doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Bubba-ed Pre-WWII 8MM Mauser Sporter

Long story, which I'll try to keep short. One of my uncles brought this back after WWII - he served as a medic in Germany late in the war with the 63rd Infantry Division. The rifle was brought back in its original configuration and gifted to another uncle. Unfortunately, the second uncle has the gun worked over and restocked - he used it for years as his deer rifle and fired commercial 8mm Mauser hunting ammo in it. The bolt handle was altered to clear a new scope - which was mounted using a Marbles Game Getter see-through arrangement. There is also now a low-profile Buehler safety on it.

Somewhere I have a photo of the original, unaltered rifle hanging on a wall in a 1946-vintage deer camp photo. It shows that the buttstock had a typical European/German cheek rest on the left side.

There are no markings (including a serial number) on the gun anywhere, except for a small, neatly stamped "H.M." on the underside of the barrel.

The chambering is also somewhat of a mystery. The bore slugs for a .323" bullet and the chamber is very long. But since the magazine looks to be standard, I'm guessing this gun is either chambered for the standard 8mm Mauser, or maybe the longer 8x60 Mauser.

I have a handful of 170-gr 8mm Remington Core-Lokt jacketed bullets. One of my Lyman reloading manuals shows an OAL with this bullet of 2.85". My chamber measures long enough to seat one of these bullets in a cartridge 3.509" long - so something seems odd. One of my cousins has some brass fired in this rifle and I've asked him to send them to me - hopefully that will answer my cartridge question.

I'm including a few photos of the gun (it's partially disassembled at the moment, so it's not all there). The bore (from the bolt face to the muzzle) measures right at 23-5/8" (or 60 cm).

I would appreciate any thoughts on what this gun may have been originally, and especially on the H.M. markings.

I would normally attempt to restore a bubba-ed rifle like this, but I'm going to sentimentally leave it in its current configuration.

TIA,

Tom

Tom,
Your rifle is most likely an 8x57 that was converted to 8x60 after WW1 to comply with Treaty( lawful) requirements. Depending on chamber length, it also could have been chambered to 8mm/06 after arriving in the US. The H.M. is likely the touch mark of the barrel maker. Lack of markings could result from being removed before the reblue job in the US, in which case the H.M. would likely be the initials of the person doing the work. It is possible that it was a rifle put together after WW2 before the Germans were allowed to make guns again. Times were hard enough that gunsmiths built many such rifles for GIs in return for various barter items, including cigarettes. Some cleaned the markings off to avoid discovery, but most didn't bother. This would make 8x60 caliber less likely, but still possible. Your best bet would be to have a chamber cast made to determine the caliber. Your gunsmith could get a pretty good idea by checking with 8mm and 30-06 headspace gauges.
Mike

Bubba'd or customized to fit his needs.

Original stock more than likely too much drop to be useable with a scope, then scopes weren't the scopes we have today, see through mounts were common since fixed 4x or 6x scopes had quite narrow FOV's and slow target acquisition, prone to fogging and see-thru and swing aways were very popular. Remember they were FREE bring backs no matter how fancy they were.

My ex-FinL had a beautiful commercial Mauser built in Germany, octagon barrel, double set trigger, nice walnut stock with cheek piece that he liberated. He got home and decent hunting ammo was non-existent for the rifle, he wanted a scope. So it received a Buhmiller barrel in 250-3000, D&T'd, he bought a beautiful piece of presentation grade walnut from Herters and had it custom stocked and hunted it from 1950 to 2015 when he died, so was it Bubba'd or was it a donor for custom rifle?