Hi Rick, That's amazing. If anyone knows...he does; so amazing - to me, the Springfeild still stands as the the greatest American military rifle of all time. The Garand is something for sure and the ARs are nice and certainly popular - but the Springfield is in a class of its own. Have a great weekend Rick.

Wow - what a great wife! And what a great rifle! God Bless!

Fantastic history lesson - I did not know. Yes indeed - iron sights can be amazing. I was shooting at 200 yards again this past weekend with a Savage in 30-30 and a rolling block in 8x58R - the 200 yard groups were truly amazing - for both calibers - such fine rifles and sights. I'm not sure I would hit anything at 1000 - well - maybe a hillside; but then, there are only so many that can shoot that Farr. : )

@@UnitedStatesOfGuns - Having exceptionally acute eyesight helps for using irons, or being young! Farr was probably fortunate in that respect.... but still, what an amazing accomplishment!

I just love that - the 2 best...in your 20s - well done!

Thanks Mark!

Thanks Darren! Maybe one day we meet at a show or somewhere : )

Hey Johnathen - same page - I've hunted up hill and dale and places in between - any man can carry a 8-10 lb. rifle - no worries. Light is fun but we can carry a lot more than we think. Comfort? Well, that's for living rooms. : )

USOG right I mean honestly what’s and extra 2 pounds heck in WW1 & WW2 men were carrying the 1903 and 1903a3 across the battlefields and loaded down to the gills with gear so I’m sure a hunter going out for the day can manage to carry a very good shoot rifle to there hunting stand

Thank you so much David - these words are very important to me and I appreciate them. Thank you again.

Hi David - Thanks for writing. A Springfield Armory 1903 in excellent condition can be around 2K. Wonderful rifle to own. All the best to you in Thailand and hope you can shoot a few targets back home one day with that rifle. God Bless.

I like the cocking piece too - it was put there for good reasons. As for the 30-06 - no matter what you hear or read - the '06 is a brilliant cartridge and capable of just about anything one needs a cartridge to do. Naturally, it is neither a .22 Hornet or a .50 Browning. It is the real world in between.

And frankly it is very American and stood against Tyranny in both world wars. They say that Oppression can come from the barrel of a gun but "Occasionally so can Victory"

Thank you!

Thanks Flint - one of these years I'll get that straight : )

You too Paul!

Thanks Jason

Words of wisdom.

I'm glad White Shadow.

Have one that was customised in the 50,s paid 125 dollars for the gun . It's heavy but shoots great, with peep sight for my old eyes !

Thank you Grendel - and thank you for noticing. It was a nasty injury - a jig slipped and my drill did the damage. Thankfully I'll have a new one soon. All the best.

Hello The Bleeb - You're a lucky man! Firstly for having a Springfielda3 since you were 15 and secondly for retiring at age 45! : ) The modified Springfields are favorites of mine - they function and shoot as few modern rifles do - just like yours - and the prices are reasonable. I wish they still made Springfields - people would buy them.

Hi Thomas - team commander! Not easy. Great rifle for that.

@@UnitedStatesOfGuns The US Army uses the M1903 for Drill and Ceremony, as well as for the Color Guard. The big difference most are chrome plated. Yes it was very time consuming and a lot of practice to reach perfection in timing a lot of hours of repetition, as well as every measurement on the uniform must be perfect. It was fun and enjoyable when I did it.

Thanks Arthur.

Thank you!

Thanks Vincent!

thats interesting! i never gave thought to where the rebels got their gear or what they used, what else did they have, k98s?

@@Sybok51288 i think so, but it was really only the springfield and remington 03s that stood out as being consistent, and the rest were (from memory) a mix up of anything and everything. Very possibly there were smgs etc that didnt make the museum.

You're fortunate to have that fine rifle - now so scarce - I've seen a lot of custom 03 sporters - yours is one of the finest if similar to the video rifles.

Thanks, I think mine had the same front sight on it as yours when first sporterized. My father had a German gunsmith re-shape the bolt handle with an inward curve to allow clearance for the fat night scope. The cutout in the stock for the old sight was filled in nicely with a piece of matching walnut. Looking at the date on the barrel it appears to have been built by Springfield in 1929. Serial#1318176. Thanks for the great video!

I noticed something else today on this sporterized Springfield. The safety has been re-designed so that it only has a 90 degree travel from the unsafe (down position) to the upward position (safe). This allows it to clear the low scope mounting. I'll bet this was a kit at some point. Works well and looks right too. EDIT: The kit is an original Buehler safety.

Buy lottery tickets. Great good luck finding one these days. I still can't believe how fine my .257 Roberts Springfield is.

