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

Hi Guys.

Been out for a long time, divorcing is a pretty harrassing and time devouring business (but now it's just business)

Been to the gunshop yesterday on my way to a friend's home and spotted some WWII rifles in very good condition. One is a strange "US Gov Property" N°4 MK1 Lee Enfield and the other 1 a M1 Garand.

What do you think about using one of those for hunting, mostly for the drives ?

I've heard the Garand require only very specific loads ??? Could not load it with modern powder and Barnes bullets ?

I never used those peep sight, on of my friends did in the military and doesn't like them for fast moving targets. I think I could manage it from the tests I made in the shop but would have some experienced hunting advices with such sights.

Thanks for reading.

You should be able to load it with 4895, 3031, 4064 for starters. Barnes bullets shouldn't be a problem either.

Bullet weight will need to be 175 grain or less and no powder slower then 4320. Hornady manuals have specific M1 data. I use one for hunting at times. I works well.

i know a lot of guys that used m1's in europe to hunt with back in ww2 (get it?) you wont have any problem. but just remember, fire and kiss your brass goodbye. and your clip!

GV, Vihta Vuori N135 and N150 are within the pressure curve parameters for the M1 Garand and a 165 grain to 175 grain spitzer soft point would be a good bullet. Go forth and slay!!


added: Aperture sights are very fast to acquire and use but you need to practice keeping both eyes open.

Any Germans hunting from bell towers may become very nervous seeing you.

I've shot a fair amount with Garands. And mostly pigs. I've dumped 3 pigs in one run when they were at a turned over deer feeder and I snuck up on em. First head, second on the run back of head, third through shoulders.

Then followed the other 2 until I caught em crossing a creek and dropped both of them.

That with some cheap factory 125 WW soft points I had found.

Generally have used it with 165 bullets though and some old powder like H380 burn rate that was surplus powder. No issues.

Jeff, all true,HOWEVER powder availability in Belgium is a tad different than us. Vihta Vuori IS commonly available both in Europe AND the USA. The manuals have data for VV powder N135 and N150 for the Garand.

Thanks guys for your advices

Seems like I'm doomed and maybe the russian boars too :p

As Jim said Vitha powder are probably easier to find in my area ;-)

I took a few pics in the shop

Maybe different from what you have on shop walls in the US.

No ARs but lots of German and Liege guns, many double rifles and shotguns, Browning BARs, straight pull action as well as classical bolt actions.













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Yah, I know that on powder, I was just rambling as usual, IE I don't have load data with Viht.

But the right burn rate and their load data all should be just fine.

I shot practice matches with the Garand through most of one summer using Speer 125 gr TNT hollowpoint bullets over a light load of H4895.

I do not know which comparable powders would be available in your location.

The load mentioned above operated the rifle well, and was very pleasant to shoot in extended practice sessions. For hunting, a charge of IMR or H 4895 (or similar powder) sufficient to push a 150 gr Barnes to 2800 fps would be hard to beat.

Just got a message from my parents, they're travelling France in a camping truck and my father just told me they're sleeping next to Omaha Beach to night. Could this be a sign ? :p

If they are original to the rifle, the rear handguard clip and sights indicate (obviously) a WWII rifle. The Op-rod is straight-cut flat side, but the barreled action would have to be removed from the stock to see if the relief cut is there.

It's possible there's quite a bit of history in that rifle.

I presently have two, an HRA and an IHC. Both '53 manufacture, so they're not WWII rifles.

The HRA is a "correct grade" rifle, and I have torn it down to confirm it as so. It is a low-mileage rifle, but I occasionally fire it.

The IHC I bought as a non-functioning item and have restored it to a functioning state with a total mixture of parts. Aftermarket stock, SA internals, gas cylinder, and bolt. PB sights and Op-rod. The barrel is Criterion. I shoot this one quite a bit. Interesting enough, the receiver a rare "Arrowhead", but I'm not going to spend the money to correct it.

I am loading my ammo now with N135. It's a good powder, as is N140. I use 150 grain bullets, FMJ for blasting, and Speer Hot-Cor spitzers for hunting.

HRA on the bottom, IHC on the top.

seen a M1 being used as a rifle for hunting in the Phillipines, even after water buffalo....believe Boddington is who i saw the video of....

In my experience 47.1 grains of VV140 and a 168 Sierra is the most accurate load in my rifle. I shoot it in the CMP matches and across the course in NRA High Power. It is a X6 million National Match gun.

