Interesting items found in butt trap

[Warren]

Good call Warren. It's got John Appleton's import mark on it. I had a few of his No.4T's that were less the scopes and identical in the early 90's.

My God how times flies.....I've not even had the chance to take the tags off a couple !!!!!
There was 6 Long Branch picked out for me and the shipments got switched by mistake and the rest is history. There are 6 scopeless LB No.4(T)'s in the US, somewhere. I wonder how many have made it back to Canada.
What year was it that John died....??

[vintage hunter]

Brian just saw your post confirming John Appleton as the importer of my T. Pardon my evasive maneuvers but I'm not big on blurting out names, even those of the deceased.

[Warren]

Here are pictures of two from the same batch. Interesting that they do not have any sale proof marks or England on them. I must see if I can find the others and check them as well.
This is what I meant by a sanded butt.Attachment 34669

[Brian Dick]

I've had quite a few of his imports over the years. I'm not exactly sure when he died. I can find out though as I was hired to do imports by several of his clients afterwards. All of his rifles were very nice and a majority of that particular load fresh releases from MoD stores at the time. There were quite a few scopeless "T's" and nice No.4Mk.2's that had been issued and then repacked for storage.

[Brian Dick]

John passed in late '08 or early '09. I never had the pleasure of meeting him personally. Talked with him on the phone a couple of times.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

it was adentified as cyrillic (?) and said words to the effect '........ do not mix the telescope and the rifle. the telescope must stay with the rifle'

One possibility is that particular rifle was meant for or was sent to Yugoslavia by the S.O.E. who oversaw shipment of a vast amount of equipment to various resistance groups in Europe in WW2. The documents for such shipments have probably long been shredded, unfortunately.