best bolt action for dangerous games

[Doug Hamilton]

Apologies if this is incorrect, as I am no expert, but I always had the impression that the beveling which allows the extractor to snap over the rim of the cartridge in the chamber was done to the face of the extractor. If this is so I don't see that such beveling would greatly increase the risk of extractor failure. Of course I may be mistaken. I have attached images to illustrate what I have in mind. Thanks all for your contributions to the discussion!

That's the way I've always thought of it as well, but I'm not an expert, mechanical engineer or gunsmith either. Now I just don't know what the right answer is. I have two rifles with Mark X actions. One in .458 WM and the other in .300 Win M. The .458 neatly snaps over the rim of a case in the chamber, the .300 doesn't. I never had either extractor altered. I am used to them and just use them as they are. They both extract reliably, and I like knowing that I can start out with one extra round with dangerous game.

 

[Dakota Hunter]

I’m pretty happy with how my Heym Martini Express in 416 Rigby has performed.

 

[Red Leg]

I looked up their website. They claim to weigh and assemble each round one at a time. The loads are all custom. In other words, the opposite of mass production. If I didn't enjoy building my own ammunition, and having complete confidence in having done everything to know that I had the most reliable rounds possible, it's the way I would go. They look to be a company that deserves their good reputation and your confidence.

Of course, I would still have to buy and test a bunch of their ammunition and test it thoroughly before I would take it out for dangerous game. Just as I do with my own hand loads.

I have used Lance Hendershot's loads in at least a dozen calibers over the last nearly two decades. I have shot all of my African and Canadian game with them except a couple of warthog and a pile of sand grouse killed with my paradox. I would guess his ammunition has accounted for at least a couple hundred head of game - dangerous, plains, and mountain.

He will also take your rifle - bolt, single or double - and work up loads specifically for it. My Blaser S2 with either 30-06 or .375 barrels in place is as accurate as most single barrels. Unless it is an odd caliber, I do not use anything else.

 

[One Day...]

Apologies if this is incorrect, as I am no expert, but I always had the impression that the beveling which allows the extractor to snap over the rim of the cartridge in the chamber was done to the face of the extractor. If this is so I don't see that such beveling would greatly increase the risk of extractor failure. Of course I may be mistaken. I have attached images to illustrate what I have in mind. Thanks all for your contributions to the discussion!

That's the way I've always thought of it as well, but I'm not an expert, mechanical engineer or gunsmith either. Now I just don't know what the right answer is. I have two rifles with Mark X actions. One in .458 WM and the other in .300 Win M. The .458 neatly snaps over the rim of a case in the chamber, the .300 doesn't. I never had either extractor altered. I am used to them and just use them as they are. They both extract reliably, and I like knowing that I can start out with one extra round with dangerous game.

No apologies needed Christian, this is a rather arcane point

But it becomes very real when the extractor breaks, because -- of course! -- it always happens at the worst possible time in the worst possible place

But -- dare I use the dreaded "trust me!" ? -- break they do...

In truth, if you go back to the drawings I used to illustrate the discussion, depending on how much tolerance is built in the action, it may or may not be necessary to remove material off the face and top of the extractor to allow it to rotate upward in the front bridge and jump over a cartridge rim.

This differs widely between an original pre-war Mauser action and some of the more modern clones -- some of which have so much tolerance in the raceway as to make the very notion of "tolerance" irrelevant, it is more like "wide clearance" (which makes folks erroneously believe that they are "smooth" when actually all they are is "loose").

Winchester, for example, "resolved" the beveling question by having so much clearance in the raceway on the right inside of the front bridge that their extractor could jump the rim of an artillery shell

Original Mausers are tight enough that an unmodified extractor CANNOT jump the rim, which was the entire point of the design to begin with

In my experience, CZ, Zastava, Santa Barbara, etc. are all over the place, which is indeed illustrated by your experience with the Mark X action (imported by InterArms but made by Zastava if memory serves) Doug, with one action closing on a loaded chamber and one not closing.

