I decided to try my hand and roll the dice on a military surplus rifle from Royal Tiger. So far it looks like I lucked out but buying anything in .303 British is a bad choice for survival. https://youtube.com/shorts/ryKRL0fJB18?si=g1igY8WvifvD7cyN
For some odd reason, the Brits insisted on the .303 instead of ANYTHING else even close to normal, and that has always been a MAJOR failure of the Brit Military, going their own way cost them dearly, something they still pay for today! That said, .303 can work well if you lay in a good supply of quality ammo, ( Which is getting harder and harder to do these days) so you gotta reload, and that's not as easy these days either, so,........................ As good as the Enfield SMLE is/was, I would much prefer the Lee Enfield P-17 chambered in ANYTHING but .303, a .30/06 would be mighty fine in my book, as those were often factory issue, so no further mods required! A nice old Lend Lease return arsonal referb would do quite nicely! Finally, the last of the good original Mauser 98's are all gone, the ones to have were the earlier 7X57 chambered rifles, but you can still find thousands and thousands of Sporters all over the place, usually quite reasonably priced, and in much better and more common calibers too! I bought a Nickle plated Jungle/Mountain Carbine SMLE many moons ago, had it re barreled to .308 win and never looked back, that's one sweet shootin little Carbine, nearly as slick as the Schmidt & Rubin K-31 ( also re barreled to .308) about as slick as they get for a practical shootin rifle!
My problem is I gave in to my intrusive thoughts and had to have a random milsurp that has been sitting in a goat shed for 60 years.
Just went to the Tiger website prices sure have gone up guess I made a good investment --- pre Obummer I had a CR license and bought several M-1 Garands and M-1 carbines from Civilian Marksmanship Program. At that time there were several sites selling Russian rifles, Mauser, Enfield, SKS, etc. Sportsmen's guide you could pickup an M16 original parts kit minus the receiver(cheap) The 40+ rifles I bought are worth a lot more now. Milsurp ammo was cheap back then stocked up on that as well.
Just looking at Gun.com Mosin Nagant have gone way up in price I bought a mummy wrapped Mosin for next to nothing crazy prices now.
Local gun shop bought a few skids of MN that were brought in that had boxes that held 20 rifles in them. As near as he could find out they were redone and hid out some where in Germany in case of another war. Meant to be used by partisans and were surplus anyhow. For $100 he would let you chose the rifle you wanted, sling, cleaning kit, and a spam can of very corrosive ammo. 440 rounds of 54. The rifles go for 500 or so now and 300 for the spam can ammo. He had a Karen neighbor who hated him and guns. She tried to have him shut down, shut down his range, etc. When he got the rifles, to spite her, he took out a large ad in the local paper showing him unloading them from a flat bed truck with a fork truck and like a hundred rifles in open boxes in one photo and stacks of boxes behind the open crates. He sold a lot of them to other dealers, but I remember him showing us the bond for about 3 million rounds of Russian ammo in a bonded ware house. She tried to get him at every level, local, county, state, and feds. He won, but he had to cross every t and dot every i as there was an organized group out to get him and this was 20 or more years ago. They were in 20 rifle crates that had been factory redone. All rifles were serial numbered, but some of the rifle receivers etc had 2 numbers. They took returned rifles and reused the parts, made sure they were in spec, and put them in a rifle with a new number. Some stocks had dovetails where the stock had been repaired after it had been shot or run over by a tank. These were well used WW2 rifles and we drank a couple beers and wished they could tell their histories. Here is a video showing what the crates looked like and the pallets. The 6 guns are arranged the same as the 20, just a bigger box and there are pallets of the 20 gun crates behind him.
Was about 2000. Here are some comments about when they were going for $50 to a hundred. Mosin Nagant prices $$$$ About the same time I bought a Chinese SKS from him and that was pricey at a hundred, but it is semi auto. The SKS Rifle - Small Arms Review And buy surplus ammo for it or an AK at about $70 a thousand, cheaper if bought 10,000 at a pop. Would shoot a couple hundred rounds at range. Best ammo to feed a SKS We used to live in a whole different world, prices, mail order pistols, 9 mm Swedish military surplus for $39,95 shipping included. Came with holster, 2 mags, and a cleaning kit. That was about 1958 prices.
There's 3 main problems with the British Enfield in the US. The ammo availability. Its limited and it costs more. The SMLE action is hard on brass, if you reload. Only 2 or 3 shots at full power. Bullet selection in heavy non-AK style .309 to .312 sux and it costs more, if you reload.
Local Gun show picked up an SKS for 125 still covered in grease, CMP Grands I paid 350, original M-16 parts kit from SG paid 450 pre Obummer. I remember CMP was supposed to get a bunch of Garland's from Greece or Korea and Obummer stopped it. That's about the time I let my C&R license go. The wife keeps asking what are you going to do with all those rifles and ammo ---my response ---make you a rich widow
