Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters M1 Garand hunting use?

I've taken my Garand out deer hunting. Weight wasn't an issue, but sight performance in low light was subpar. The Garand rear sight is a relatively fine peep, that while excellent for shooting good groups is an awful performer in fading light in the forested hollows that I hunt. In my state we can hunt till 1/2 hour after dusk, but it's almost impossible to get a good sight picture with my Garand peep around dusk, while the otherwise inferior open sights on my muzzleloaders are still bright and clear.

It's funny. A friend of mine recently picked up a Garand and just last week we were talking about putting together a Garand only hunt next season. I have a DCM rifle in the safe that I used to shoot matches with years ago. Any recommendations on factory ammo to hunt with? My recollection is that the Federal Garand round is a FMJ bullet. Would any standard velocity 150 grain hunting round be good as long as it feeds?

Is CMP the best place to get them from? My dad has a serious hankering for one and I think it would make a heck of a gift for him. We both shot his buddie's Garand a couple of weeks ago and we are hooked. Flinch

As others have alluded to, garands were generally not availably other than through the old DCM, which was one per lifetime.
My addiction to the garand started at about age 11 while deer hunting with a relative, now deceased. He was a navy vet, and i am sure in hindsight dufflebagged it. It didn't see the light of day in the 50's very often. Garands ammunition is loaded to a certain pressure curve with certain powders and that should be strictly observed. You can buy a replacement gas valve that allows heavier bullets. They are not light, but i don't think that much heavier than some "sporting" rifles in reality. Most people only see much used and abused garands, but they are capable of good accuracy. You can also rebarrel them as they originally were not intended for 30.06, but .277. The 06 was a couple of generals idea, because of the ammunition on hand.
I went to the expense a few years ago of rebuilding a turkish lendlease garand. Douglas .308 barrel, imported wood, everything brought up to spec. It shoots quite well.

Around my house the Garand is still the Yute Rifle of choice. Here's Mooseboy with his Yute Rifle



If you go trolling around on my weblog (see signature) , you'll find gobs of stories about Mooseboy and the Garand. He actually got famous there for a while. A French D-Day forum found that picture I just showed you and the story of Mooseboy and the Garand got International attention. Thanks to Grand Veneur for helping me to translate my thoughts to French.

You may wonder why a Garand for a yute rifle? Simple, between the extra weight and the gas-operated semi action, the recoil of the 30-06 is reduced quite a bit over a bolt gun. Usually the yute is hunting out of a stand with a rest and he's always hunting with Dad. It ends up being a good fit. The one proviso is you have to have yutes of the right size. Mine are. . well, when you nickname your kids Moose and Angus you get the idea. Even the youngest, at 13, is well beyond the average WWII GI.

We use the 5 round enblocs, just to keep the number of rounds down. Kentucky allows up to 10, but when you hit the button to unload it's nice to have only 4 flying out at you. We load Lake City brass with 165 grain Hornady SP Interloks over H4895. It airs the whitetails out but good. Mooseboy took a shot at a small buck a few years ago and completely eviscerated the thing. The pressure wave caused the belly to open up and all the organs poured out. All we had left to clean was the anus, a couple feet of large intestine and a few bits of heart and lung.

Here's a pic of the Garand. It's a Springfield, built in 1942






This year Angus (13) wants to use the Garand. He's already taken a nice buck with his mom's bolt gun, but he says he wants to do it old school. This past season, he just didn't fit the weapon, but he's grown again. My guess is he'll be ready.

buckhorn

To my knowledge there is no factory hunting ammo available for hunting. I hope that some one would. Right now I would handload. Medium burning powders are recommended H4895,IMR 4895 and such velocities should be kept to 2700-2800fps Bullet weight should be kept to 150-165 grain bullets. CCI makes a 34 primer specifically for the M1 garand.

358win

Hornady and maybe others have special reloading pages for the M1 Garand, different from the 30-06 pages.

I think the reasons the Garand is not more popular with hunters are (1) it's very difficult to mount a scope on one (and the scope and side mount adds weight), (2) it's hard to really sporterize one, due to the long operating rod, (3) you have to reduce pressures from top 30-06 handloads, (4) they don't sell factory ammo in the correct pressures, and (5) they aren't as accurate as many modern rifles, due to all the claptrap hanging on the end.

I really like shooting mine. I have a lot of 172 grain match bullets I got decades ago and I load them to the old National Match velocity of 2640 fps using Varget.

Hornady is making a factory garand specific round, but I think it is fmj. I would argue the accuracy question, agree with the scope, but you can get different iron sights, such as national match and a 150 to 160grain bullet at about 2750 will do the job on most things. And I wouldn't talk like a heretic and Ugh, sporterize a garand? Thats enough for me to want to upchuck.