My M1 is within 100,000 of the s/n my dear old dad carried in the Battle of the Bulge, and is all "correct". I've shot the devil out of that beautiful weapon and have killed many deer with it. 47.0 grains of 4064 behind a Sierra 168 produces little bitty groups, and very dead deer. Good luck!

in one year i loaded and shot nearly 2500 rounds in practice and competition out to 600 yards with my garand. they are very accurate and the sights are awesome and repeatable. the factory soft point ammo is loaded with too slow/too hot pressures for the long op rod to sustain. i used handloads exclusively. my garand has been "built" with a krieger barrel and shoots in the .3's. i have harvested a lot of game with a 30-06 including wolf, deer and elk.

The Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk1 is probably made by Savage Arms, for the Lend-Lease program between the US and Britain during the Second World War.

The US ordered rifles built to British specifications for delivery to England, but not used by the US military in any way.

The M1 Garand has been covered thoroughly by the other posters.

RE sights, you must be lucky, I 've yet to have a Garand or M1A that had perfect sights, dial indicator always showed at least 1 or 2 clicks off distance wise from the rest. Even with NM sights. Enough so that as I got really decent, it irritated me at 600...

You may find this helpful. I have no experience with them, but plan to order one of these:

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/77...nd-steel-parkerized?cm_vc=ProductFinding

It's an adjustable gas plug which allows tuning so that you can safely shoot regular ammo in your M1. I plan to get one for a couple of my M1s in order to simplify my '06 reloading and be able to use the same 180 grain load in multiple rifles.

I wouldn't feel handicapped at all using a MI Garand to hunt deer other than packing it around . Good 165 gr bullet and IMR 4895 should work well.

I like this plug mo' better.

http://www.garandgear.com/m1-garand-ammunition

M1 Garand makes a great dear rifle, as long as you can put up with the weight. My #2 son shot my Garand for several years, and killed a lot of whitetails.



My recipe for the Garand was H4895 under a 150 grain Hornady SP. The Garand is fairly easy to load for. The trick is to stay away from very slow powders and very big bullets. Staying to the middle of the road will keep the op rod from bending.

Besides weight, the one other problem I had with the Garand was the fact that was tricky to load with just a few rounds. I got some 5-round en-blocs for Moose. That seemed to solve the problem.

It may be hard to export to Europe, but (I believe its called) a Holbrook device would help. You replace the Op-rod catch with it, and it will not eject the clip. You simply push a clip in and then load it from there. The bolt will stay open on the last round and all, but you have to manually eject the clip itself.

Ok guys ... I admit it ... I've not been strong enough ... I went to the gunshop today and made a deal with the gunsmith ... will have the gun at home within a few days :p Hope it's gonna roll some wild boar on thé battle of the bulge's ground very soon

This gonna be a divorce présent to myself

Congrats.

Some things you must do:

Keep us up to date on your progress with the rifle.
You should really check out the CMP website for info on it.
If I can be of any help, please ask.

I would pee myself all day long getting to hunt the Ardennes (or its surrounding area) with a WWII Garand, I envy you.

I never thought of such a thing until you mentioned it, but that would be a totally outstanding hunt. My goodness!

John use to post on the culver's shooting pages forum, the device works.

That enfield in the picture in the rack, is cocked, you can tell from the butt of the reciever.
The main issue in the garand is the pressure curve, which 4895 or 4064, are in the range it likes to operate at without blowing the op rod. That relief cut on the rod was put in mostly because of firing rifle gernades. You can buy the after market pressure values which helps, but keep in mind these were designed to push a 150grain bullet at approx 2750fps. With a powder as described above.
I have more than one garand, some with national match sights, and also in .308. While the military standard acceptability group at 100 yards is rather generous given standards today, they can fire quite acceptable groups. And i know of a number of elk/deer taken in my area with them. For that matter i have had now deceased friends telling me of shooting european deer for food in WWII and that was with full metal jacket ammo.
The enfield could or could not be a good shooter subject to barrel wear.
A friend of mine in bavaria who is/was a sniper in the german army shoots a lot of high power in competition. Interesting enough, he says they prefer the model of 1917, or the enfield, to the K98 mauser feeling they shoot better.
I would be curious too to know whats in that garand, part wise.
a few years ago i bought a springfield that had way to high a serial number, and had other markings on the butt of the reciever that springfield didn't do. It had ALL pre war parts in it. Finally from a guy who's collection was used for a lot of the reference books on garands, after wanting to buy it, told me it was a prewar springfield that ended up in italy. We did ship the winchester equipment to beretta after the war, and they were used in the italian army at one time. And it was beretta supplying parts to the danes who used them after the war. That rifle could have a LOT of valuable parts in it, so be sure to chase it down at some point.

I would too, not so much if the deer had mausers.

