Bought my second swedish mauser rifle

Wohoo! I just purchased a second mauser rifle - this time a 1940s Husqvarna m/38. I do not know that much about the gun at all, I bought if unseen over the phone and the price was very low as usual here in Sweden - $76.

According to the seller, it is from the 40s and has threads on the barrel for the blank firing device. It is in OK condition with some scratches on the stock. Only modifications seem to be a Söderin target sight and a missing rear open sight. If numbers match or not, I have no idea. At least until the rifle arrives by mail in a week or so. It will be very interesting to shoot with the Söderin diopter at 300 meters. The reason I bought this m/38 is that it cost about the same as a gunsmith would charge me for drilling my dear unaltered 1918 Carl Gustaf. I would hate to desecrate that weapon!

It will be very interesting to see what this actually is - an m/38 should have a bent bolt handle as far as I know. Probably a mismatched bolt? It doesn´t really matter for me as I like to shoot my rifles, I´m not a true hardcore collector type guy anyway.

I believe it has an Elit kornring (see pic above)? It will be fun to take it to the range and see if I can hit the target at all at 300 meters, I have never shot at that distance before. And the diopter sight is also a new experience to me, almost anyway - I had an AK5 assault rifle with a peep style sight during my military service. I must say that I never really liked the sight picture of that gun... but this rifle is in a totally different ballpark when it comes to vintage vibe and all around coolness: it just has to be great!


Look at the picture above, the stock disc is probably from a shooting club of some kind. I don´t know what it reads. I know that Husqvarna made a lot of rifles during the second world war, and many of them were delivered to FSR - frivilliga skytterörelsen. We´ll see if I have the time to take it to the range before the roads get too bad because of the spring weather. I hope I will be able to try it out soon. Check back for a range report!

New Range Report! Circumstances Still Primitive!

Me and my dad once again decided to go to the range. The weather was fantastic today, the sun was shining , +2 C and you could almost walk on the snow. We went to another range this time, a place that hadn´t been used in a few months (?), the snow was very deep and we had to walk on some old snow mobile tracks to get to the end of the range.

Due to the snow, it was impossible to get the target suspension thingies to work right, and we ended up sticking the targets down in the snow, supporting them with short wooden sticks. Primitive, but functional.
I had my 1918 Swedish Mauser rifle with open sights of course, and my father had his CG 63. The CG 63 is a factory match rifle version of the m/96, they used old recievers (in his case a 1902 Carl Gustaf) and put match barrels and "modern" stocks on them, as well as polished and lightened the trigger mechanism. His gun has a scope and is used every season for hunting moose. We fired at 100m:

Hm... recoil looks a bit heavy. Or is it that his arms are getting weak? After a few shots, it was my turn:


We realised that trying to shoot from a huge pile of snow really really sucks!!! For every third step we took we sunk down to our knees, the sun was melting the top layer a bit and things were getting difficult. I can tell you that high pulse from running around in deep snow makes things a little bit more interesting when trying to hit a target. The threat of getting the sink-down-in-the-snow-surpise was an extra bonus. Look at the pic - after I fired that round I sunk down again!

Also, look at the bench in the background. Originally, we figured we could shoot from it. Then I discovered that the sand bag was stuck in the ice! At the wrong place.

Here are the results from the first series:

I was shooting a bit high, I figured I had to aim directly at the bottom of the target to hit the center. (Time to order a higher front sight blade!) Still a decent group thinking of the fact that I was shooting without support on a hostile pile of snow. The next series:

Too low this time! Still a decent group, I´m at least hitting the target! Higher! Next one:

OK, height is getting better, but I won´t be able to group tighter than this. All in all, a great result I think, as I didn´t expect any of my bullets to hit the target after my first series. This was hard! I prefer sitting down with support for the gun and so on. Probably crappy shooting for some, but I am very pleased.

For our next session at the range I need the following:

1. Higher front sight blade.
2. Better range.
3. No snow.
4. A bench.