The entire discussion can be visualized in the drawing, and it is rather intuitive that what allows the extractor to lift/rotate itself over a cartridge rim is whether there is room for it to be lifted/rotated upward or not. All that chamfering the front edge of the extractor hook does, is, originally, to conform to the chamfered groove cut in the cartridge head and allow it to grab it, and, nowadays, to allow it to slide upward on the cartridge head. The real enabler is whether there is room for the extractor to move upward or not.

As I said before, to each their own, but the Mauser system was actually much more clever and anticipated many more issues than most modern folks realize, while using unarguable logic, e.g. if the extractor has space to jump the rim going in, then it has space to jump the rim coming out.

There is also some incredibly smart thinking going in the shape of the firing pin, design of the flag safety, etc. etc.

As to whether "slipping a cartridge directly in the chamber" is faster than clicking one in the magazine for a desperate emergency reload, I invite those who think that slipping one in the chamber is faster, to practice doing both and asking their wife to clock them doing so. Here is the catch (pun fully intended): quite often the cartridge just dropped on top of the empty magazine does not slide forward IN THE CENTER of the action, aligned with the chamber, quite often, it catches on the rear edge of the chamber, especially with semi truncated solids.

Do yourself a favor, do not believe me, try it for yourself

 

[CoElkHunter]

That's the way I've always thought of it as well, but I'm not an expert, mechanical engineer or gunsmith either. Now I just don't know what the right answer is. I have two rifles with Mark X actions. One in .458 WM and the other in .300 Win M. The .458 neatly snaps over the rim of a case in the chamber, the .300 doesn't. I never had either extractor altered. I am used to them and just use them as they are. They both extract reliably, and I like knowing that I can start out with one extra round with dangerous game.

My .375 Whitworth Safari and custom .416 Taylor Whitworth (just enhanced Mark X) both will snap over the rim of a case. I haven't tried the .458 yet, but I'm guessing it might too. Maybe that was the Interarms design?

 

[One Day...]

My .375 Whitworth Safari and custom .416 Taylor Whitworth (just enhanced Mark X) both will snap over the rim of a case. I haven't tried the .458 yet, but I'm guessing it might too. Maybe that was the Interarms design?

You are correct indeed, many importers, or mass marketers, or self-trained "gunsmiths" came up with a whole range of their own design "improvements" of the Mauser system, not realizing that in doing so they were removing one by one the true advantages of the Mauser system. Such "improvements" typically affected the extractor, the safety, the shape of the feeding rails (one for all!), the width of the magazine (again, one for all!), etc. etc.

The thing is, however, that unless the feeding rails and ramp shape, and the timing of the extractor are TOO butchered, these "improvements" do not prevent the rifle from working. They just make it a "cosmetic Mauser" rather than a true "Mauser system", not any more reliable in feeding or extracting than the cheapest push-feed out there, which, again, generally goes bang in most cases under most circumstances.

The genius of Paul Mauser was that his system would go bang in ALL cases in ALL circumstances EXCEPT when it was not intended to (e.g. accidental double feed or accidental cartridge left in the chamber)

 

[Wyatt Smith]

Paul Mauser was a true genius. I’ve read that nothing infuriated him more than one of rifles malfunction.

 

[Doug Hamilton]

I have used Lance Hendershot's loads in at least a dozen calibers over the last nearly two decades. I have shot all of my African and Canadian game with them except a couple of warthog and a pile of sand grouse killed with my paradox. I would guess his ammunition has accounted for at least a couple hundred head of game - dangerous, plains, and mountain.

He will also take your rifle - bolt, single or double - and work up loads specifically for it. My Blaser S2 with either 30-06 or .375 barrels in place is as accurate as most single barrels. Unless it is an odd caliber, I do not use anything else.