I have shot everything from gophers to elk with the Garand. It works well with Remington 150 grain Core-Lokt bullets. I found mine will shoot them to the same POI as my ball ammo, so I don't have need to adjust sights for different ammo. Anyone that tells you that need premium bullets is wasting your time and money.

Loaded with IMR-4895, it works perfectly and will shoot the 150 grain bullet to about 2750, which is all you need from the Garand. Slower powders are not good for the Garand and the operating rod, as it will build up too much port pressure and can bend the operating rod...

Nice bit of history there, Shrapnel.

I'm going down to the CMP to build one in two weeks, will have to see how the finished product turns out.

I bought one for my dad last Christmas and shrap's advice about the H4895 and 150's was dead nuts. Thing shot great with Hornady SP's.

They're not as heavy as people think they are. Unless your every day rifle is a true lightweight.



Travis

It's not surprising about H4895 and 150's, since the original 4895 made by DuPont was designed specifically for the Garand's M2 service load with a 152-grain bullet.

In the book "of Bench and Bears" Judge Folta used one to hunt Alaska Brown Bears with and didn't get et. Muddy

Get them both.

The Lee-Enfield is a Savage Arms Co. rifle made in the US and given/sold to the Brits under lend/lease. They shoot well. The Garand, of course, is a Garand.

Hornady 150 gr. spire points work real well in my Garand in front of 49.5 gr. of IMR-4064 in civilian brass. Velocity runs an average of 2760 fps. with an E.S. of 35.2 fps. which is right in the ball park for what a 150 gr. bullet should be doing out of an M-1; as someone already mentioned.

And now you can mount an IER scope overbore.

http://ultimak.com/BuyM1Garand.htm

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.

Numerous things.

How far are you setting the shoulder back when you size your cases? Do you know how much headspace you have? The reason I ask is that if you have a longish chamber and you set the shoulder back too far (I set a fired case back .002"), then you can have the case moving too far forward before it hits good solid metal and by then the firing pin has traveled as far as it's going to without enough inertia to get ignition.

Is the bolt clean? A Garand bolt is not hard to tear down and clean. Clean everything and light to no lube on the firing pin.

Are your primers fully seated? ESPECIALLY in an M1, you want flush primers for safety, and for consistent ignition reasons, firmly seated. Primers will show a small dent when the bolt slams home, that is a characteristic of a floating firing pin. ARs will do it, too.

The hammer spring could be weak.

Firing pin protrusion.

I would start by assuring I was not inducing too much room in the chamber by oversizing and that the primers were firmly seated in a clean primer pocket. Check headspace, measure fired cases and don't oversize. Then run mechanical possibilities down from there. You have the right idea with powder, etc, so it shouldn't be hard.

I hope you have good luck in running the problem down, those are very enjoyable rifles.

Edited to add:

Go to the CMP forum, and describe your issues. There are some really knowledgeable Garand mechanics on that site.

The Garand as a hunting rifle. Sometime in late summer after VE Day, when my dad was still in Germany, he and a few friends took some Garands and went hunting for dinky deer in the Harz mountains where they were stationed. Asked a farmer if they could hunt, he said they could, as he'd like some deer meat.

Punched a few deer out of the woods and all managed to miss them with the Garands. Later, the old folks on the farm invited them to lunch and at some point the patriarch made a comment that elicited laughter from the other locals at the table.

One of dad's buds spoke a bit of German, told the other GIs that the ol' boy had wondered HTH they'd lost the war, if that was all the better Americans could shoot?

Dad's excuse was, that none of them had ever fired a Garand much before then, other than some target practice at camp after VE Day.

They'd all qualified with the 1903 in basic, prior to Pearl Harbor (dad was drafted in the summer of '41). All were carrying M1 30 Carbines throughout the European Campaign, because they were in a halftrack crew.

Dad said the old Krauts wasn't having any of it, decided that Americans can't shoot and that was that.

Thirty-some years later when dad and I were hunting together and he missed a running deer, asked him if he'd gotten confused and thought he was hunting with a Garand again? Wasn't amused in the least. ;O)

Lots of Garand owners at our club, but I've never had one. Do have some CMP Carbines though and enjoy the hell out of them.

Just a story- when my father was in training at Camp Hale CO during WWII, they could sign out 5 rounds of ammo (military ball) and take their M1s out for elk hunting. They could bring the elk back to the mess hall and the cooks would butcher and cook. Hate to think about what an army cook could do to a fresh kill elk.

I suspect the Army cook would do well by the elk as the hunter still had the other 4 rounds.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the rifle is still not ready ... can't wait can't wait can't wait

Fired the gun today.

