This was my point, I hear folks lament the model 70 and praise the Mauser for its better specs but has anyone really hunted with both that has found real short-comings in either one?
dennis I think in general the answer is "no",although there are some guys who will argue this.What follows is purely anecdotal because I have never had any problems with either design but like you mostly I have used M70's and just in NorthAmerica.
I think both have very good reputations for field performance.Pro hunters like Finn Aggard liked and used both as an African professional. I don't recall him saying anything adverse about the M70..in fact his favorite 375 was a pre 64 M70; his favorite 30/06 was a Mauser 98. I'm certain there are some pro's who won't use anything other than a Mauser and vice versa.
I think this is kind of like standing over two dead elk, one killed with an Accubond and the other with a Partition, and trying to argue persuasively which bullet is better.
On one hand the 98 Mauser was designed as a battle rifle that was later adapted to sporting use, while the M70 was designed originally as a sporting rifle that was pressed into some military and target use. The demands were different.
The 98 is regarded by some as more resilient, more likely to keep working under harsh conditions because it was designed to withstand the abuse and rigors of wartime,i.e. trench warfare,constant neglect,adverse conditions, in the hands of panicked troops under the stress and rigors of warfare.
Plus it was designed during the black powder to smokeless transition, when brass and ammo were not as reliable as they are today, so the likelihood of ammo malfunctions and blown cases was higher. (JWP called me this morning to remind me of this and other mauser features).
Other stuff he mentioned was that the Mauser has three locking lugs,two up front and a third auxiliary lug back beneath the rear bridge in case the front two should let go from an overload or burst cartridge....if we count the root of the bolt handle, that makes 4 lugs(!). It had a heavier firing pin fall to reliably light up balky ammo,vs the lighter but faster lock time of the M70.
So what you had was a system designed to provide maximum protection to the user while insuring the most reliable function under adverse conditions in a manually operated battle rifle. Some guys feel that if it will handle those conditions, it will handle most BG hunting conditions in stride.
Plus it's hard to prove a negative....if you spend 10 days tracking lions in the Kalahari with a Mauser 98,and the rifle gets filled with blowing sand,but goes bang when it has to (it had better!),you are hard pressed to say at what point and how much sand it would have taken before a M70, or anything else,would have stopped working (I mention this as an example because a pal who posts here hunted the Kalaharia and said his rifle needed constant daily attention just to work the bolt, it got so clogged with wind driven sand).
The point being that everything "works" until it doesn't...how much abuse it takes for something to quit is one of the unanswered questions but there is no doubt some designs are more prone to shutting down or failing to function properly than others. I think that Mauser users simply want to hedge bets;the known design differences give them a sense of security and confidence in their rifles.
I don't know if this answers your question but it's the best I can do. maybe someone else will weigh in.