Red Leg,
You have the experience. I would trust you, so I would trust them too.
Good hunting,
Doug

 

[Doug Hamilton]

I don't really know, but my .458 is a Whitworth Express model, as yours are. I bought the Mark X action new and had the .300 built by Ed LaPour many years later (long story). So maybe it was an Interarms modification to the Whitworth line?
I do know that they are both more reliable than any thing else I am likely to shoot, I have used the .458 to take two buffalo and the .300 to take a lot of animals in Africa and the US. They aren't the only rifles that I hunt with, but I am fond of them and won't be changing anything.

 

[ChrisG]

Ruger Precision Rifle. 6.5 Creedmoor. If that fails. I have heard from reading Bunny Allen that buckshot stops everything in its tracks. Especially Leopard!

 

[ldmay375]

My .375 Whitworth Safari and custom .416 Taylor Whitworth (just enhanced Mark X) both will snap over the rim of a case. I haven't tried the .458 yet, but I'm guessing it might too. Maybe that was the Interarms design?

I have one Interarms 458 with the express sights, it will not snap over the rim. If I recall correctly, it will not even with the pushing in on the extractor.

I have another in 375 H&H that will snap over the rim.

 

[Doug Hamilton]

No apologies needed Christian, this is a rather arcane point

But it becomes very real when the extractor breaks, because -- of course! -- it always happens at the worst possible time in the worst possible place

But -- dare I use the dreaded "trust me!" ? -- break they do...

In truth, if you go back to the drawings I used to illustrate the discussion, depending on how much tolerance is built in the action, it may or may not be necessary to remove material off the face and top of the extractor to allow it to rotate upward in the front bridge and jump over a cartridge rim.

This differs widely between an original pre-war Mauser action and some of the more modern clones -- some of which have so much tolerance in the raceway as to make the very notion of "tolerance" irrelevant, it is more like "wide clearance" (which makes folks erroneously believe that they are "smooth" when actually all they are is "loose").

Winchester, for example, "resolved" the beveling question by having so much clearance in the raceway on the right inside of the front bridge that their extractor could jump the rim of an artillery shell

Original Mausers are tight enough that an unmodified extractor CANNOT jump the rim, which was the entire point of the design to begin with

In my experience, CZ, Zastava, Santa Barbara, etc. are all over the place, which is indeed illustrated by your experience with the Mark X action (imported by InterArms but made by Zastava if memory serves) Doug, with one action closing on a loaded chamber and one not closing.

The entire discussion can be visualized in the drawing, and it is rather intuitive that what allows the extractor to lift/rotate itself over a cartridge rim is whether there is room for it to be lifted/rotated upward or not. All that chamfering the front edge of the extractor hook does, is, originally, to conform to the chamfered groove cut in the cartridge head and allow it to grab it, and, nowadays, to allow it to slide upward on the cartridge head. The real enabler is whether there is room for the extractor to move upward or not.

View attachment 501021

As I said before, to each their own, but the Mauser system was actually much more clever and anticipated many more issues than most modern folks realize, while using unarguable logic, e.g. if the extractor has space to jump the rim going in, then it has space to jump the rim coming out.

There is also some incredibly smart thinking going in the shape of the firing pin, design of the flag safety, etc. etc.

As to whether "slipping a cartridge directly in the chamber" is faster than clicking one in the magazine for a desperate emergency reload, I invite those who think that slipping one in the chamber is faster, to practice doing both and asking their wife to clock them doing so. Here is the catch (pun fully intended): quite often the cartridge just dropped on top of the empty magazine does not slide forward IN THE CENTER of the action, aligned with the chamber, quite often, it catches on the rear edge of the chamber, especially with semi truncated solids.

Do yourself a favor, do not believe me, try it for yourself

You obviously have the expertise that I do not. I do however have to ask about the "unarguable logic" that if something works one direction it has to be able to work the other. If a ratchet works one way, then it has to work the other? If a fish hook works when you pull it one way, does it work when you pull it the other?
Paul Mauser was certainly a genius, but has anything ever been designed by Man that has no room for any improvement?

 

[One Day...]

