Friends:

I sit here in stormy Florida this evening while snow and ice storms rage north of here. I trust whatever you are up to that you are safe and warm.

Going back and forth on the issue of CRF vs. pushfeed on a dangerous game rifle, I have had a very interesting sidebar conversation with a knowledgeable member of the fire in Alaska regarding an ancillary issue: what about "tactical reloads"?

Here is the issue: Some controlled round feeds do not allow you to top load a round if you have emptied your magazine and need yet another shot in a pinch. Not sure for the right word for this, but when you add a round on, say, an empty Mauser 98 IIRC the bolt/extractor will not fully capture the rim to enable the thing to go bang.

Yes I recognize this issue is a stretch in that if you are stampeded by, say, a brown bear, you would even have the time to empty your magazine onto it, but please bear with me (no pun intended). So situationally, here you are, empty magazine, bear in your face, and you have a pressing need to throw another round into the magazine, yet if you do the sunofaagun is not going to fire because...... its designed that way.

Now what?

Is there a better mousetrap?

Warm regards to all, and thanks in advance for your input.

Every CRF rifle I've ever owned will feed a single cartridge from the magazine. Some of them would balk if you tried to drop one into the chamber without putting it into the mag first, but that's a very easy movement to learn. You can also modify the extractor to make it work that way.


Okie John

We don't even think about it...it's instinctive...we reload the magazine. Don't even look...Drop it in the general vicinity of the follower, thumb it down close the bolt, go back to work.
As Okie John says, many have been modified, but in my 5 Mausers, 1 Enfield, 1 1920 Savage, 2 pre 64's, and 2 Mannlichers, all designed as CRF....none of them, not one has ever been modified. I don't know which of them could be forced to snap over the rim, since I consider it to be deliberate abuse.

That's really poor advice. Leave the extractors alone, and learn to load from the magazine. It's easy as hell, just putting one in, and then loading it in the chamber. That is how they were designed to work. Throwing one in the chamber is a very bad habit, when using a/any CRF.


Good post. I had a buddy break an extractor on one of my pre 64's once, because he was throwing them in the chamber, before I could catch him and tell him NO!!!!!! I was shooting his rifle, and he was shooting mine, so I was not paying attention, until it was too late.

CRF is only for those that think they need it. I have shot 10’s of thousands of rounds through Sako push feed actions without any failures.

As Mule Deer said once on this topic, (paraphrasing of course) “you would think there would be a cemetery full of dead hunters in Africa as a result of failures of rifles without CRF the way the proponents talk of its superiority.”

The practical advantage of a CRF rifle that can be single-loaded is that you can completely load the magazine and then drop an additional round into the chamber to top it off. Far better to have an extra round in the gun than to be fumbling around trying to reload under stress-- even then, though, the ability to get a round into the chamber by any means is a good thing.

Maybe every cemetery just has a few?

Same here. I had one crf Mauser action on which the claw had been modified (prior owner) to jump over the rim. It failed.

I agree wholeheartedly with Shrapnel that the supposed benefit of CRF in such situations is overstated if not negligible. That said I much prefer CRF to push feed despite spending the first 20 years of my hunting using a howa actioned rifle. I just find the process of cycling a CRF much more satisfying personally. If one is concerned about such things I suggest,as others have, to get into the habit of always loading rounds into the magazine first then pushing the bolt forward. Then when it hits the fan and big griz, cape buff, bullwinkle, or ricky the rabid raccoon is bearing down on you…muscle memory will take over.

A more common scenario than life or death griz charge is a spooked game animal presenting itself unexpectedly when the gun of choice sits with an empty magazine. When I was presented with this exact opportunity many years ago on a whitetail hunt, I automatically loaded a round into the mag of my oldHowa instead of loosely dropping one on top of the follower. Because that’s how I always loaded the rifle. We can only hope to keep our wits about us in pressure situations and remember if the rifle we carry is push feed or CRF.

I prefer CRF, but my next rifle is probably going to be a Tikka. If Finn Aagaard was confident in his push feed M70 in .458 for a stopping rifle, should work for me on deer and coyotes. Like Red spruce, single loading from the magazine is habit. I haven't needed a full magazine since I was a kid, so the extra round gained by filling the magazine and putting another round in the chamber doesn't worry me.

Same here, notorious mag stuffer myself. I do it with everything.

In the posts here thus far, I don't see where anybody has denigrated push feed rifles in any way...most of us that like CRF probably have a pretty fair inventory of push feeds...I know I do. Even counting 8 years in the bush in western AK, I never felt I needed CRF at any time in my hunting (mis)adventures, it has always been a preference...not because of the extractor design...because I preferred the old rifles that just happened to be designed that way.

Seems a lot of you guys don't know how to get one in the chamber from a loaded magazine box. You don't just throw it in the chamber, like some have suggested. That is a big no no with an older CRF. You can just put the cartridge on top of the others, push it down a little while you run the bolt face up to the cartridge, let the rim slip under the extractor, then you can run it in. Pretty simple really. Been doing it this way since I was 12. If a 12 year old can figure this schidt out, I'm hoping you guys can.

I think what you see here is guys getting their panties in a wad, because they think we are attacking their favorite push feed rifle, which I don't think we are. There are some damn good pushfeeds (Winchester being one of them) out there. Others not so good. I also love my Tikka's and those are pushfeeds, but they have been damn reliable, unlike others. I like either or, but they have to be RELIABLE!!! If they show me they are not reliable, I send them down the road.

Not so on the 98`s. You can single feed with no problems, as I have 98 Mausers from 1909 to a Mark 10 that do. Ludwic Olsens book on Mausers describes this feature in detail. Remember, the 98 was designed by Mr. Mauser as a battle rifle, where the need to load one round, or top it off was antesapated.

I`ve never owned Rugers or Winchesters or other CRF`s builds, so can`t comment.

If you have a bit of slack with a full magazine, the method you describe works well. Two of my rifles are tight to the bottom of the box with the manufacturers reommended capacity. I don't like them crammed in there that tightly, so I either put 4 in instead of 5 for carrying cold chamber, or put 5 in and close the bolt and put the safety on for hot chamber work.