU’s philosophy, they’re inexpensive — I found them selling for just over $22 per 20, which makes the rifle a perfectly acceptable purchase. (The only problem is that this rifle is horribly –and I think unjustifiably — expensive, even by Collector’s standards.)
Now… where are those lottery tickets?
There’s nothing like a full stock Mauser to get me aroused.
Especially in 7 x 57.
I’ll have to look it up on Collectors to see what it fetches.
It may be over my head.
I have left a fair amount of money at Collectors over the years, but not in a pretty good while.
Earlier today I asked a sportsman friend of mine to take me white-tail hunting this fall and winter.
This would certainly do the job in the right hands.
molonlabe28: Where were you when I was selling my dad’s Mannlicher (full) stocked Mauser in 7×57 that looked much like the example, lacking the double set trigger and with a lower-placed Weaver scope?
It was a lovely rifle with lots of memories, but it did not fit in my “battery,” so it went to a hunting-writer friend who gave it to his son, who shoots deer with it in Wyoming. So that was good.
In my safe are numerous rifles chambered for 100 yr old cartridges. Just recently I bought a 9.3×62 Ruger as my top end cartridge. I really can’t stand all the hype and BS about “new” stuff.