If you are not bothered about historical significance, i.e. you have to have a WWII vintage rifle, c.m.p. is selling for around a 1000 bill a totally rebuilt garand with new criterion barrel etc, new wood, and an original forged reciever, which is a heck of a deal. The after market garands have cast recievers. They are nice rifles. And if you were to take a rack garand that's basically shot out you can get pretty close to that figure in acquiring parts and so on. In my area you see a LOT of garands at the shows, sporting price tags a couple of hundred bucks more than what it costs through the c.m.p.
Understand they are down at the bottom of the barrel as to garands and they unless you pay more money, are not as good a quality as you use to get either through the cmp or the old dcm.
By bottom of the barrel I don't mean they aren't a good value, but some of the dcm guns in their day were pretty good.
They are out there, last year i bought three of them that are called "white bag" garands. They were put into a white bag around 1953 or 1954 after arsonal rebuild, and were untouched. They aren't going to be shot by me.

My Granfather was the armorer at the Air Force base near Fairbanks AK during the Korean war. He told me that once ammo got so many years old (I think it was five) he was told to destroy it. Instead of doing that he would check a bunch of Garands out and a Browning 1919 .30 or two and get some of the boys and head down to the Tanana river. They would burn through the ammo shooting at piles of driftwood floating in the river. He said the Browning .30 cal would set the driftwood on fire. This isn't about hunting I know but this thread reminded me of those stories.

Ronin,

The problem with Garand accuracy is mostly the operating rod, gas cylinder, front handguard, etc. getting out of tune and rattling around. As soon as the M14 (M1A) came out, it drove the M1s off the line at the National Championships at Camp Perry. In turn, the AR15s beat the M1As at 200, 300, 600 yards.

Another problem is barrel variation. Armorers used to star gauge a bunch of barrels and call the best ones National Match barrels. These had very little diameter variation and tended to have a little "choke," wider at the rear than at the front.

National Match sights do little for inherent accuracy. The front blade is narrower (which may not be as good for hunting) and the adjustments are finer.

The CMP has initiated a special John C. Garand match at Camp Perry each August. You're supposed to shoot a stock M1 which hasn't been accurized (accurized ones have NM stamped on their parts). This is one of the most popular matches at Camp Perry.

The Alaskan judge John was referring to was judge Richard Folta and the book is titles Of Benches & Bears: Alaska's Bear Hunting Judge

Due to the long history of our military in Alaska the M-1 Garand has received a lot of use as a hunting weapon

In Pennsylvania it is illegal to hunt with a semi-auto rifle or handgun. Do any other states have similar laws?

Can one shoot 2700-2800 with the stock gas plug?

The above is probably the biggest reason. I bought a M1 in the early 80's from the dcm for $125.00 but there just wasn't very much availability. Most 03's,P17's etc were sold as surplus cheap through the NRA for like $5. Then came production rifles and surplus rifle sales slowed or dried up.

I know guys in semi-auto restricted areas that drill out the gas plug and then had a bolt action rifle.

I love M1's, wonderful rifles and especially on days like June 6th it makes one really appreciate the contribution they made to the freedom of our country.

2700 with the proper powder - burn rate matters!
150 gr bullets.

Mark

I expect that any real man who had carried one across Europe would jump at the chance to carry something else when hunting. There's a world of difference between carrying a bolt action at 7 1/2 pounds and a Garand at 10 pounds, especially once Uncle Sam stops saying that you have to.

Besides, the Garand was too difficult to scope and there weren't that many available in the Fifties and Sixties.

I've got one if the new production Springfield Armory Garrands they made a limited run of about 10 years ago.
I've killed quiet a few feral hogs here at the ranch with it. I use Remington Corlockt 150 grain Factory Ammo in mine. It's very accurate & a blast to shoot.

All my nephews wanted to shoot it after seeing the movie "Saving Private Ryan"
Now they think it's a pretty cool "antique". Especially after telling them my Grandad or their Great Grandad landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day carrying a Garrand

I think Joe had it somewhat right it was mostly a matter of timing. Surplus rifles for hunting were most popular in the 50's and 60's. the grands were not that readily available then and by the time they were declared surplus the Kennedy assassination had put an end to mail order surplus rifles, scopes had become popular and commercial rifles at reasonable prices had taken off plus it was a matter of economics. People were making more disposable income traveling more and hunting was becoming more than hunting the back 40 .

just before i retired from the army i bought my fil (a vet of the pacific during ww2) a garand from cmp. paid 250.00 for an international harvester version that was in excellent shape. my fil always spoke so highly of the garand. just before he died he gave the rifle back to me. i shot one or two whitetail doe with it before putting it away. killed deer just fine, but too heavy for a hunting rifle imo.