The Sako L-579 Forester - An Introduction

Founded in 1927 as Suojeluskuntain Ase- ja Konepaja Osakeyhtiö, later abbreviated to Sako, the company has been at the centre of Finnish arms manufacture ever since. .By 1958 advances in precision casting let Eino Mäkinen design the L579 action, with tapered dove tailed bases and a forged one piece bolt.

Opinion is sharply divided between a vocal minority "modern rifles are much better" and team  'made to a standard the bean-counters have all but eradicated'. 

 I first met this rifle about ten years ago, its belonged to two friends of mine.  It accompanied us on our trip to Scotland, returned un-fired, and since then it's sat in the gunroom.  Made in 1974 [probably in April/May when the serial numbers beginning 300 start] it's become mine, and for sentimental reasons I'm going to do a Resto-Mod and take it up on the hill. By Resto-Mod I mean I'm keeping the action. 

The lovely McMillan stock is way too heavy for a stalking rifle, but fortunately worth about half of the price of its replacement. It's going to be carried in the highlands, and if I ever recover from the ignominy of the last outing, on skis too.  My original plan to give it a nice Walnut stock is either going to have to be an example of radical lightening cuts or I need to learn the art a science of the carbon rifle stock. Maybe more Mod than Resto. 

The fluted .308 barrel will have to go too. I'm abandoning .223 and 22-250 as hunting rounds, going one down for Hare .17 Hornet, and one up for Roebucks and Beaver. I want to be somewhere between the Scottish minimum of 80gr and the wind-cheating 115gr specified by Mr Tubb. The 6mm contenders de jour are 6XC and 6mm Creedmoor. With the Creed being a nominal 200fps faster, and the XC having a nominal extra 500 rounds of barrel life. The thing that's tipping the scales in favour of the XC is airlines are becoming more and more sniffy about hand-loads. Fortunately Norma are supporting the cartridge, so its got greater availability of factory ammunition.  It doesn't hurt that I won't have to sacrifice any of my treasured Creedmoor cases. 

More in part 2

your pal

SBW

 

Review: Steve Rinella' s American Buffalo

There is a Venn diagram with Hunting at the centre,  and many overlapping subjects; 

Weapons [not limited to rifles, shotguns, bows, spears, knives, how to make 'em, how to use 'em,]

History [ of animals, hunting, cooking, in prehistory, the last century, and the one before that] 

Biology [of prey, of their prey, of their parasites, and symbiotic fellow travellers ]

And many, many more

You started off wanting to shoot a deer so you could live up to your moral concerns about the industrialised food chain. Before you know it you've got a room full of firearms and camping equipment, there's no room in your kitchen cupboards because you own every means of food preservation 2000 BC to last week.  You're dressed in Tweed, taking the day off to accompany your friend who dresses like a viking blacksmith and only shoots rifles that were made in the century before he was born, to a symposium on restoring Pliocene habitat to Elizabethan mining sites, as chance would have it you're both reading the same book about parasitic infestations in non-native species. All you actually wanted was a venison burger. 

Steve Rinella is one of us.

When the hunting and fishing lifestyle meets the writing and filmmaking lifestyle, it's what Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones described as 'Five years of drumming, twenty five years of hanging about'. Steve Rinella has spent most of his hanging about reading about Buffalo. This is the voracious appetite of the polymath. Find a decayed buffalo skull, take it home with you, contact every expert on your continent to find out more, when you exhausted the first one, fly to another continent, commission DNA testing. read every known account of hunting, processing, and selling every part of the animal by every culture that lived along side them.

Every year he enters a lottery to hunt a truly wild buffalo in Alaska. When his number comes up, he has a lifetime of preparation under his belt, and thousands of hours of reading to set the adventure in contexts; historical, biological and anthropological. He's the ultimate Buffalo buff. 

More soon

Your pal

SBW

Unboxing Review The Shultz & Larsen Victory 7mm08

I've always wanted a Shultz & Larsen but they don't turn up secondhand at the prices I'm prepared to pay that often. The only time I was going to buy a new one the importer didn’t get back to me so I bought the money pit and took a moody Spanish chick on holiday with the change. To be fair there have been opportunities, but I'm an obscurest; I’m not after the comfortable logic of a .308 and I wouldn't be likely to  buy another secondhand .243, so it’s taken a while. The ACL bought a mint 6.5 x 55  at the lesser end of grade two for a considerable saving, I was more convinced than ever there was an S&L shaped hole in my gun cabinet, the itch was upon me.  At the range, one of the wealthier Who?'s from my club rocked up with a 308 in grade three. Southside D took one look at it and opined "that's a bit of you init" the itch got a little worse.  