Thank you! I'll have to learn more. : )

Thanks Jon! I find the 2 groove is great as well.

Hi Steve - more gems. I love the 71 and the 1895 in 30/40 is a classic - always wanted to hunt with one - even just once. I'll make the videos as soon as I get the guns. I don't have your luck : )

Great luck! Not so easy to find - I found one about a week ago on line and contacted the seller - it had been posted for about an hour he wrote back...gone. Good hunting and shooting.

Thanks Deacon! Glad you're here.

Some people have all the luck.

Hi alungiggs - that is amazing. Waterloo...what a loss. One of the more interesting books I've read lately is The Emperors Last Island by Julia Blackburn.

Hi John - great idea! I will.

Very true Keith - whenever I hunt or shoot the milsurps I think of the troops who carried these, plus their hundred pounds of other stuff, through mud, snow, bush and over hill and dale...while being shot at. Not easy for sure.

Good point about the men carrying them in battle conditions. I don't mind a rifle with some heft - seems "real."

Hi Alex - So many of those projects turned into some of the best sporters.

@@UnitedStatesOfGuns The main thing in his mind was to create the best tool from the surplus rifle for acquiring Deer to feed the Family. Your are right, he sure brought home a lot meat with that little investment..!

I think most people agree with you. The Springfield looks great no matter where it is - from trenches to tree stands - it looks fine and right.

Interesting Michael - I guess so many things could have gone on. I've seen combinations of barrels and receivers and stocks that don't quite match how things were supposed to have been. All fascinating though. Your granddad must have been one of those skilled men - not easy to find. Best to you.

All true - great rifle. Thanks for the note.

Thank you - great post. I picked up a couple of sporters built on the Springfield - but no luck finding a military one. I like the action though.

Buy lottery tickets. : )

Thanks Randy

I hope to make a video on a Springfiled sporter soon. There are some superb rifles based on those military actions - just as you say - unbelievably fine.

All good points. There are ways to sporterize and ways to wreck.

Hi Steve - I wish they came up for sale more often - so hard to find now.

Thanks Leman!

Thanks Luke!

@@UnitedStatesOfGuns I would love to see some more content on the old faithful Remington 760, I own 5 myself.

100%

Many 03A3's don't have the correct height front sight post to shoot POA to POI. Probably as a consequence of wartime "hurry-up" production.... good news, though, is that plenty of surplus front sight blades are available to fix the problem.

Between $350. and $850.

Thank you - I like that mark.

Thanks Jon!

Hello Cliff, Thank you for your kind words - I appreciate them. Please let me know what your question was. Your 1903 is a gem - and they stopped making these gems....long ago. God Bless, Mike

USOG the Springfield 1903 that I have has a bolt handle that is 90 degrees flush with the stock when closed. I can't find anything on this particular rifle.

Lucky man.

Excellent post - thank you. I did not know most of what you wrote - learned much. The rifle did not have the star : ( and I sold it to a fellow collector. I did have one star gauge sporter quite similar to the one in the video - I sold it to a collector in New York years ago. I only have the Remington (I didn't know about the straight grip stock - thank you) and a custom sporter in .257 Robert improved by WM. J. Welker, Seattle - an impossibly accurate rifle, and a British 30-06 sporter. You must have some magnificent specimens. I find the Springfield uniquely fascinating among the military bolt actions. Hard to put into words. The action has some kind of character and complexity of appearance or something like that - I think they are fantastic. I owned a Fred Adolph 03 that was near perfect - also gone from my vault. I had several others over time; each one special in its own way. The G&H products are of course magnificent. I phoned Michael Petrov in 2006 and bought his book Custom Gunmakers of the 20th Century - many fine rifles and a lot of information there. I had one rifle by a famous stockmaker - he inletted with tiny chisels to perfection - I just can't remember his name at the moment. Amazing work. Hope to hear from you again soon.

