My Groundhog Rifle As A Kid :) A Brief History of the Mauser 98

 

The 19^th century saw many innovative firearms designs, from Sam Colt’s famous single-action revolver to Winchester’s cowboy-favorite lever-action rifles, but one of the most important firearms to make its debut in this era wasn’t from America, but from Germany. You’ve probably seen this firearm referenced in a shooting magazine or book—in fact it’s hard to pick up any literature on firearms today and not see this gun or its action mentioned. I’m talking about Peter Paul Mauser’s Model 98 bolt-action repeating rifle.

Noted for its extremely strong action, the Mauser 98 was the basis for military shoulder arms for the first decades of the 20^th century. Utterly reliable and capable of taking on some of the largest dangerous game available, Mauser’s bolt-action repeating rifle soon became a favorite tool for sportsmen. While the lever-action rifle so popular when the Mauser 98 was introduced could offer a slightly faster rate of fire, the capability of firing cartridges with flatter trajectories and greater accuracy gave the edge to Mauser’s bolt-action design (especially when longer shots are concerned).

Most bolt-actions look similar from the outside, but there are many differences in how they are designed and function internally. Mauser’s design, for instance, doesn’t require the use of an internal hammer. (Note: a gun’s “hammer” can be external, like on a revolver, a Colt 1911 semi-auto pistol, and many lever-action rifles, while the majority of repeating shotguns and rifles have internal or “non-exposed” hammers.) The Mauser 98’s “lock time”—the time between the end of the trigger pull and the detonation of the cartridge, something measured in fractions of a second and important to a gun’s accuracy (faster is better)—was much faster than the lever guns so popular when the 98 was introduced. So just how good was the Mauser 98? To give you just one example, Winchester cloned the Mauser 98 when it released its now famous Model 70, and that rifle would go on to earn the moniker “The Rifleman’s Rifle.”

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