You obviously have the expertise that I do not. I do however have to ask about the "unarguable logic" that if something works one direction it has to be able to work the other. If a ratchet works one way, then it has to work the other? If a fish hook works when you pull it one way, does it work when you pull it the other?
Paul Mauser was certainly a genius, but has anything ever been designed by Man that has no room for any improvement?

Doug, the point here is simple: is there the physical clearance, yes or no, for the extractor to lift above the cartridge rim? If this space physically exists, it exists whether you open or close the action. I am tempted to add: period. This is rather unarguable it seems...

But, as I said repeatedly before, to each their own. When we get about arguing reality I am not really good: if the space exists, it exists, full stop

I have tried to explain and illustrate how the Mauser extractor was designed and why it was failproof as designed, and how the "improvement" discussed here, to allow it to jump over the rim of a cartridge of the chamber creates the possibility for it to fail, and negates its very purposes: one, the impossibility to jump a cartridge rim, and two, the impossibility to close the bolt over a cartridge unknowingly left in the chamber.

There is nothing more I can contribute to this subject I am afraid, I do not know what else to say or show via keyboard or internet. Chatting face to face with an un-barreled action in hand would be different, one can see what one discusses without having to painstakingly construct a mental image of it, from maybe not very clear explanations and illustrations (I try my best)

All I can say is that if I was unclear, there are a number of very good books, especially Mauser Bolt Rifles by Ludwig Olson.

My own experience started a bit differently, I grew up in the French Alps, near the Vercors mountain, world famous for its resistance to German occupation during WW II (my own village was burnt to the ground by the Wehrmacht in retaliation for helping resistance fighters), at a time when there were still large numbers of parachuted British SMLE and even more captured Mauser 98 in every barn and behind every kitchen door in every mountain farm (many are still there if you know where to go and have the people's trust), and when in the 50's and 60's every alpine peasant used them to routinely hunt/poach Chamois etc. to feed the family in food-rationed post-war times when pigs were precious and expensive (never mind cows, they were too valuable to eat as they produced milk) and when 5 years of war without hunting had made game plenty. I have seen, many, many, many "sporterized", "modified" and "improved" versions of these Mausers, and I have myself, first, damaged some of them, tinkering with them, as I learned by experiential discoveries (Ah! THIS is what this part does...), and I have myself, I am sad to say, "fixed" the action-can't-close-on-a-cartridge-in-the-chamber "problem"; seen many broken extractors; many butchered triggers; many destroyed safeties; etc. and, ultimately, repaired for incredulous farmers some of these rifles (Thank God in those days and in those places finding donor rifles was not difficult). So, yes, I do have a fair amount of practical experience with the 98K military Mauser, then, later, reading the books really put all the dominos in order because I had very detailed and very complete experimental mental pictures of what the authors were describing.

And I suspect that this is what is missing in those discussions, most folks do not have a mental picture of the systems we are discussing because they have not tinkered endlessly with them, which they can hardly be blamed for, I might add

Other grand classics in the same vein are the adjustment of the camming surfaces when replacing the high profile Mauser "flag" safety with a Winchester-type 3 positions safety; the adjustment of the trigger from military to sporting use; or, maybe an even greater classic, the understanding of what "feeding rails geometry" and "CRF extractor timing" mean and how to adjust them when converting a Mauser action to another caliber. Hint: just screwing a new barrel or pushing a reamer in a chamber does not suffice

There is a reason why, at a time when the world still had some sense, genuine gunsmiths had to spend a couple years first in school (e.g. Liege in Belgium, Suhl in Germany, London or Birmingham in England, Saint Etienne in France, etc.) then a couple years apprenticing. Nowadays, in the internet age, everyone is an instant expert, from COVID, to war in Ukraine, to ... you guessed it ... the Mauser system

 

[geoff rath]

Ruger Precision Rifle. 6.5 Creedmoor. If that fails. I have heard from reading Bunny Allen that buckshot stops everything in itsr tracks. Especially Leopard!

6.5 Creed for D/G?

Ruger Precision Rifle. 6.5 Creedmoor. If that fails. I have heard from reading Bunny Allen that buckshot stops everything in its tracks. Especially Leopard!

