Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles The '03

It was made late November 1942. Barrel date 12 / 42

A above is the issued rifle, the other one is not used I think. Metal is great on this one, but stock was banged around.

Looks like a good honest rifle. Barrel dates aren't exactly meaningless but not necessarily a true indicator of when the gun was built. NOS barrels sold on the surplus market after the war for just a couple bucks, and a lot of tinkerers swapped new barrels onto their tired older rifles - no way to guarantee a barrel was installed at the factory or not. (And I'm guilty of that too. I've rebarreled a few with original nicer barrels and you couldn't tell that it wasn't done at a gov't facility. Pick one: c'est la vie or caveat emptor.)

I would rate this one at a bit over $1K in today's market. If it had a straight wrist stock or a Type C pistol grip stock, then a little more. Maybe into the $12-1400 range.

The scant grip stocks like on this one were a stopgap measure that allowed them to use the scads of old straight grip stock blanks on hand in the machinery used for making the pistol grip stock that was the official standard by then. Some say that scant grip stocks were only put into the pipeline as replacements for broken other type stocks, some say they were used in actual production. I don't know of a definitive answer in that regard and would welcome some insight. I do know I never cared for the scant grip stock as it's neither fish nor fowl.

I wish I still had that 03, but hard times is hard times. Here's a nice deer rifle Remington 03-A3. I have a different scope on it now.