Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Europe WWII M1 Garand as hunting rifle ?

Hiya Larry rooty-toot "Douchebag" Root!

Some folks just won't die.

The Enfield #4 Mk1 is a useful working rifle, but as others have said, the Garand is a wonderful thing. And should Belgium again be invaded, the invaders would have a very bad day

Shrapnel- awesome. truly american. i have shot a lot of targets with my garand. no game. awesome.

LOL Like a bloodhound..

i got to paw through some of those savage lee enfields that came on the market a few years ago. They were mostly built after the crisis was past, and some of the ones i saw were basically new rifles. I much prefer the adjustible sights on the back, rather than the m1carbine l shaped flip sight. The adjustibles were parker/hale and are real top quality irons.

and that picture is pure poison, at the thought of doing that.

i know a few elk around bill williams mt that wish they had not heard of a garand.

i was just talking today with a guy works with a very well known gunplace about a 1943springfield, rebarreled in 51, with the danish stock with the little cutout for the decal on the pistolgrip. Basically a parts gun, but that wwII reciever.
it sold in one day for about 1000 bucks.

one of the better garands i built was from a number of parts kits from denmark, when they started coming back in. I had ALL early winchester parts, but needed a reciever. A guy was kind enough to sell me a Win13, which was out for a couple of months in 1945. Winchester was cleaning out the parts, so they were generally found with all kinds of production win. parts. Which is the way mine came out. I put a bunch of cosmo on it, and let it age for a number of years trying to duplicate that greenish tinge the wwII ones had. Finally ran a couple of clips through it. They can truely become an addiction.
if one is truely interested in them, then join the garand club, they are online. The magazine is full of neat stuff they publish.

To go to all that trouble, I take it comparatively few war era Garands exist then?

Most war era Garands have been rebuilt, some several times. Rifles sold by the DCM in years pass were mostly originals. Some sold were war time and others post war. They are out there if you look long enough. In my collection I have a pair of 3.4's and one 3.5 that are unissued. I also have in my collection many post war unissued M1's, including a M1D in the box with all the BII. They can be found if you look long enough.

True original garands that are correct as to part series, barrel/reciever combinations are quite rare, and can get into the ten thousand dollar and up range easily. Most of the internals etc of a garand were intended to mix and match, and no armorer in the field was concerned about who made the part, just that it worked. Also as production continued into the 50's, a lot of the parts were modified. You find very few that are correct as they left the factory. You see them come up on cmp periodically at auction and demand high prices. Most are a combination of parts. Having said that there are many things that drive collectibility to people. Some want WWII years, some want a certain manufacturer such as IHC, some want certain no ranges and so on. Some of the better made ones were high number springfields, made after korea was winding down. Then once in a while you find the arsonel rebuilds, done in the later 40's, or 50's, often called white bag, because they were put in white bags, that were rebuilt and put away and never used/issued again. I have seen a few.
I got one of the M1D's from cmp too, but it was a earlier m1 in some of the parts made into a m1D at the ogden utah army base. Whats cool other than that is i have a carbine with elmer keiths cartouche on it from the same base, and a m38jeep that spent it's life there. I would say the earlier guns sold by dcm before cmp came into being were high end quality wise rifles, but not original as from the manufacturer. There are plenty of garands around, just getting harder and harder to find an example with mostly correct parts with a proper and correct barrel that is somewhat less than a golf ball in the bore.
There are in the hundreds of thousands of garand stranded overseas, thank hillery for that. A deal was signed, sealed, and ready to go to bring back quite a few, as well as carbines, and 1911's from south korea, some of these stored since manufacture in 50gallon drums. It was ready to go when the state dept under her squashed it.
if it would have happened i would be spending my retirement knee deep in cosmoline, picking through them. They all have their stories. One of mine is a prewar springfield by serial number, pre WWII that is, with a 1943 replacement barrel. You know that one didn't spend it's life in a armory. A rifle like the one in this post in europe, you have to wonder what the story is. I believe from memory the winchester equipment was sold to beretta, who made them for the italian army, and was for sure a parts supplier to denmark who was using garands up until the 90's. You can find beretta marked garand recievers. And other countries used them too. Cmp recieved back from italy a bunch of carbines a few years back refered to as F.A.T. carbines, because of that stamp on the wood. And the carbines that patton turned over to germany were returned to. They are a hoot because they were kept in much the same condition they were in 1945. I want to stress to look at everything on that rifle. A good piece of wood with the right cartouches and stamps alone can bring over 500bucks, not to mention some of the other parts.
It's hard not to drool on them, particularly when you see a collection of somebody that started collecting in the early 50's.
There is a guy in town here, if still alive, a lot of his toys are in pictures in the referenc books by canfield, ruth, and others. I use to have drool running down my chin going into his shop. I did buy a few items from him, i wish i would have used the home equity line of credit.

I was just talking to a guy the other day about some of the danish lend/lease rifles. They were returned to cmp, some with replacement V.A.R. barrels, which are considered real high quality. They shipped back a bunch of danish m2ball too, some in bandoliers. Real good stuff, but it hurts to shoot it up knowing hard to replace.
One of the kickers of the danish guns, the lend/lease guns were returned to the army here, then to cmp. But denmark Bought a bunch too, they were not allowed to bring back whole. So the recievers went to canada, the parts kits here. I watched one time a guy i know go through about three or four thousand parts kits, to put them back as to manufacturer. I don't know what happened to all the recievers in canada, but i do know a pretty well known collector that spent some jail time for trying to bring some of them from canada into the U.S. He used to have a website with pictures of a warehouse just stacked with garands. He's dead now, and i don't know what happened to those either.

You would be surprised as to what those uncut op rods are worth these days too.

since i am rambling, another little tidbit. When the cold war was heating up, there were arms caches deep buried in various european countries. Courtesy of the C.I.A. with anticipation of russian invasion and having to fight a partisan war. And then promptly forgotten for many years, until found again. And the stuff promptly destroyed. Which is a real bugger.
I was talking to a german kid a number of years ago that heard the distinctive sound of a MG42 being fired, and wanted to fire it. He had a big grin on his face. Said there was one greased up and buried in the family barn in germany. Brought back from russia by his grandfather and put away in case of need. I am sure there are many many such firearms hidden all over europe regardless of what current govt. policies are.

Checking Zero's

I bought my first in the 80's through the then DCM for about $100.00 then sent it to a retired Marine armorer in Bald Knob, Mo named Roland Beaver. He put a Douglas barrel on it and slicked it up and converted to a National Match.

I shoot it every year in a Garand Match and like to take it out on occasion for the antlerless season. Some of the old fellas told me in states that wouldn't allow a semi-auto with the Garands capacity that they would drill a hole in the gas plug and work as a straight pull bolt for hunting.

So a question for you Garand guys.

After reading this topic, I took mine out today. I am having about 50 percent miss fires. These are my hand loads. Standard primers, 4895, Amax...the primers seem dented really well.

Maybe the primers where bad. Any ideas.

Sounds like you have already nailed it. Try a new batch of primers.

Could be the primers seated too deep. OR, the gun not fully locked up, and the firing pin not going all the way forward, as there is (supposed) to be a stop to keep it from going forward and firing without the bolt being locked up. A friend, who's the Garand Guru, built the match rifles for the Army Marksmanship Unit when they still used them, advises against loading for the Garand, due to the floating firing pin, they can fire, when the bolt suddenly stops, do to too long a case, primer not seated deep enough, etc. He has seen a lot of them blown up. Also, the Garand should only be used with a couple of powders, 4895, which was developed for it, Varget, maybe R15, as the pressure curve has to be right to keep from damaging the op rod, etc.