I tracked down a 7x64 in the highlands, [cracking round], but it had one of the  crazy long barrels they like up there, its septuagenarian owner had used to shoot 'jackass prone' off the bonnet of a Landrover.  

I found  a 7mm08 in Yorkshire which hadn't really floated the boat of the young lad I spoke to over the phone, he was all about a black rifle that was the uk legal version of one he'd used to prop up the military industrial complex in a game he plays online. Ever the optimist I paid a deposit on the 7mm08, sent off my paperwork, and promptly forgot all about it. 

Empire's rose and fell, teenagers became grandparents, glass dripped from its frame, and the bureaucracy coughed up a variation to my licence. 

When I called the gun shop it had been so long the work experience lad I'd first spoken to was about to retire, but made a charming pretence of remembering me. 

He put me in touch with the rifle's owner, who told a much more compelling story of;  

'proper nice bit of timber that', 'wife wants takin' to Spain', 'cops want me to have less stalking rifles, had a pin though my wrist so I'm keeping the light one'.  

He mentioned he'd sent it off for the two-stage trigger upgrade. 

On one of our trips to Scotland I would be passing through Yorkshire so I popped in to take a look and either retrieve my deposit or ....

S&L do a range of mini rifles called Legacy in the 223 and 7.62x39 case families (there's a 6x45 and a Grendel, I know!) a working rifle called the Classic , The Victory - for the stalking gentleman who has to have a job, and the Ambassador for Oligarchs.  All come with really nice features: 

Three lug bolt; I've got a Tikka that'll shoot the lights out of almost anything, its only got two lugs, but if a three lug bolt doesn't stir something in your soul you don't like rifles, and probably haven't  got a soul. 

Takedown; that most beguiling of features, I've got two, never take either of them apart, but it's nice to know I could.  

Cut rifling: Another thing its possible to wax lyrical about, I refer you to my Tikka now wearing a button rifled tube. 

Magazine fed: The dual latches on this thing are really really nice. You don't care? Buy a Tikka and lots of ammo, you'll be happier. You have no soul. 

Sexy timber: Sometimes I just sit and stare at it, within its blotches, and swirls you can see the birth of the universe. I never take it out in the rain, or anywhere likely to be muddy. It makes me feel slightly unworthy. 

Pillars and bedding as standard: there nothing more to spend, just a lovely accurate rifle straight out of the box  

Shultz and Larsen have both long since gone to the happy hunting ground, but their spirit of Danish high end design, woodworking, and engineering live on. The company lacks the marketing punch of their German, Finnish, and Swiss rivals, but by making a really great product at the price of a mass produced rifle. They have a fan base who aren't about to dessert them any time soon. It's a different kind of offering.

These days what's commonly described as a 'custom rifle' is actually a rifle assembled from bought in bits, its pretty amazing that you can, for the same or less, have one from a company where the barrels arrived as bars, and the stocks arrived as planks. A lot like John Rigby Rifle Makers, but with almost ten large knocked off Rigby's price tag.  

More soon

Your Pal

SBW

Shotgun Shenanigans Pt.1

This: I was bouncing down a farm track in a pickup with some deer managers, you know what these guys are like, they are always trying to sell you something, or some form of sporting endeavour where they can leave you in a field with the meter running and go for a nap in the truck .

DM: Do you do much pigeon shooting SBW?

SBW: There'd be little point

DM [ears up sniffing the wind, not the expected answer]: Why's that ?

SBW: I'm a total Chump with a shot gun. 

I have form you see, the day I met my culinary hero in a pigeon blind in Fife I launched a whole box of carts/shells at birds swooping in to the decoys, and hit exactly none. 

From this inauspicious start it's been up hill all the way.

In the UK shotguns are licensed in a similar way to rifles; the criteria are less stringent, but the process is the same. You can save a few quid by getting your certificates to run contemporaneously. I got my first shotgun because not that I expected to be able to do much with it, but because, like a historic rifle, you have to have one. 

