Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What's under the butt plate

I once head a story that certain Remingtons made between WWI & WWII had a Remington knife under the buttplate.

Only heard this once. But really didn't know many that bought a new Remington in this time period.

A short stack of Krugerrands wouldn't hurt.

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Bought a Remington model 8 stock from eBay to replace one that had been broken beyond repair. Inside, coiled so tight against the hole you almost couldn't see it was a California Hunting license from 1912. Its got hunting scenes on one side with a hunter and his dog and just a cool mountain scene on the other side. The hunters info was written in pencil but seems like it was scribed yesterday.

About 30 years ago I bought several German KAR 98a WW1 carbines from Southern Ohio Gun for $80 each.

Before being imported into the USA, these had last served as training rifles in Turkey. During that period of hard use, assorted Turk armorers worked on them, obviously doing just enough to keep them shooting. Many parts were substitutes, some of them handmade and rather crude. I stripped and cleaned the rifles.

Beneath the butt plate of one of them I found a 3"x2½" piece of lined paper with a note neatly written in Turkish. I knew a professor of engineering at a local university who was from Turkey and asked him for help with the note. He related some amusing stories of training with similar rifles during his time in the Turkish army. He produced a line-by-line translation of the note for me, which I have checked since with online translators.
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Line 1 identifies the military unit of the writer and probably users of the rifle. The word " dever" or "deven" he translated as "calf", and said it seemed to be a nickname for the division. I recently gave the word to some online ranslators; "deven" translates as "camel", while "dever" translates as "transfer".

Line 2 is the writer's name, Rustem Bozkurt. Google thinks the name is not unusual.

Line 3 - "Inlice" identifies the writer's town, a small (pop. 1000) inland town. According to internet searches, "P.K" indicates "postal code".

Line 4 - "kasabasi" means "town", probably a continuation of Line 3.

Line 5 - "KONYA" is the largest province in Turkey, in which Inlice is located. The province's capital city of 1 million has the same name. (This city is the ancient Iconium, which the apostles Paul and Barnabus entered with non-dusty feet,)

Line 6 - The line is translated as "Come 95 days come", probably refering to the remaining period of the writer's military service.,

Line 7: Translation "My unending days". The writer seems to be grousing, perhaps poetically, about his remaining service.


--Bob

Took the butt plate off a Savage 99 I bought a few years ago, inside was Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

99F ?

How did you know ?

Over the years I have found a lot of pieces of lead in the butts of shotguns when I took them apart to clean or reblue them ,usually I will just put it back after the job is finished.

Under 1963 Rem1100 12 ga at gunshow for $120 in 2013


Under 1928 Crescent double barrel 12 ga in gunshow parking lot for $61 in 1999



1979 browning at pawn shop in 2016




Swiss K31 s one for $90 +tax in 2002, one for $80 at gunshow in 2004

About 5 years ago I was researching a George Daw 12 bore shotgun owned by Shrapnel. I removed the heel plate and found spare firing pins and a complicated extractor put there by the maker in the 1860's. Quite a find for this very old high quality shotgun. I'll bet I was the first person to see those spare parts in about 160 years! That extractor is all one piece of steel.

A slip of paper carrying my name, address, and phone number.

Nice find.
Congrats.

A buddy of mine found an old gun that was his as a kid, at a gun show. He asked the exhibitor if he could remove the butt plate, and behold, there was a piece of paper with his name on it in there. Pretty cool! Obviously, he bought the gun.

Under the butt plate of a Rem Model 11 that my dad had was the bill of sale from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. My Grandfather had retired as Under Sheriff and bought it from the department. Unfortunately it was stolen along with 10 other firearms about 1965 and even though we had all of the serial numbers and I have posted to hotgunz.com, not a single one was ever recovered. You would think with all of the hysteria about gun crime that there would be a national registry for stolen firearms but if there is I am unaware of it.
The government is uninterested in solving crime. Sorry for the rant.

Clark,

Those are interesting tags. My guess is that these are tags that identified the "owner". Owners being the persons who were issued that K31

1. Alfred Siegrist, who I think was in a Fusilier battalion (infantry) and lived in Wuhrenbach (Horgenberg).
2. Alois Küng lived in Benken. Dorf is German for village. It appears he was with the gebirgsjäger. They were mountain (alpine) infantry troops.

These fellows lived SE of Zurich.

Great find!

I wonder if there is a website out there that lists the Swiss divisions that existed in WWI?

i found a name address and a "treasure" map in the bolt hole under a stevens 940A shotgun..
over the years i think i found the spot using google earth, but not bold enough to drive 8 hours and try to explain myself to a landowner

if someone would allow me to send the pictures to them and be posted i wouldnt mind, someone may live nearby!!

Amazing! Imagine making one for the butt as a spare!

I wonder if he was related to Mr Daw who worked for Holland and Holland and appears in so many early 1900’s order ledger entries?

My favorite answer to this in a similar thread somewhere years ago was.... "a finger".



(talking about his SKS. If you've ever stuck your finger in the butt plate trap door on an SKS you know why)

never understood putting a li8cense under the buttplate. How do you get it out if the game warden wants to check your license? I usually don't carry a screw driver while hunting