Thread: Old school hunting

Originally Posted by grandpamac

Greetings, I wonder if that clay pan and the hills behind are choked with contorta by now. We tend to forget how little of the wizzo clothing, kit and especially rifles was available to most as recently as the 1950's and 60's. GPM.

@grandpamac And even later than that. I bought my first centrefire in 1980; a year after I left school. It was an ex WW2 K98 8x57. It cost around $70 and I had to put it on layby because my butchery apprentice wages couldn't afford that cost. I put an old 4x32 Pecar scope on it. It was beaten up and had a very fine crosshair reticle, but again, was all I could afford. But even then, it was mostly BSA's and Parker Hales that were the predominant new rifles we saw in Taranaki.

Funny; to this day I can still remember firing my first ever centrefire shot through that rifle, and the trepidation before I pulled the trigger; I would have been 17. I'd got my gun licence at 16, and because I asn't 18 mum and dad had to agree to me getting it. The only reason they did was because I'd had firearm training in the ATC. They bought me a Stirling .22 for my 16th birthday.

About 2 years later I bought a new Ruger M77 .270 from Sutherland Sports in NP. Cost me $434, and mum hit the roof when I told her the cost! I paid a deposit, put it on laybuy, took it home. I drove to NP every Friday night to put $20 down on it until I'd paid it off!

Barwicks Auction Mart in Gisborne I can remember as a young fella going in and they had racks of 303 some fully wooded some not many new - BSA Martini action .22 rifles and 410 Kea guns for sale ( the .22 BSA might have been ex training or cadet rifles they had bought at auction ??? ) and lots of ex army clothing - used to ride back up to work on an old triumph 650 wearing an ex army great coat -

Speaking of drooling.... K98s being packed up after WW2....


@NIMROD Dad's old farming mags had the Valentine's surplus store ads on te back page. I used to drool at the ads for new/in grease Jungle carbines and M1 carbines for $26! Sorry for the old man "in my day" references!

Originally Posted by bumblefoot

Speaking of drooling.... K98s being packed up after WW2....

Attachment 243422
@NIMROD Dad's old farming mags had the Valentine's surplus store ads on te back page. I used to drool at the ads for new/in grease Jungle carbines and M1 carbines for $26! Sorry for the old man "in my day" references!

I wonder how many of those Mausers ended up as Parker Hales or Midlands - jungle carbines- nice concept pity about the complete lack of accuracy -had a MI Carbine for awhile 30.cal particularly useless cartridge from my memory of it - but handy little rifle for pig hunting

Originally Posted by bumblefoot

Speaking of drooling.... K98s being packed up after WW2....

Attachment 243422
@NIMROD Dad's old farming mags had the Valentine's surplus store ads on te back page. I used to drool at the ads for new/in grease Jungle carbines and M1 carbines for $26! Sorry for the old man "in my day" references!

That's a pretty famous picture from Sola airfield in Southern Norway.

None of those Rifles were exported whole to make sporters . Most were rebarreled in 3006 and some later in 308 but very few.. The Navy kept theirs in 7.92 but the Army,Airforce,Railways and Coastal Artilly got remarried ones. They were still in use up until the 80s in dome reserve units. They were sold out to service personal for about $10 each

Until about 2015 there were still a few thousand in a warehouse on the east coast,they could not be exported because of a ban on weapon exports. Its rumoured Frakonia Jakt bought them,broke them down and used the receivers for their hunting rifles.