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Good friend and member here, Ka'imiloa, sends me the following piece from a friend of his who is a Mauser historian based overseas. This gentleman has been following this particular rifle since it was first listed by Cabelas two years ago and his mail is posted verbatim:

It is a Mauser (“am Neckar”*) made rifle, and is one of the shorter (kurz) bodies that were produced for sporting use, based upon the 1898 pattern of body and magazine box. Although some will give you an argument that there are elements of the 1893/95/96 models as well.! For the purposes of nominal description let us use a designation of, a '98 short bodied, sporting rifle, to save confusion.! A simple way of identifying earlier Mauser '88 based bolts, compared to later '93 to '98 ones, is to see if there is a separate bolthead - if the former, and a solid bolt body for the latter.

The German Trade produced all manner of items, utilising many of the parts declared as obsolete, or surplus, by the military - basically because they were cheap and freely available! Many of the bits and pieces that were used in the sporters, were simply lifted out of the parts bins that were in use, or had been used for military rifles, modified and finished to suit whatever was required. This no doubt helped to subsidise the sporting division a great deal.

The Austrian manufactured Mannlicher-Schoenauer rifles, were all based upon the German developed Kommission 1888 body and bolt, allied to the Austrian Mannlicher rotary spool magazine system. If the bolt handle appears to be halfway down the forend, it's a good bet you've got an '88 based bolt, if there is a steel spool mag, you've DEFINITELY got a Mannlicher-Schonauer.

At the turn of the 20th century several 6.5mm ctdgs were developed and/or modified from existing case types. The 6.5x54 M-S cartridge was quite simply the 6.5x53R Mannlicher round with the rim removed and an extractor groove cut into it. Everything else, dimension-wise, was the same, and the original 156 grain round nosed bullet continued throughout the entire life of both cartridges.

The Mauser company were chambering several 6.5mm calibres, around 1900, and in the German favoured cartridges, the 'standard' Mauser head size, as used on the military 7.92x57, was utilized as a basis. No doubt due to the popularity of the Mannlicher cartridge, Mauser probably wanted to get in on the action, and offer something of their own that was broadly similar - hence the 6.5x54 Mauser cartridge and the body/bolt/magazine to properly accomodate it. (It certainly makes the .260 Remington cartridge look a bit less 'modern', than most would imagine!)

If you have access to the old DWM cartridge case catalogue, you will see the different numbers that were assigned to the various cases, and this is a very good reference point to utilise, unlike the very confusing and often totally incorrect, "Cartridges of the World"!

It took a law, enacted in 1939, to physically make it illegal for German gunmakers to produce 8 mm rifles that did not comply to the "S" pattern of chamber and bore dimensions, even though the use of such sizes had been commonplace for well over 30 years! A lot of German sportsmen insisted on the 'old' dimensions being used, as they insisted that they shot better and 'harder'. The differences between the 'old' and the 'new' 8mm cartridges caused no problems, or confusion, for the Germans - but the same cannot be said of Americans it would seem!

* Regarding “am Neckar”: Mauser's main works was at Oberndorf, in the Neckar valley, on the Neckar river (am Neckar), in the far SW of Germany. The sporting rifle business was in a tiny little bit of the main plant, and never made much money. The real money came from the massive orders for military materiel, both domestic and foreign.

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The Ark was made by amateurs. Experts built the Titanic.

Mehul Kamdar