A friend with a massive collection of firearms was out of work, so on a whim I asked if he had one he'd want to sell. No surprise he did, I collected the most unpleasant semi-auto anyone has ever seen from him and gave him £100 for it and some 1022 magazines. I came to think of them as expensive second hand magazines and a free shotgun. I was traveling home by train with the gun in the worst gunship I've ever seen. Another 'freeby'. It was a nice-ish afternoon, I sat on the station platform, two Polish chicks came to sit on the next bench, the train pulled into the station, I hopped up and was making the ten step journey to the doors of the train when the slip disintegrated, the zip gave up the coast and the little leather strap parted company. The shotgun clattered to the floor. The Polish chicks looked over and totally unconcerned got on to the train and continued with their day.

I scooped up the gun and got on too. In the toilet I had to quickly work out how to dismantle a semi, so I could wrap it in what was left of the gunslip.  It was a long nerve-wracking journey back to London as I awaited the intervention of the armed response unit. 

Shooter [who you'll know from other adventures] invited me to shoot geese with him for my birthday, I tried to make excuses, 'my gun is a disgrace, I'm slightly worse' but he would have none of it. "Everyone should own a semi-auto, you can clean it with Fanta and WD40 they are a perfect thing, you just need to practice".  We drove up north in perfect goose weather; blowing a hoodie, iced water flying horizontally into our faces. It was a spectacular piece of goose-ground. We walked out onto a strip of land with a fish farm on one side and a nature reserve on the other. a skien flew over at not far off head height, I missed the first one, manly through shock, downed the next two, added a shell and popped a third. The gun was now a proven slayer. 

Based on its record so far I can neither call it solely an unlucky gun, or lucky gun, but it certainly attracted attention. Not just from the goddess of the hunt. 

I took it clay shooting a few times with Foxy, the ACL, and SouthsideD. It's ability to hit things had largely deserted it by this point, but in fairness we did always say we were going 'for a laugh' and it provided those in abundance. 

The slide release is on the opposite side to the port, so reloading is counter-intuitive on its best days. I have never cleaned it, so it has some mud left over from the goose shooting, some blood from the same trip and a few comedy feathers travel in the same slip, now held together with more than one brand of packing tape. Strangers laugh at it. The ACL was unrelenting in his mockery. 

After a while I bought my Browning; in an equally undiscerning purchase, that by dumb luck turned out to be both a bargain, with nice timber, and a bargain that breaks clays.  

I was short of space in the cabinet and I'd been trying to encourage Super Plumber to take up a hobby so he'd not be driven mad. I gave him a cabinet I found in a client's garden, and filled out the forms with him. He'd gotten his ticket back from the cops, but was still making excuses about buying a shotgun. The same sort of excuses made by tool-fetishists everywhere "I only want the XYZ and I don't have the 2-3-4-or 5 grand they cost'. total bullshit of course. You should always buy the worst rifle or shot gun you can find [pretty sure I achieved that] as it will quickly teach you more about about what you actually want than any amount of reading other people's opinions on the internet. Then you'll enjoy the ecstasy of 'new gun X never see than piece junk again'. 

To give him his due, while it took Super Plumber a while to engage with the sport of clay-busting he's certainly been 'all guns' since he has. 

He'd been roundly mocked by the first person he'd shown his gifted Semi Auto to, undeterred he thought he'd buy himself something cheap and cheerful at the auction. Cheerful maybe.

If you're used to buying stuff on Ebay you have a wildly over-favourable view of the auction experience.  He'd bid on some piece of junk he could buy for the price of a couple of rounds of G&T's. Not receiving a 'you won it' notification, he shrugged his shoulders and tired again, didn't get a notification, bid on an inexpensive pair of Spanish guns,  still nothing. Assuming that he'd been too Yorkshire [tightfisted]  he waded in the next time. Nothing.  

The following afternoon he received a gloating email from the auctioneer 

Dear Super Plumber, we're delighted to tell you your bids were successful you're now the proud owner of six [shit] shotguns and you owe us £475 and 30% + delivery.

Needless to say, he's now on first name terms with his local gunsmith, and on the waiting list for a new gun that costs more than my car. 

More shotgun shenanigans to follow 

Your pal

SBW