After shooting Doug’s little sporter, I began to see why some troopers bitched about the ’03 Springfield. Maybe it’s just me, but the older I get, the less I like getting kicked. One thing worth mentioning is the very pleasant level of felt recoil of the Krag. Pretty interesting, although not quite enough to justify wrestling 49″ worth of overall length through the deer woods. It turned out to be considerable - clocking an impressive 2,639 fps and crowding. Since Doug had seen fit to bring along his unaltered full-length (as in 30″) 1898 rifle, we were curious to see what kind of velocity boost an extra 8″ of barrel would impart. Out of the 22″ barrel of our carbine sporter, it averaged 2,308 fps. Our test ammo menu was restricted to Winchester Super-X 180-grain Power Point that proved to be an excellent load in the Krag. 30-40 Krag, notably the lever-action M95 Winchester, the Remington-Lee Model 1899 bolt action and, much, much later, Ruger’s nifty little single-shot No. Incidentally, a few other notable American rifles have been chambered to. Most changes in the M98 variant were minor and included a slight redesign of the bolt handle and a reversing of the operation of the magazine cut-off lever from the previous versions.
One period military holdover is the magazine cut-off, a small lever at the left rear of the receiver which allows single loading without tapping into the main 5-round payload sitting in reserve. The lesson? If you have a nice Krag, hang on to it. Me? I had one once, loved it, and traded it away. The machining required to produce this wondrous side-magazine today would make any attempt at a current “Krag” prohibitively pricey. The single-lug bolt of the Krag action as slick-cycling as it was, couldn’t handle the pressures the multi-lug setup of the ’03 could. You could stuff a handful of cartridges in and - as long as the bullets were pointed the right way - once you snapped the cover shut, you were good to go.Īnother factor contributing to the ’03’s adoption was the desire for an action permitting a more powerful cartridge than the 30-40 Krag (or. Unfortunately for the prospects of Krag longevity, the Mauser stripper clip system had gotten all the major powers hot and bothered, so the simple, single-loading virtues of the Krag system were relegated to sportsmen. It only cut the 5-round cartridge capacity down by a couple of rounds but kinda destroyed the distinctive “Krag Kool” look of the originals. Many “civilianized” Krag sporters - usually 22″ carbine variants - had the side magazine “chopped” and replaced by a flush-fitting hinged cover. There were several American Krag variants - Models 1892, 1896, 18 in both rifle (30″ barrel) and carbine (22″ barrel) configuration. The term “buck-fifty” Krag wasn’t all that much of an exaggeration. Surplus Krags were shockingly inexpensive for decades and were often the only available choice for many hunters, particularly when there was a world war going on. Handloaders, of course, can go heavier or lighter. Regardless of fad and fashion, 3,000 fps is not the critical yardstick for a viable big-game load used at real-world yardages. Winchester, Hornady and Remington offer excellent hunting loads (Power Point, SP Custom and Core-Lokt) approaching the 2,500 fps mark - still about right for a general-purpose deer, bear and hog load.
In fact, it was used to take the world’s record (until recently) Rocky Mountain elk in 1899 according to Barnes’ Cartridges of the World.Īny commercial loading you may encounter is pretty much restricted to the 180-grain weight. It was, and is, a perfectly serviceable number for North American big game.
303 British, at least in 180-grain configuration as opposed to the original 2,000 fps 220-grain loading. 30-06 - was reasonably close ballistically to the similarly rimmed. 30-40 cartridge - while not the equal of the. 30-40 cartridge may have been “obsoleted” by various Mausers, not to mention the Mauser-copycat ’03, it found favor with many hunters in sporterized trim.
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