my first mauser

[Patrick Chadwick]

In addition to the good advice from Gunner, I would like to add the following: Assuming you have checked the muzzle for bellmouthing or damage, your Mauser may have a deep throat, which is bad for modern boattail bullets, especially if as light as 150gns. It is also the most common problem I have found to date when shooting old service rifles, so well worth a check.

If you are an experienced reloader ( if not, get help from someone who is) you could try the following:
Dismantle one round. Establish how far the bullet goes into the throat before touching the lands. Measure that position and compare with a loaded round. Quite possibly the bullet will go so deep that it would be out of the cartridge case (i.e. in free flight) before touching the lands. That would mean serious gas blow-by, skewed engraving, lousy grouping).

If that is the case, there are two options: as already recommended, try ammo with a longer, heavier, flat-base bullet (because the longer parallel section gives a better feed into the throat), or, as a simple test - but only if you are an experienced reloader - reseat the bullets further out in the ammo you already have and try again. If that produces better grouping, then it would confirm the deep throat suspicion, without you having to buy different ammo first.

Patrick

[Calif-Steve]

Many older Mausers have poor/fair barrels and they simply will not shoot well. The Yugos that are common today will usually have decent bores on them. Try Privi 8mm loads. Hot, but very good. Handload- try to down-load the round. Find 196/198 gr. bullets and good luck with a light load.

[USMCNewdog]

I found some turkish 1943 190 something grain, I will take it to the range and report.

[smellie]

Best thing you can do with that Turk ammo, friend, is pull it down and dump the charges into sized casings with FRESH primers. We had a bunch of that Turkish ammo up here and people were cussing at it something awful because it just would not shoot. (This was the 154-grain stuff we had, 1942, 1943.)

I transferred 30 rounds into new cases with fresh primers and my rifles started jumping up and doing tricks. ONE inch at 100 yards is not at all bad for a "no-name" undated Reichswehr Kar.98b, nor is inch and a quarter at all bad for a 1915/1920 Gew. 98 Mauser/Mauser. The Danzig 1914 Kar 98aZ shot just under 2 inches. It has also been through 3 wars, so I forgave it.

The Turkish ammo was absolutely superb when it was made. The problem now is dodgy primers. You can't expect the rifle to shoot its best if the ammo has bad primers.
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