Collecting and shooting Milsurps on the cheap

[Eaglelord17]

I don't want to hijack your excellent thread so early in the proceedings, but personally, I'd advise a new shooter to stay away from "Weird"* calibres like 7.7mm Arisaka, or 7.65mm Mauser.

I've always suggested people go with .303, 6.5x55 Swedish, 7.62x51/308, or 7.62x54R calibre guns until they're more established in the pursuit. Because those are the most common Service Rifle calibres, they're the ones where there's the most expertise available for (ie other people who load the cartridges, have guns chambered in them, etc) - things which are important to a new shooter.

*"Weird" being any calibre you can't generally readily obtain from pretty much any gunshop.

I 100% understand what you are saying in regards to common calibers, but the advantage of the 7.7x58 and the 7.65x53 is that once you have the brass and dies it is no harder to reload than a standard 7.62x51 and 7.62x63 (30-06). It is even easier to reload than the .303 British. It also gives some variety in options for actions (M91 Mauser actions, M98 Mauser actions, Type 99 action etc.) so it gives a bit more variety than just using a Mosin Nagant (not a bad thing, but personally I like to shoot at least two different rifles at the range per day I shoot).

Right now in Canada, both those types of brass are available for the same price as any other full rifle caliber (70-80$ for 100 pieces), which if you get 10 reloads out of each piece comes to about 7-8cents a shot.

The biggest goal of this article is to let people know how to shoot these rifles cheaply. If your shooting 6.5x55 in Canada your looking at 1.25$ a round at the moment, and even if you reload it is only slightly cheaper (100 bullets costing 40$, this applies to virtually every caliber except .223 and .308). Besides at about 27-38cents a shot, your shooting centerfire for cheaper than virtually anyone else (except maybe some cast lead shooters), and most definitely are shooting jacketed bullets for cheaper than anyone else, unless they are using this technique. It is actually cheaper make and fire the whole round than it is to just buy the bullet itself. You will pay for your reloading gear in 555rds of .303 British or 218rds of 7.7 Japanese (just looking at if your buying factory ammo).

Personally the first caliber I ever reloaded for was a 7.7x58 Japanese, and other than one mistake that required me to dump and deprime 50 cases (seated the primers too deep accidentally on my first try) I have never had a issue.

Unfortunately I only have a 100m range to play around with in my area, so I haven't been able to stretch it out farther, but they preform excellently in this area (better than I can) so there is no reason I can see it won't do good at longer ranges (certainly grouping better than the factory ammo I have used).

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[Colonel Enfield]

I think this discussion perfectly demonstrates the difference between countries regarding ammunition/gun availability

Ammo in Australia costs a fortune. Factory, reloading components, doesn't matter, it still costs the sort of money that would make our friends in the US keel over with an attack of the vapours.

My observation is centrefire ammo for the "mainstream" calibres I mentioned earlier is about $1.50/rnd, with deals available from time to time when someone imports a container-load of a specific calibre (or range thereof).

While I appreciate where you're coming from with regards to ease of reloading for some of the odd cartridges, in this part of the world the guns themselves are so uncommonly encountered as to make it a moot point. For example, I don't think I've ever even seen a rifle chambered for 7.65x53mm Mauser, except for a scant handful of Turkish Mauser rifles on display in museums, captured during the Gallipoli Campaign.

Back in the '80s and '90s someone imported vast quantities of Swedish Mausers into Australia - so many they're easily the second most commonly encountered Milsurp rifle here after the various .303s. Something similar is happening at the moment with the Swiss Schmidt-Rubin rifles; someone has imported a heap of them, they're on the market for reasonable prices, and they've suddenly become very popular whereas perhaps five years ago only serious military rifle enthusiasts would have even heard of them, much less own one.

I know there's a few Carcanos floating around for next to nothing at the moment; a friend grabbed one a year or two back for that reason but discovered the ammo and reloading components were so hard to get in his area that he's now stuck with a spectacularly average rifle that's a huge pain in the neck to feed, not cheap to run, and not especially accurate either.

I must stress that all this doesn't make your advice bad in any way - just illustrates the different experiences people are going to have in different areas.