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The only military rifle I still own:
A Portuguese Carabina Mo.1896 in 6.5x53R aka .256 Mannlicher. Dated on the left receiver wall “Steyr 1898”. Except for the royal cypher of king Carlos I on the receiver ring it is identical to the Romanian M93 carbine, but apparently much rarer.

No, I don’t intend to sporterise it. When Portugal dumped their military surplus on the German market 30 years ago, I bought it for DMark 150.-, about $ 100.- then. But I bought and kept it for sentimental reasons. When I was a boy of 12 years (that’s 60 years ago right now!), already interested in guns and hunting, 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. 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 Por tuguese. 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. 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. “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.
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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