Three Mauser M03s vs Feral Beasties

Moonless night - check.
Full tank - check.
Full block of Cadbury hazelnut chocolate - check.
Flasks with hot water, cooler bag with cold milk, coffee and hot chocolate sachets, sandwiches, even breakfast - check.
Million candlepower spotlight - check

What else … ? Ah, that's right. Three Mauser M03s, perfectly sighted in - check.

The late afternoon light was fading by the time I drove from where I'd fired test shots with each of my M03s to a broad slope where I'd seen several pairs of rabbits the week before. On that day I was travelling light and had only a 30-06, looking for four pigs that had been seen in the area. The rabbits had been safe then. Today I had a 243 Winchester and a bag of deadly accurate hand-loads. Today was going to be different.

The first shot was 200 meters a long way up the slope at a rabbit that crept slowly from behind a bracken bush. Zok! The second was only 100 meters away along the flat, so I had to aim at fresh air, three centimeters below the intended point of impact. The lack of damage to the body made this wild rabbit as good as a bought one. The farmer's daughter's pets would approve. After I'd delivered the rabbits and enjoyed some freshly fried potato slices hot from the pan I got back to work, meaning, the rabbits were safe again. I knew from experience at this farm that the foxes clock-on at seven pm and the pigs at midnight. I also knew from experience that the weather report is a big fat lie and that showers easing in the evening with light winds means that my windscreen wipers would be mostly on and that the 243's wind-bucking performance would come in handy. All came true.

Seven foxes had clocked-on for the last time before midnight when I was heading for the soft, wet paddock where Mrs Farmer had seen the freshest digging. Many thistle roots had been munched by a big pig, she said. Experience again had taught me to listen carefully to the clues the landowners provided. Many many times I'd found pigs within a good seven iron shot of their best recommendation.

The thing about moonless nights is that the intensely high contrast of a million candlepower focussed by a parabolic reflector can make interpreting the two dimensional scene that is lit up quite tricky. I was holding the lamp with my right hand and trying to focus my binoculars with my left, sussing out some dark shapes, when another dark shape made a distinct movement at the edge of the scene. I panned the binoculars but forgot to move the light. Everything went dark. Bugger! Once I had the binos and the light lined up I found I was looking at a muddy snouted and totally guilty pig. The dark shapes that had caught my eye were huge clumps of turned over soil.

As I walked to the back of the Landcruiser I felt like a golfer. Hmm … a gentle swish with a five iron or a strong swing with a seven? It was the Mauser M03 in 270 Winchester that I lifted from the rifle box and I soon had it teed up on the front of the Landcruiser. Earlier in the day when checking the sights I noticed that the Zeiss ASV+ ring number 004 has five clicks between 100 and 200 meters. Five clicks it is then. Reach up to flick the light back on, and now load, and press the cocking lever to the right. Oh OK then - the Victory HT has an illuminated reticle so I may as well switch it on. Yes, that's nice. Now where are you piggie? There, quartering towards me. Bang. Whop.

Three Mauser M03s vs a Beer Box

Some wild pigs were making a mess of a farm I shoot on and I hadn't been able to find them during a few sessions at dawn and dusk. It was going to take an all-nighter to deal with this mob. I arrived mid afternoon and after gathering the latest intel from Mr & Mrs Farmer, drove to a sheltered valley to check points of impact for the three Mauser M03 rifles I'd brought along in my custom rifle box.

Each rifle was fitted with the same barrel as used previously, which had been lubricated with a few drops of Break-Free for storage. Before heading out I pushed a tight patch through each barrel, to remove oil residue. I didn't use a solvent to strip oil from the bores. They looked clean and shiny but not oily.

I set up a beer box (empty!) at 100 meters and fired two shots from each rifle over the front of my Landcruiser. The 270 Winchester and the 30-06 were consistent in placing the first shot through the clean barrel a few centimetres higher than the second shot. With the 243 Winchester I used a leftover hand load with a different bullet and charge as the fouling shot, so the impact point doesn't relate to the second shot. All three of the second shots went exactly where I wanted them to go, forming a neat 16mm group just above the target square. That'll do Mauser. :-)

Cue feral beasties!

Mauser M03 - Barrel Change Accuracy

I've been wanting to do this accuracy & repeatability test with my Mauser M03 system for a while. This isn't as big a test as I still plan to do one day, but it's useful nonetheless. Here's what I did, to assess how well the system holds zero after barrel & scope changes.

I fired a test shot with the 243 barrel installed on my Mauser M03 Deluxe stock and receiver. It was bang on, just above line of sight at 100m, as expected. I switched to the 6.5x55 barrel and fired a shot, to find that it was 1.2 milliradians lower and 0.9 milliradians to the left. I put the 243 barrel back on and moved to a new target sheet, shown in the picture below. I then fired alternating shots with the 243 and 6.5x55 barrels, changing and adjusting the scope each time.

I would have liked the 6.5x55 holes to be above the square, like the 243 holes, but I got the scope adjustment wrong with the first shot, so stuck with that for the next.

I fired only two shots from each barrel. I was hand-loading each round at the range, as well as changing barrels and it took quite a while to do. My video camera was whirring away up near the target throughout all this; I still haven't checked if I got all of the shots 'in the can'. :-) (I did - video now embedded below).

The results: the two shots in each group are 17mm apart, which is only slightly more than when I don't change the barrel with each shot. There was a wafting breeze blowing across the range and a difficult hot afternoon mirage to deal with. All in all, I'm impressed and so were the other fellows who watched my progress. A couple of them said they'd be happy if they could get accuracy like that from their hunting rifles, noting that they don't switch barrels, the scope, or make ammo on the spot. As explained in earlier posts, as a hunter it's where the first shot goes that matters for me, far more than where the second, third, fourth or fifth shots go.

I've still got some ammunition tuning to do and these barrels should become more accurate as the shot count climbs over 50, so stay tuned for even better results. :-)