Good luck Timmy!
All this talk about Euro calibers…
I killed one of my first Elk with an 8x57 Mauser back in the late 90’s. An old Turkish Mil-Surp Mauser that I purchased in-person at J&G Sales in Prescott, AZ for $40+tax, and then cleaned it up and re-finished the stock myself. Yes, only $40!!!
I could have spent $60 for the “hand select” model that were generally in better condition (hindsight is 20/20, I probably should have done this, but I was a poor college student), but I knew one of the counter guys pretty well and he let me look through about a dozen of the other ones and I found one that was pretty damn close to the hand-select guns.
It was COVERED in cosmoline, but everything except the wood was in great shape, all matching numbers. I sanded off about 1/16-1/8” of the Beech wood on the exterior to get down to fresh wood that wasn’t saturated in cosmoline, then refinished with ~8 thin coats of the Birchwood Casey linseed oil for a nice lacquered finish that turned out looking really good. The front sight was a short triangular one that wasn’t tall enough, so I replaced it with a blade from Brownell’s and after that it was a tack driver to 600 yards with the iron sights. (I’ve always had good eyes, but back then in my 20’s they were like a hawk, and I could consistently hit a 9” paper plate out to 600 yards. I could probably only do it at 300 yards now.)
The 8x57 has very similar power and ballistics to a .30-06, and S&B was the only company back then making hunting ammo in that caliber. The soft point bullets had a strange design called a “cutted edge” where there was a significant step in the ogive about halfway down the curve. They worked though, and made for nice lead mushrooms.
I still have ~30 rounds of the S&B hunting soft points, and like 1,500 rounds of (corrosive) mil-surp FMJ ammo with either copper or gilding metal (soft steel) jackets.
Fun gun to go shoot a high-power rifle for cheap!
