Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Browning 1895 Scout Rifle Project

It was originally a new in box 1895 in 30-06. The original 24" medium taper barrel made for a HEAVY rifle.

I had the rifle rebored to my wildcat: a 9.3x62 case necked up to .410" as opposed to the .411 of the whelen. With 61.5 grains of reloader 10x, I"m pushing 2400 fps with a 350 grain swift A-frame. The odd-ball bullet diameter was designed for old African cartridges. Not many choices in .410", but a Swift A-frame is my favorite, so works good enough.

I got to measuring the barrel contours of my old BLR 358, by gully!.......those Japanese used an almost identical contour for where the barrel attaches to the receiver on both the BLR and the 1895. It's kinda cool, discovering something like this. I immediately purchased a fixed 2.75x scout scope, a BLR aluminum scout rail, and those new aluminum, Warne Mountain Tech rings. The scope, rings, and scout rail, all being aluminum, only added 13 oz. to the rifle. Honestly, the rifle felt too whippy with the 20" carbine barrel bored out to 41 caliber. The balance was all screwed up. The forward mounted scope, really fixed the balance. 1895's are kinda rear-heavy. Drilling and tapping all those 6-48 screws was kinda tedious. I may add two more front and rear on the rail, because I don't want it loosening up. The rifle kicks less than my 9.3x62.

It weighs 8.5 lbs all up. Since I like to carry the rifle by the reciever, I decided to get rid of that ugly, blocky lyman peep sight. It bit into my wrist when carrying I'm now just robbing the little peep off the lyman, and mounting it right to the rail. It's gonna be my spring bear rifle for the dog sled. Good for 300 yds!

Those dummy cartridges: one is a 358 winchester with 250 grain A-frame, a 9.3x62 with 300 grain A-frame, and the 41 O&M wildcat with 350 grain A-frame. The 41 caliber is kinda weird, the bullets act like they're trying to be all ballisticly suave with high BC numbers and pointy spitzer shape. But then.......they are chunky monkeys, like a 458 cal.

The reason I didn't go 405, is because Elmer Keith mention that the winchester 95 would jam up tight n hell, if you didn't load the magazine with each successive rim in front of the last. Kinda silly, stacking rimmed cartridges vertically. He said he couldn't leave the power of the 405 for the 348 Winchester though. Later in that book, he mentioned that the 400 whelan with 350 grain western tool and copper bullets, was one of the only cartridges he'd used, that would drive clear through the rump of a bull elk, and onto the vitals.

I read a 1984 Jeff Cooper article about the evolution of the scout gun, and wanted to kinda combine all the best words of advice from these two elders, into something different I guess. It's a weird rifle. Everything about it was unnecessary impulse.