132 



RECREATION. 



NO PERFECT GUN. 



I have never found the perfect rifle. But 

 then, perfection is a hard thing to corral 

 in this wicked world, and in the case of the 

 rifle, I have come near enough to it for all 

 practical purposes. 



Everything has flaws if you can get to 

 know them. One thinks the Savage the 

 perfect gun. I admit it is good, but we have 

 tested it here in competition with other 

 rifles shooting a similar cartridge, and we 

 fail to see just where it excels. It is more 

 liable to jam and to freeze up than the Win- 

 chester 30-30, but in reloading the latter 

 gun the lever must be carried so far for- 

 ward to place a new cartridge in the maga- 

 zine that there is danger of a balk. 



We have found the Savage and the Win- 

 chester 30-30 good enough guns for deer 

 -and caribou ; but they are too light for 

 moose. Hitherto the U,. S. 30-40 cartridge 

 with the soft nose bullet has been found 

 the best American made article to use on 

 this game; but the new Winchester 35 car- 

 tridge should be much better than even 

 that. 



One correspondent wishes to hear from 

 those who have used the Mauser pistol, it 

 is, I think, the most ingeniously devised arm 

 on the market. Its accuracy, range and 

 penetration are beyond question ; but to the 

 inexperienced handler of firearms there is 

 none quite so dangerous. It also has the 

 fault, common to so many magazine 

 weapons, that you never can tell without 

 unloading, how many cartridges are in the 

 magazine. The soft nose bullet, when fired 

 from it, is not very expansive. Adam 

 Moorse, the celebrated guide, who used one 

 last spring to kill trapped bears, thinks this 

 is because the jacket covers too much of 

 the point of the bullet ; but I am inclined 

 to ascribe a little of it to the comparatively 

 low velocity of the gun. 



There are hundreds who can give you 

 the name of the best shot gun in the world, 

 and in 9 cases out of 10 each one will name 

 the particular gun he himself uses. If a 

 man is rich he can afford to experiment, 

 and if he does not get what he is looking 

 for the first time, he is in a position to try 

 again. But when a poor man errs in his 

 choice the remedy is not so plain.. For a 

 man who feels that he needs 100 cents' 

 worth of gun for each dollar he invests 

 there is no better gun made anywhere than 

 the Ithaca, and I do not know of any that 

 I consider as good. It is cheap in com- 

 parison with the prices charged for other 

 guns. It looks, wears, handles, and shoots 

 well. 



In October, '98, W. H. Lawrence, of 

 Keswick Ridge, N. B., visited me for a few 

 days' duck shooting. He was using an 8 

 pound, 12 gauge Ithaca. I was shooting a 

 high grade Greener,, One (Jay we took it 



into our heads to target our guns. In the 

 penetration they gave there was no appar- 

 ent difference. With No. 7 and 6 shot 

 mine had a trifle the better of it, for it gave 

 as regular a pattern as you could prick out 

 with an awl. With Nos. 4 and 2 there 

 was no difference that we could see, but 

 with Nos. 1, B, and BB, mine was simply 

 out of the competition. The Ithaca plant- 

 ed them as regularly as it did the No.. 8's, 

 while the shooting of my gun was wild. It 

 makes a person feel uncomfortable to have 

 his $200 gun beaten by a $60 one. At the 

 same time it teaches him something. 

 L. I. Flower, Central Cambridge, N. B. 



DEFINITION OF CALIBER AND GAUGE. 



Kindly explain the exact meaning of the 

 technical terms used to express the different 

 rifle and shot gun gauges. Why is a cer- 

 tain caliber called 30-30, another 45-70, still 

 another 45-70-330? Why is a shot gun a 

 10 gauge, a 12 or a 20? 



F. J. Smith, Boston, Mass. 



ANSWER. 



Caliber refers to the diameter of the bore 

 of rifles; gauge to the diameter of the bore 

 of shot guns. Caliber is usually expressed 

 in fractions of an inch, although many of 

 the newer military cartridges, especially 

 those of foreign origin, are expressed in 

 millimeters. The figures indicating caliber 

 really refer to the size of the bore of the 

 rifle before the rifling or grooving is done. 

 For instance, the 30-30 cartridge is used 

 in a barrel bored to .300 inch, but the rifling 

 increases the diameter of the bore, meas- 

 uring from the bottom of one groove to the 

 bottom of the opposite groove, to .308 inch, 

 the grooves being cut .004 inch deep. A bul- 

 let to fit exactly would be ..308 inch in di- 

 ameter, but in practice is usually smaller; 

 the present Winchester 30-30 bullet being 

 about .307 inch. 



When a cartridge is denominated in 3 

 figures, for example, 45-70-330, it means 

 that the bore of the rifle is .450 inch before 

 the grooving or rifling is cut, the powder 

 charge is 70 grains and the weight of bullet 

 330 grains. The Winchester 45-70 ball is 

 .456 inch, while the United States Gov- 

 ernment 45-70 is .45 inch. These figures do 

 not always represent the exact data. For in- 

 stance, the 38-55-255 when first brought out, 

 using the old style folded head shell, held 

 55 grains of powder. When the new solid 

 head shell came in vogue, the only thing to 

 do was to reduce the powder charge, as the 

 new shells held less powder than the old 

 ones. The charge was therefore reduced 

 to 48 grains, but the cartridge still re- 

 tained its old name. Many other cartridges, 

 as now made, do not correspond to the 

 names they bear, The 38-40 ball is not .380 