 

[CoElkHunter]

You are correct indeed, many importers, or mass marketers, or self-trained "gunsmiths" came up with a whole range of their own design "improvements" of the Mauser system, not realizing that in doing so they were removing one by one the true advantages of the Mauser system. Such "improvements" typically affected the extractor, the safety, the shape of the feeding rails (one for all!), the width of the magazine (again, one for all!), etc. etc.

The thing is, however, that unless the feeding rails and ramp shape, and the timing of the extractor are TOO butchered, these "improvements" do not prevent the rifle from working. They just make it a "cosmetic Mauser" rather than a true "Mauser system", not any more reliable in feeding or extracting than the cheapest push-feed out there, which, again, generally goes bang in most cases under most circumstances.

The genius of Paul Mauser was that his system would go bang in ALL cases in ALL circumstances EXCEPT when it was not intended to (e.g. accidental double feed or accidental cartridge left in the chamber)

Just checked my .458 Whitworth. With a round in the chamber, the extractor EASILY slips over the cartridge rim with just a little push of the bolt. Although I bought this used with no sights on it, after cleaning all the grease away, I see NO evidence it had ever been fired. It looks like the previous owner bought a barreled action and put his own stock on it and then sold it? Here's a photo of the bolt face and the extractor looks "cut out" and/or "beveled" like the ones on my other Whitworths. I'm thinking it came from the factory like that? None of my CZ 550s extractors will slip over a cartridge rim while in the chamber.

 

[ChrisG]

6.5 Creed for D/G?

I will leave you with that thought. 6.5 creedmoor. CREEDMOOR is actually an acronym for "Cartridge Really Exists for Elimination of Dangerous Mammals Over Outrageous Ranges"... Hey...you can't make these things up.

 

[Flewis]

Correct a properly beveled extracter designed to slip over the rim is equally as strong as one designed not to do so when extracting a spent cartridge....

Yes, it’s only beveled on one side. Just look at the back.

 

[Wyatt Smith]

Yes, it’s only beveled on one side. Just look at the back.

@One Day... pictures are very clear. The actual hook of the extractor is not the part the gunsmith bevels. Look at them carefully and you will understand.
Snapping the extractor over a cartridge rim on a CRF is like putting a round directly in the chamber of a 1911 and dropping the slide. No one will say it’s a good idea.
I’ve found that all my magazines on CRF rifles have enough room to get the “top off” down far enough to get it under the extractor, eliminating any need to ever snap over the rim.

 

[Flewis]

@One Day... pictures are very clear. The actual hook of the extractor is not the part the gunsmith bevels. Look at them carefully and you will understand.
Snapping the extractor over a cartridge rim on a CRF is like putting a round directly in the chamber of a 1911 and dropping the slide. No one will say it’s a good idea.
I’ve found that all my magazines on CRF rifles have enough room to get the “top off” down far enough to get it under the extractor, eliminating any need to ever snap over the rim.

How is the stress any different then the ejection.

 

[One Day...]

How is the stress any different then the ejection.

A very legitimate question

During ejection, the cartridge head is pushed forward by the ejector blade on the left side, while being held by the extractor on the right side. This DOES indeed create an effort against the extractor, but the primary mechanical movement is that the cartridge head rotates out from under the extractor. The extractor hook is slightly lifted during this rotation of the cartridge head out of its grip -- this is why extractor tension (another critical concept for proper tuning of a Mauser action) is important, because it contributes to flicking the case out and away -- but two considerations are critical:

1-- during ejection when the cartridge rotates out from under the extractor hook, the lifting of the extractor is much less than when it is forced to jump the rim of a cartridge pushed flat against the bolt head when the action is closed;

2-- the spring tension of the extractor during ejection is not concentrated against a small area above the extractor head, it is distributed along the entire length of the extractor, especially its long rear section, which is designed to absorb the tension and produce the spring effect, at a time when the extractor is entirely out of the front bridge and is free to flex.