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Are clips hard to find?

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If you happen to live in the USA, not at all. F.i. Numrich Gunparts offers them, labeled as "Dutch Hembrug Clips". Remember, Romanian, Dutch and Portuguese Mannlicher en bloc clips are all interchangeable. But Numrich and other American companies don't export any more. Even before I bought that carbine, I bought some 100 Portuguese military fmj rounds dated 1930 in clips = 20 rusty clips, some more at gunshows. I needed them for my G.Gibbs Mannlicher too.

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I listened to a discussion of my gransfather’s hunting pals at an after-shoot party. All those old men were WW1 veterans of course.
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Their discussion turned to the suitability of 6.5 mm cartridges for German “big game”, that is red deer stags and boars. One of the old hunters laughed and told: “ Whe head liberated some small 6.5mm Mannlicher carbines and a supply of their special ammo from the Portuguese. As those short carbines did not take a bayonet they were unsuitable for our fighting. But we used them for foraging until the ammo was used up.
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I shot a lot of really big game with such a little carbine.” Hauptmann = captain Müller hat fought all the Great War with v.Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa.
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“Foraging” to him was shooting African game to feed the troops, Germans, askaris and porters. The more meat to the shot, the better. Preferred prey were hippos for their fat, buffalos and giraffes, but zebras and larger antelopes were not scorned.
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So these small, 45 cm = 17.7” carbines with their 10 g = 156 gr round nose bullets certainly had their place in the history of African hunting.

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I think your elderly gentlemen who you were able to listen to, were some true "adventurer". If war could be called an adventure.

I was going to ask, where Portuguese arms were captured, and it was confirmed, Mozambique.

What a delightful little story, added to the comments and pictures of your lovely rifles.

Maybe that rifle you still own, was similarly "liberated" from Portuguese arms in Mozambique?

Your sporting rifle is also admirable.

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John aka NitroX

...
Govt get out of our lives NOW!
"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."
"A Sharp spear needs no polish"

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