I did manage a 4 shots sight set then made a 5 shots group at 65 yards (right for battue purpose).

For my first experience with the gun AND with a peep sight I'm pretty happy. That will be accurate enough for my needs.



Unfortunately I didn't bring the gun home. It had to be modified for hunting and hunter's ownership purpose (invisible and revesrible modification to make it a 2+1 capacity rifle).

That has been done but we realized you can't fire more than one round without clips: all the rounds are ejected with the first case. So the gunstmith has to find me some clips.

Good deal!

Looks like it's shooting good, and keep us posted on progress.

Oh yes, I didn't check every mark but it's a Springfield made.

i ran into a modification a few years ago, where a guy had brazed a post under the lift where the shells in a clip normally reside. It converted it basically to a one round gun. They also make two round clips, or you can make one yourself.

depending on price, I normally make all my reduced capacity clips. Once you have an example it's pretty easy to whip them up with a dremel.

Could you provide some picture of that modification, please ?

you can see the addition of the post added to the part in the first picture. The second picture is the top of the part for reference. That part is where you shove in the clip in the reciever.
Why he put that post in there i don't know, but he was a camp perry nationally ranked shooter, and it is a match garand built for perry in the 50's.
it had no function for me as i am not restricted in amount of rounds in mag with a 8round clip. But it did turn it into a one round shooter with that post underneath which kept the additional shells from being loaded. Sorry for the pictures, blame me and the cellphone.

this part would be the follower: see the link for a better picture plus all the parts in a garand: http://www.civilianmarksmanship.com/nomenclaturehtml/nomenclaturefollowerassy.html

http://www.civilianmarksmanship.com/nomenclature.html

That has been done but we realized you can't fire more than one round without clips: all the rounds are ejected with the first case. So the gunstmith has to find me some clips.
i would say you shot a good group given all four are together. Don't underestimate the sights once you have them adjusted properly. I was going to scope a m1a scout, changed my mind with the national match sights on it, which up to about 300yards worked just fine. National match sights have a smaller peep and a narrower blade on the front.

And to add to this,they are a pretty dammed accurate rifle!
Cat

I have one that was built in March 1941. It seems to like Imr 4064 and the Nosler Ballistic Tip bullet 165 grain.
I have fired it in a competition and it did well even at 600 yds.
whelennut

Buddy took a pig with a Garrand in 2003

That was fun to watch

I've learned that original Garands, with the original primitive gas port, used to be very sensitive to barrel pressure peaks and that modern ammos, especially heavy bullets and slow bruning powders, may not be suitable for those rifles.

After some researches about that on the web and among the Reloading 101 community, I developed a load that suits my garand very good. At least I fired 60 shots of those no jamming nor any problem but VERY hot brass (which is apparently usual to Garands)

My load pushes a 150 grains Barnes TSX bullet with a 48.8 grains load of Vithavuori N140, winchester brass and CCI LR primer, no crimping. Muzzle speed is 2782 fps. COL is 81 mm, it was a very important factor in the resolution of my early jamming problems.

Don't use those datas without appropriate precautions and reloading safety processes. It may not suit every Garand.

I'm now fearing some trouble with that gun. Semi Auto or at least semi auto assault rifles could be banned as a stupid response to the Paris attack.

But at least my Garand made his first post WWII kill right in the anniversary days of the battle of the bulge

That'll show those muzzie radicals. Politicians all over the world over are largely the same. Feel good ineffective legislation that only affects those that follow the laws.

Well, at least the fox got to be part of history!

Indeed

Some news from the Garand.

I made a lot of reloads and brought it to a "running wild boar" range. It's a .33 yards long range designed for driven hunt shooting training: you have to hit a wild boar shaped target (1/2 scale) crossing from left to right and right to left at variating speeds (from 15 to 28 mph) through an appr. 10 yards wide shooting window.

I went with 3 friends firing high price modern rigs and optics (fine double rifle 8x57jrs with docter reflex sight, recent Browing BAR .300 WM with docter reflex sight and a .270 sauer 202 with premium Zeiss battue scope). All of them are used to that kind of shooting (which I'm not).

Everybody, including the range's shooting coach, laughed at me when I pulled the garand out of the scabbard. But not for long.

I managed to put 94 % of my shots in the boar, and 75 % shots in the vitals (lungs/heart/neck area). None else was close to my results

Hell, the killing machine was grouping so good, with very quick target acquisition and no malfunction at all with my relaods. Could not be more happy with that old battle proofed rig.

That's good shooting. Don't think I could have done that with a shotgun and buckshot.

I use H4895 with a 150 Sierra. Fun to hunt with open sights.