I "cut my teeth" with my 1903 addiction circa 2000, shortly after I married the now-Mrs. Walton, and learned most of what I know from John Beard, and the other fellas that were posting on the old Culver's Shooting Page and the Gun & Knife Forum. Mike Petrov was a heckuva source on the custom 03's, and I loved the photography he was doing of them, and though I never conversed directly with him, his posts were always informative and respected by all. I wore out my first copy of Brophy's "The 1903 Rifle". Some of my favorites have been the "Sporter" rifles that Springfield sold to civilians, and I've built several clones. The National Match rifles are the pinnacle of development, in my mind, though there were many that were built for specific international matches. I'm just finishing up a 1922 MI .22 LR. A few days after I retired from the USAF as a civilian, I was asked to work at a local gunstore in southeast Idaho. One of my first customers was also a retired GI, and he had a rifle in a full case that he wanted to trade for "a .22 magnum". Nothing specific, other than it had to be a .22 magnum. What he offered for trade was the 1922, in a maple stock with ebony forend tip, grip cap, and an old, steel Model 70 buttplate. I pulled a used Marlin bolt action repeater .22 mag from the shelf that was marked at $199 for the holiday sale, and he asked if I'd be interested in a straight across swap.....that was the first of many times that I put blisters on my hands pulling cash out of my pocket!!! In the meantime, I found an original, correct stock for the 1922, the right band and buttplate, but am now looking for the right receiver and barrel scope bases, as this little rifle was shipped from SA for most likely a Winchester A5, or perhaps a Lyman of Fecker. I've never had a deep bank account, and couldn't afford to have the work done that I wanted, so I self-taught myself, along with the help from several old gunsmith-mentors, to bed, finish, checker, install buttpads, grip caps....nothing worth much except to me, and my kids like it, probably just because they saw the time and effort it took to do. I love the G&H rifles perhaps the best. The styling "gets" me. Jack O'Connor mentioned a lot of the old craftsmen that have gone to the shop in another realm, and of the bunch, the only one I've come close to being able to afford was a Neidner 25-06 that was in terrible shape that a LGS in Pocatello had on the rack for a ridiculously low sum. The rifle went out the door as I was on my way back from the credit union with the money..... I really love your videos! Most all of the others leave me throwing things at the screen with their errors and misstatements. Take 'er easy, have fun, don't git caught!!!

I originally had a comment or two about the Remington that I didn't share. Most of the very early Remington 1903's ended up going to New Zealand just prior to and shortly after Pearl Harbor. The originals, with NZ acceptance marks, are very scarce. Most did make it back to the States, but not without all of the British and Commonwealth acceptance and proof marks on them. Without those marks, it likely stayed in US inventory, and they were used by all branches throughout the war, being rebuilt and given to allies, especially NATO countries post-WWII. The original stock, with that very low serial number (Remington's allotted s/n block started at 3,000,000) would've been a straight grip, with grasping groove forearm, with "RA" and boxed "RLB" on the left side of the stock in the vicinity of the rear cross bolt. Those stocks are scarce!!! The C type stock was a standard replacement piece that could've been installed by a unit armorer, or arsenal, but if done "in service" it would also bear marks from the overhaul or inspection facility. The stocks, and all the leftover parts were sold off as scrap post-Korean war. Two groove Remington A3 barrels 'back then' could be purchased for .50 cents! 03's in good shape, as-issued started to escalate cost-wise in earnest after the Civilian Marksmanship Program brought the last big batch in from Greece, somewhere around 2002-5. Those were loned to Greece back when they were fighting communists in their civil war, and have some pretty unique characteristics. From what I understand, Springfield Armory was almost entirely taken over into production of the Garand rifle by 1939. War was on the horizon, and they were scrambling to get M1's, then the standard US service rifle, into everyone's hands. Britain approached Remington to build a fairly unique 1903 variant, chambered to the British Mk VII round, with a ten round box magazine. Remington prototyped a rifle, but the project was scrapped. Someone decided that we'd be better off just building 1903 rifles, and Remington was contracted with to do that. They were given all of the old tooling, gauges, samples and drawings out of storage from when Rock Island Arsenal shut down 1903 production in 1922. The very early Remington 1903 rifles are pretty much a direct copy of the Rock Island WW I rifles. Most of the equipment was about worn out, new equipment that gave better results, better materials were all available, and so shortly after letting the contract, Remington started hitting the Ordnance Corps with suggestions for upgrading the 1903 manufacture that ultimately, in steps, gave us the 1903A3 rifle. Little know fact is that Smith Corona was contracted with at the same time as Remington for the A3, and beat Remington into production in September 1942, Remington's first A3's showed up after acceptance in Dec. 42. At one time, I had a Remington 1903 with a barrel dated 12-41, and a very, very low serial number. We had a family tragedy, and I was forced to sell off a number of firearms, and that particular rifle brought a LOT of money, just because of the s/n and mfg date. It seems that it's only been the last several years that more and more people have started calling the 1903 a Mauser 98 clone. I'm not so sure about that. The receiver dimensions more closely match the 1895 Spanish Mauser. The magazine cutoff was held over from the 98 Krag at the insistence of the old infantry officers on the board. Not sure where the coned breech came from, but certain not from the Mausers. I'd have to say that it had features from several rifles, from several different nations in it's final form. Sorry, got winded again, and I have to apologize if I've bored you to tears with my ramblings.....

