The Finest All-'Round Deer Gun - an old 6.5x54 article

The Finest All-'Round Deer Gun - an old 6.5x54 article
Lately have seen a few posts about the 6.5x54mm Mannlicher-Shcoenauer cartridge/rifles. So, for those with such interests, here is an article from the February 1930 American Rifleman magazine.

Not trying to start any disputes over the title of the article's meaning,
just sharing amongst a fine group of shooters an article from the past.
With some writings about the 6.5x54mm for those interested in these fine old rifles and cartridge. May all enjoy setting to a nice read shared.


The Finest All-'Round Deer Gun

Ever notice how firmly you can stand on a couple of inches of light snow over a heavy crust, with snowshoes strapped to your shoe-pacs?

A good hundred yards away, across the blow-downs and white coated stumps left by the loggers, a big buck threw up his antlered head and started away at a lumbering gallop. Twelve inches of snow and the crust bothered him; and it was another hundred yards to the shelter of the cedars which he sought.

The silver bead of the little 6.5 Mannlicher found his shoulder, and I eased off the trigger. "Wham!" said the smokeless; and the buck, caught with the 160-grain bullet midway of his stride, plunged forward and slid, nose first, into a pile of brush.

A moment later I stooped over him and grasped one of the branching antlers to turn him over. The fast, heavy bullet had broken both front shoulders, the hole emergence being almost the size of a silver dollar.

In the past fifteen years it has been my good fortune to try out most of the common types of American-made hunting rifles in a lot of calibers; and there is no more certain method of starting an argument than to state that such-and-such a rifle is 'the best' for any given purpose.

The little 6.5mm Mannlicher is my own pet tool at present, and this in spite of the fact that for many years as a guide and hunter, I used and swore by a .38-40 carbine; killed lots of game with it, and took plenty of abuse from the wise boys who just knew that it wasn't a suitable gun for use on any kind of medium or large game.

In those days my hunting was confined to dense cover, where it was unusual to get shots at more than 60 to 80 yards, usually snap-shooting through brush, and for that sort of work the little old .38-40 was, and still is, mighty good medicine.

Three years ago I went into the Allagash region of northern Maine, where there is a lot of hardwood, and the country is full of streams and lakes which offer plenty of shots at long range. Knowing that the .38-40 was outclassed in this type of hunting, the little 6.5mm Mannlicher came into my possession and immediately I fell in love with it.

Equipped with a full-length stock with a nice cheek-piece, a very smooth-working bolt which is rigid even when fully extended, an 18-inch barrel of fine accuracy, set-triggers, a silver bead mounted on a nice ramp, and a swinging Lyman with two apertures, this little tool handles splendidly, is light to carry in the woods, and slams its loads out to 300 yards with very little drop.

It did not take me long to discover that those long, lean, hungry- looking 160-grain pills had plenty of wallop. I shot three large bucks and a couple of black bear with them, and in no case did a bullet stay in any of these animals. They rambled right on through meat and bone, and there was never any necessity for chasing anything which was properly hit.

The bullets also showed up splendidly when shooting through very thick cover, not flying to bits and going off at a tangent as do the lighter slugs from the .250-3000, .22 Hi-Power, and others of the same type. I experimented with the 140-grain open-point Western load, a much faster bullet, and it was deadly enough; but the recoil oddly, seemed heavier than that of the longer, heavier bullet, and for other reasons I did not like it as well as the regular 160-grain load.

Beautifully balanced for offhand shooting, with a glass-hard action which would slide backward and forward by itself, the Mannlicher won its way into my affections almost at once. By pressing a small stud on the right side of the receiver, the rotary magazine spills all the loaded shells right out into your hand; and this is a good feature, which might well be copied by some of our American makers of fine rifles. That rotary magazine, by the way, is hand-polished, and detachable, and is certainly a sweet bit of mechanism. In three years of constant use I have never had even the slightest intimation of a jam or a misfire with the 6.5, nor lost a single head of game that offered a decent chance.

Lacking the equipment for careful targeting at known ranges, I can not say just what sort of groups it would make in a machine rest, but for practical work in the game fields it appeal to me as just about the handiest, deadliest, sweetest-shooting tool which ever got into my hands - and I've had plenty of rifles!

Reading the works of other hunters and riflemen, I note that with very few exceptions they show a decided preference for longer barrels in the Mannlicher - preferably 24 inches or more. No doubt these long tubes do add speed to a bullet, and more punch at the delivery end.

I never got a chance to tag a moose with that small sweetheart of a rifle, but would welcome the opportunity to try it out on from a mature dinosaur to a small switch engine. I think it would stop either if held right.

One of the bucks killed with it was shot at an estimated range of 350 yards, across a big marsh. Using the regular 160-grain loads, I held a couple of feet over his shoulder and eased off the set trigger very carefully, shooting from the prone position with my elbows dug in solidly. The buck threw up his head and whistled, stamping his feet angrily and evidently uncertain as to the nature of the big insect which had just cracked past too high. So, dragging the front sight down just a hair, I slammed the second one across And both Mrs. Lee and I afterward agreed that we heard it land on the big boy's shoulder. Down he went in a still heap, not even thrashing after he struck.

As usual we found both shoulders broken, and the 10-pointer was 'dead right there, after detouring around a lot downed timber, we finally reached him.

Performances of that type have welded my affection and respect for the little Mannlicher, until it even seems likely that I will keep it permanently, something which has never happened with any other gun in my years of constant change; and, outside of the specially built arms of Griffin & Howe, Hoffman, Niedner, and others of their kind, it seems to me that the 6.5mm Mannlicher stands almost alone in the field of finely built and most effective hunting arms.

Thank you for your time folks, and hopefully others out
there may enjoy having read this old article from the past.
regards to all, waidmannshiel, outsidebear