DAMN!!!!! My bloglines feed has been buggy lately, didn't see this till this evening. We done talked guns a bit, Froggy, and I will reiterate, I am a .30 man. My main hunting rifle is a Short Magazine Lee-Enfield, chambered in the venerable .303 British cartridge. Hell, I have 4 of them, and I likes my furniture. Full military stock is the way to go. The cut down stocks never shoot well unless you are having the bed glassed&leveled professionally, and for brush you can not beat it. Use the damn thing as a club, buff the scratchs out of the wood and give it a linseed oil rub down and you are ready for inspection. Getting a bit hard to find a wide variety of loads, though you being near the source you can special order from Sellier&Bellot, one of my favorite hard rice dealers, and there is a company in Serbia named PRVI Partizan that carries 125gr through 184gr Softpoint jacketed that shoot very well. Threw about 20 125s into the wetsand barrel and dug them out, very nice expansion. Spread to 3/4 inch and didn't frag much. Also, PMP out of South Afrika still moves .303. I just picked up a box of 174gr SP to try out.
OK, I will get down off my ammo crate now with an admonishment. If you are looking at SMLEs look at a lot of them. And don't be shy! Drop the mag and pull the bolt. Eyeball the barrel with a good light, put it back together and shake hell out of it. It rattles? Back in the stack. There are many in excellent, never issued condition, though they are quite often heavily coated in cosmolin or laquer. Got to look for that gem in the rough.
DAMN!!!!! My bloglines feed has been buggy lately, didn't see this till this evening. We done talked guns a bit, Froggy, and I will reiterate, I am a .30 man. My main hunting rifle is a Short Magazine Lee-Enfield, chambered in the venerable .303 British cartridge. Hell, I have 4 of them, and I likes my furniture. Full military stock is the way to go. The cut down stocks never shoot well unless you are having the bed glassed&leveled professionally, and for brush you can not beat it. Use the damn thing as a club, buff the scratchs out of the wood and give it a linseed oil rub down and you are ready for inspection. Getting a bit hard to find a wide variety of loads, though you being near the source you can special order from Sellier&Bellot, one of my favorite hard rice dealers, and there is a company in Serbia named PRVI Partizan that carries 125gr through 184gr Softpoint jacketed that shoot very well. Threw about 20 125s into the wetsand barrel and dug them out, very nice expansion. Spread to 3/4 inch and didn't frag much. Also, PMP out of South Afrika still moves .303. I just picked up a box of 174gr SP to try out.
OK, I will get down off my ammo crate now with an admonishment. If you are looking at SMLEs look at a lot of them. And don't be shy! Drop the mag and pull the bolt. Eyeball the barrel with a good light, put it back together and shake hell out of it. It rattles? Back in the stack. There are many in excellent, never issued condition, though they are quite often heavily coated in cosmolin or laquer. Got to look for that gem in the rough.