Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why No Love For The 7 Mauser?

I did my first big game hunt this year with a 7 mauser. In a M70 rifle (and, gasp, a McM stock).

Got myself an elk. One shot, through both shoulders blew the top of the heart apart. Not a difficult shot, but being able to practice a lot because the rifle is very pleasant to shoot made me more confident. I shot handloads of course - 160 grain partitians.

It's a great round, and something a little different which makes it fun to carry and shoot.

Is it just me, or is something wrong with that path?

Didn't know an elk's heart was that high.

Maybe I'm confuzzed??

An Addendum:

You and I are both correct.

What I call (consider) the shoulder is actually the scapula (high shldr).

Your description is also correct. An elks heart is not only farther forward but also higher than a WT heart .

I'm so used to shooting the scapula that's what I think of when shoulder is mentioned.

No offense was intended.

At least it wasn't through the rear shoulders! I hate it when that happens!

Teeder -

Yeah, ONCE I had a bullet deflected by a small limb to hit a buck in the left
REAR shoulder, OMG! What a MESS!!! (for real)

I also have read 'here' of a shot to the 'rear' hip. I asked "where was the 'front'
hip? ". <GRIN>

No longer my rifle, but here is a left hand Mauser 7x57, the rifle I mentioned previously.

Wow! That, sir, would be the Holy Grail of rifles for me. I'm sure the buyer was, indeed, utterly delighted with it.

All good - my description left a lot open.

Thank You !

Here is an interesting report on bullet performance with the 7x57.

Jack O'Connor accidentally got two deer with one shot. He told the story in his article, "Forty Years with the Little 7mm" in the 1974 Gun Digest. He was using a custom 98 Mauser in 7x57 that he acquired in 1934 when he lived in Arizona. Jack moved to Idaho in 1948.

Here is the story from his article:

"I shot my first desert ram with that rifle, one of the best Rocky Mountain mule deer I have ever knocked off, and various other game- all with the Western factory 139-gr. open point bullet load.

With one exception, everything I shot at with a 7x57 was a one-shot kill. That was a desert mule deer which I shot in one ham as he ran directly away and on which I used two cartridges.

Then about 1952, I caught up. Hunting on Idaho's Snake River with another 7x57, I picked out a nice fat doe and took a crack at her. Down the hill she rolled- and also a forkhorn buck that had been standing behind her."

Heheh.. I mentioned the .30-01 back on about page 14 and I seemed to get away with it

Of course .30-01 wasn't the official description, but the 20 February 1901 Frankford Arsenal design was the cartridge selected as the standard to be used by the Small Arms Board for the Model of 1901 Caliber .30 Experimental Rifle. Over a million of the new rimless rounds (with a few variations in details of the projectile) had been loaded before the new rifle and round was adopted in 1903.

Not only did the US copy several features of Mauser's actions, including extractor and magazine, but also the stripper clips. That being the case it is probably not a great surprise that the new round ended up having essentially the same casehead and extractor groove dimensions too, though there was some refinement of these early on (in particular a reduction of rim thickness from .060" to .045" from 1 Sep 1903, three months after the new rimless round had been adopted as the .30 Ball Cartridge, Model of 1903).

Speaking of penetration......
Using my .275 Rigby to cull brumbies in the upper cape country in Northern Queensland, I tried a range of bullets and loads but the deepest penetration came from the 160gn Winchester Failsafe over 46gn of Rel 15 for 2739fps which penetrated full body length with frontal chest shots . I recovered 3 bullets from this placement all coincidentally at the top of the rump, just under the skin.

Better yet was the 140gn Barnes XBT bullet over 52.5gn of 760 which yielded 2914fps. This was my standard load in the Rigby rifle and I never ever recovered one, even using the same placement.

John

John, did you get any expansion to speak of with those failsafes? I bought a few boxes of those on a close out thing but never tried them. Thought them to be a bit on the tough side for the 57.

dan oz,

Thanks for the additional information on the 30-01 cartridge and rifle.

I'll be messin with this in a few day's.1975 Interarms 7x57 [img:center][/img]

Of course he got expansion.

Yep. Full expansion and petal loss on all 3 recovered bullets.
John

Thanks John!

Alright, that's reassuring. I was not too excited to shoot one of our little whitetails to find that it would pencil through. That's in the weight range that I like to use and it doesn't have any plastic on it...

FYI
I also used the 30 cal versions in 165gn and 180gn when released and killed smaller game such as Fallow, pigs and goats with my .30/06.

John

The real question is why the guys that can't handle recoil chose the 270, why not the 25-06?