Gun modification

leaningright

leaningright

Moderate Republican
Staff member
All you military gun purists just skip this thread. I like taking military weapons that I obtain on the cheap and sporterizing them. I'm finally planning to begin modifications on a 303 British Enfield (in honor of Tom Pendergast aka Milagro) that I bought for $40 back in 1992. I have already put a synthetic stock on it and have killed a few deer with it. Targeting on paper it has performed more than adequate as well...so it is a good candidate for my plans. I plan to shorten the barrel and glass bed everything. I haven't decided yet if I want to keep the synthetic stock or if I want to purchase a nice wooden stock for it. I'll also put a nice scope on it.

If this gun does what I think it will and performs accurately out to about 250 yd, I plan to make it my elk rifle. I plan to retire and do a bit of elk hunting in the coming years as long as I remain in good enough health. While I can afford a very good weapon for this, I find this approach to be much more rewarding. I've got a couple of weeks off starting Friday so I'm looking forward to getting started. I'll try to document with some pics if I can remember to take them.
 
Here's a beauty with Cutaneous fibromas , should make for some fine eating...
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Enjoy!
 
leaningright said:
All you military gun purists just skip this thread. I like taking military weapons that I obtain on the cheap and sporterizing them. I'm finally planning to begin modifications on a 303 British Enfield (in honor of Tom Pendergast aka Milagro) that I bought for $40 back in 1992. I have already put a synthetic stock on it and have killed a few deer with it. Targeting on paper it has performed more than adequate as well...so it is a good candidate for my plans. I plan to shorten the barrel and glass bed everything. I haven't decided yet if I want to keep the synthetic stock or if I want to purchase a nice wooden stock for it. I'll also put a nice scope on it.

If this gun does what I think it will and performs accurately out to about 250 yd, I plan to make it my elk rifle. I plan to retire and do a bit of elk hunting in the coming years as long as I remain in good enough health. While I can afford a very good weapon for this, I find this approach to be much more rewarding. I've got a couple of weeks off starting Friday so I'm looking forward to getting started. I'll try to document with some pics if I can remember to take them.
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I'd love to see the final results. Keep us posted. I have always liked the .303 british.
 
WinterBorn said:
Yeah, no one I know is foolish enough to eat that. But then, if it were a cow you would never know those tumors were in your ground beef.
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But liberals don't want it shot and put out of it's misery; because they would prefer that it die a natural death or one by predators.

:facepalm:
 
Norah said:
It wouldn't be a fun trigger pull but an animal like that would clearly be suffering and would probably face a long drawn out death from starvation.
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You are a sweetheart trying to explain logic to imbeciles like Bucky

Of course Bucky is all about killing babies and euthanasia. But kill a deer?
 
This is not my gun but it is the same style and is what my gun looked like back '92 when I got it. It will give an idea of what I'm starting with. The first thing I did was buy the synthetic stock you will see in subsequent pics and then eliminated the peep sights, modified the receiver so that I could drill and tap it for a Weaver scope bar.

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Here a couple of pics of the scope mount I cobbled up for this modification.

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I cut about an inch off the bar so it would fit. I took the peep sight (which was made to swivel and switch between two sizes of holes) off and drilled and tapped the back of the bar from each side and put it where the peep sight was. I then drilled and tapped from the top so I could put a single screw in there. Now the bar is secured at three positions. This has proved to be a very secure mount serving since about 1995 or 1996.
 
All of these target pics are shot from at least 100 yds (100 of my steps) just taking a rest off of the hood of my pickup. This is before I shortened the barrel. The two farthest apart are 3 inches. I allowed that I had a flyer or I didn't hold steady ... just taking a rest off my truck there is room for error. The older I get the more room there seems to be.

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A little work with the bench grinder, then the bench sander, finally some finer work with a Dremel tool to re-crown and curb the sharp edge...then a dab of bluing agent. The barrel crown actually looks really good. My phone flash brings out all of the nicks and dings in this old military barrel.

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Here is where we find out if my efforts were worth it. Again, shooting off the hood of my truck at at least 100 yd. The farthest holes are 1 5/8 inches apart. Definitely good enough for this weapon. Now I'll go to work developing the most accurate load for it in 150 gr (for whitetail) and 180 gr (for elk). I will still have to see how I can get it to perform at greater distance. For me to use this gun for elk I want it to shoot at least a 3 in group at 200 yd.

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That's all I'm doing for now. So far I have a total of $107 invested in this project. The best part of it is that now that I'm in the part where I have to develop loads for it, I get to do a lot of shooting...not that a person ever needs much of an excuse to burn some powder.
 
Going to revisit this thread. I don’t get to hunt with a modern rifle because of having to be out of town (visiting in laws) during that particular hunting season. My boy is 14 and hasn’t got to experience deer camp like I did when I was young. Oklahoma has a holiday doe hunt but it isn’t open in our part of the state. I decided this year to make the 5 hr drive north dragging the camper and hunt an area I know nothing about. We headed out early last Tuesday morning, found a good camping spot (not much competition with 9 degree nights predicted), and hunted for a couple of days.

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Now the terrain up north is nothing like my corner is SE OK. I rarely need to shoot more than 30 - 50 yards at a deer and there are few places where I hunt that afford a shot out to 100 yards. Where we were hunting on this trip was wide open country, for the most part.

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The WWII 303 British that I modified (documented in this thread) was the gun I chose to take. I have developed whitetail loads that give less than 1inch groups at 100 yards and will group less than 3 inches at 250 yards. I was planning on that long range shot, you know. We had a great 4 day father-son camping trip. Hopefully one day my boy will look back on it with fond memories like I do when I remember events with my dad.

The only deer we saw....well, we jumped her out of a thicket and I shot her on the run at less than 20 yards. LOL...so much for that long range shot. At least I’m confident in this gun if/when I get to hunt the wide open country again. It was a great holiday trip.

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