Hi Bob - things can go wrong for sure. I'm not sure how many turns - but thank goodness you checked and figured it out. A click is not a boom... although it has happened to me more than once.

I just found out that it was a ww2 sniper and the Sporter stock was a factory made sniper stock, and the barrel is a machine gun barrel, that’s common on ‘03s

That's a home run buy!

Hello Jb - Please send pics to usogbyemail@gmail.com I'll do my best.

I'm looking....not easy.

Hello Jose - I like those 2 groove barrels - they are as accurate as others - at least for me.

The two-groove barrels are actually quite accurate in many of those 03A3 rifles.... especially with heavier-than-typical bullets for use in the rifle. Meaning, heavier than 150-grain M2 Ball...

I have a Lee Enfield from 1915 that has been sporterized which is a shame because if my research is correct, it is a bit rough made and is missing the magazine by-pass which is said to be a rushed production to meet the demands of WW1. It functions well, shoots ok (I have not shot it much) and where it did not matter, you can see the metal is rough, not finished. For the rest, it is quite well made. I wish it was all original, the conversion to a sports configuration is fine, and perhaps I should also look at that as historically significant, but it is a rifle I keep purely for sentimental reasons. Likely a soldier carried this in action, I really don't know for sure, but it is well used.

I don't like the ones that are done poorly. Like just cutting down the stock and calling it a "sporter". If however, they take the time to do it right: new stock, shorten the barrel, reblue, mill/lathe off any stripper clip guides, etc, then to me they're great. Typically these are the guns that are done by large firms doing mass commercial sporterization, or very talented smiths. Generally not the work of some lone guy in his garage.

I wonder why an original condition milsurp (in good condition) can't be used for hunting as originally produced? I can't think of a good reason other than perhaps weight, and even that I wonder about because if a soldier carried it all day, why not a hunter? I like the weight, I like long barrels, does sporterizing make them more effective? One of my favorite rifles has a 26 inch barrel and it is nice.

pseudopetrus different reasons but generally 1. Weight. Sporting rifles do not need, generally, do not need the mass for parts durability or prolonged shooting as a military rifle. 2. Accuracy. Many hunters I know prefer their hunting rifle to shoot 1moa or better. And most military rifles are intended to be (excluding the Ross 1910) “accurate enough” even with reproduction military style barrels on highly refurbished Springfields only shoot about 2-3 moa with ball ammo. 3. Customization. There’s only so much that you can do to customize a “military rifle” without changing the look of the rifle and making no longer “a true military” configuration. 4. War. As much as I recognize that a gun is a tool and it’s the person who wields it that can either do good or harm. Sometimes people would rather not have something that reminds them of the horrors of war. Where I live I know a few veterans that kept their issued rifles from WWII and Korea, and a fella I know who served in Afghanistan even built himself a replica M16a4 like the one he carried. But in the post war years not many guys wanted a “military style” rifle, hence why surplus rifles were (in comparison to the wages and inflation) dirt cheap. Even in comparison to those times, some guys could buy a Winchester for only a little more than a Springfield or k98. And the model 70 would’ve had more “hunting features”.

@@Ben_not_10 You make many good points, the last one resonates with me, if I carried a rifle in a war, that very same rifle might have dark thoughts attached to it! I might not want to carry it any more and for some, that is very understandable.

Sounds just like that Kelly. Great minds... : )

Thank you so much - I either didn't look, or didn't remember or got confused filming 😂 ...I have found so many ways to make mistakes. And now foolishly sold the rifle so I can't check. For some reason some people sometimes file the face of the flats - so there are no markings at all. All the best to you.

At 69 I cant remember all the mistakes I made today. I enjoy your shows. I especially enjoyed the Husqvarna rifles.

Thank you!

Hi Isaac - you're right - recoil well handled on that one.

I'm in my 20s and I like these old rifles. His videos made me almost want to get a Winchester 70 or Rem 700

Mauser sued Springfield Armory for infringement of their design and won, Springfield had to pay Mauser money for every gun they made. The Springfield is a slicker rifle than the battlefield Mausers but the Mauser 98 is stronger. Dangerous game rifles often use 98 stye actions for their strength and reliability. If it wasn't for the Mauser, the Springfield would not exist.

Hi Patrick - so true; some are like that. I had a couple that had trouble hitting a door at 75 yards. A deer would have been quite safe even with 5 rounds loaded.

Hi como dice - It's a keeper for now

@@UnitedStatesOfGuns bloke great job best in biz korngrats