Sporterizing a WWI Gewehr 98

[trigger643]

Sometimes sporterizing an old military rifle is not such a bad thing. Take, for instance, this one produced by the Royal Prussian Arsenal at Erfurt immediately after WWI. The arsenal rebuilt quite a few into sporters using GEW98 rifles until it was shut down by the allies' disarmament commission in 1921. Whoever "E.K." was, he had a few bucks. Did he shoot bore and deer with this? or something more exotic like lion and gazelle?

 

[cnodie1]

Clicked ready to cringe but was pleasantly surprised. That engraving is gorgeous

 

[dwr461]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Kaltenbrunner

Hopefully EK wasn't that guy or this could blow up bigger than the Mormon incident.

Nice looking example of a old school professionally done "sporter"

Dave

 

[trigger643]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Kaltenbrunner

Hopefully EK wasn't that guy or this could blow up bigger than the Mormon incident.

Nice looking example of a old school professionally done "sporter"

Dave

Kaltenbrunner was a big guy, standing 6'7". He was also from a wealthy Austrian family. The original length of pull on this rifle 13.25" (without the J.C. Higgins pad that was most likely added by the WW2 vet that brought it home). It would be reasonable to assume, even at the age of 17 or 18 - which was about his age when this rifle was made, that Kaltenbrunner would have purchased a rifle of this relative cost fitted to him with a length of pull commiserate with his stature, or at least 16" and quite likely even more.

Also, the really telling evidence that this is not a Nazi gun is the well documented and undisputed fact that all the Nazi's at the Mountain Meadows Massacre carved little smiley faces with the eyes x'ed out on the top of the barrel for every Missourian they slaughtered that day. Legend has it that in an early Nazi Rally in the 1920's, Goebels was looking for a symbol for the new party and spied one such rifle in the hands of a Freikorp Morman-Nazi and the crudely carved x's for eyes (no doubt done at the celebration immediately following the Missourians' murder by the Mormon-Nazi drunken on Mormon Mead Liquor), were the inspiration for the swastika.

Thousands of hunting arms were confiscated by the allies immediately following WW2 with the disarming of the German civilian population and these looted arms were quite popular with returning veterans and soldiers of the U.S. occupying forces.