Thank you. One of the reasons I have not fully straightened the barrel of the Lebel, not to mention I did not drill out the magazine hole in the stock, is to set up a red flag. The charring on the buttstock should be enough, but some people only see what they want to see. They look down the sights of the lebel, they can see the issue. As for the 03, its a personal choice and I never like the recoil of an 03 anyways. Oddly, when they were tried with maxim silencers in the teens, the testers noted that the perceived recoil and muzzle blast were much less which made the 03's pleasant to shoot.