What are you doing there Ian?
I'm loading up mags for the match. You said World War I .30-06 right?
No, this is the rimless Enfield match!
Oh. Oh... Never mind then.
Thank you for tuning into an episode of InRange! Oh, already moving.
You know the smoothness of the Enfield. (Yes.)
So we're doing something really interesting today. I think you guys will find interesting.
You've shot Enfields a number of times at 2 Gun. (Yep.)
And we have a couple friends who have also shot SMLEs or Number 4 Enfields here at the match.
And quite frankly, we have not yet seen one of them not one of them! Not one!
Literally not one. Either you or other people, make it through the match without a significant
malfunction. (Right) Either the magazine failed due to dirt.
We've got rim lock, something happening that caused you to have like some just explosion at least one of the four stages.
Bolt head comes out of its alignment track.
Your gun literally came apart once. So what we're doing today is kind of trying to figure out what that is?
And we've got what we're gonna call the rimless Enfield match. (Yeah!)
So what I mean by that is, this is an Ishapore 2a.
This isn't even a 2a1, it's a 2a. (Oh, cool.)
The only difference between the a1 and a is the rear sight leaf really, but it's a 2a.
This is in .308, so this is really the World War I Enfield. (Right.)
I mean it is in every guise, the exact same rifle as the World War I Enfield with a couple small
modifications. The most major one being chambered .308 NATO. (Right.)
So instead of 303 Brit. We're no longer rimmed. We're now rimless, otherwise the World War I Enfield.
And I'm gonna be using this today to see what happens to me with this today!
Yeah, the the Indian Army never adopted the Number 4 rifle, so
when NATO standardized on 7.62, they went and just
changed over the caliber of the SMLE they were already making.
Right, so you have a world war 1 gun chambered in a more modern round.
(Yep.) But otherwise functionally the same. (And a 10-round magazine still.) Ten round magazine.
So nothing's changed. It might as well be the World War I rifle, just in a rimless cartridge. (Right.)
You have what is the best bolt-action military rifle, I think, of all time.
World War I and World War II, and beyond, combined.
This is the P17 Enfield. (Uh, the model 1917 Enfield.) Fair enough. (Yeah.)
We call it the P17 Enfield around here. (Yeah, we don't.) I do. (You shouldn't.) I did.
(The P14 is the British one.) I'm calling it the P17, and I'm also gonna call it the Eddystone! How's that?
(Well this one is an Eddystone, how do you like that?) I know, they're not all at Eddystones.(Yeah.)
We call them the Eddystone, so I'm gonna double down on that. It's the P17 Eddystone. (Okay.)
The (?) might drive people nuts, and I don't care. Go ahead.
It is a fantastic rifle, it is, this was the outgrowth of the pattern 1913 rifle. The British were going to replace
their SMLEs with a better Mauser style, cock on closing, high-velocity rimless cartridge.
Great rifle, and then World War one happened, and they went "Agh! forget it!" (So they stuck with this.)
Right, however, they ended up adapting that 1913 rifle to .303 as the P14, and then .30-06.
Manufactured and the US military actually used like three times as many of these in World War I as they did 1903s.
A US Doughboy in World War I was much more likely to have a Eddystone with him in .30-06 than any of the 1903 Springfields.
(Yep, contrary to what a lot of people expect.) And quite honestly that was good for him, (Oh, yeah.)
because this is really a much better rifle. This rifle's designed for combat. (Yes.)
It's a little heavy, and that comes from its, its origins as a, well the original 1913 was a much heavier,
much higher pressure cartridge than the 303.
So it's a very durable action and rifle. Great trigger, six round magazine interestingly. Five round stripper clips,
but a six round magazine. Great sights. (Superb sights.) Yeah. (Superb sights.)
so I am hoping to kick your ass with it. Well, you've got six rounds, although your stripper
clip is five again. (Yep.) You start with six, I start with ten. Although stripper clips are again, five. (Five, yep.)
I have absolutely awful sights. (Yeah.)
These are awful sights, and these are the best sights of any bolt-action rifle out there, so this should be fascinating. (Yep.)
And we're gonna have four stages today, although one of them is pistol only.
We are using a 1911, actually our Cimarron (Yep.) World War I... pretty much replica of a 1911, of World War I era 1911. (Yeah.)
And literally a pistol, because we're sharing the same pistol. And I will throw this out there,
I'm sorry guys. You cannot get this smock. You're gonna ask! As people that have seen our video for the first time
"where do I get that jacket?" is what we always get. You can't. This was this limited edition thing.
We can't find them anymore, so before you ask, you can't get one of these.
But let's move on, let's go to the match, and see how it goes today with rimless! ... Enfields. (Enfields.)
Alright guys, welcome to our first stage for the day. It's technically stage 3, but this is our first stage.
Shooter begin starting in this start box, rifle loaded and held at low ready.
At buzzer, shooter will engage each steel target down range with one hit each from prone at this start box.
Shooter will then move to the first berm and from the right side of the stick, somewhere from the right side
of that first stick. Shooter will go prone and engage each steel target with one hit each. Shooter will then move to
the second third and fourth stick from the right side of the stick and shoot from prone, getting one hit on each
steel target from each position. Anything less than ten hits will be scored as a miss any shots fired
from other than prone or not on top of the berm will not count as a hit.
Hit!
(Hit.)
Alright, so we just did our stage... First stage, first stage. How did it go? (Ahh, not too bad.)
(I would have liked a lot fewer misses.) Yeah, I was actually honestly
I was a little surprised because when I had this as I was not surprised. Let me tell you,
iron sights on this gun are almost as bad as it gets.
There's just a little tiny front post and a little tiny notch,
and then the front post protection wings look like a front sight post. (Yeah.)
I frequently accidentally used the wing as my front sight post. (Yeah, that's a danger on this one as well.)
Okay. (But not quite as much of one.) Sure.
Yeah, I dunno. There are some things in retrospect. I could have done better.
(Yeah.) I noticed you were really good about resting the gun on the dirt every time. (Yes.)
I wasn't, that gave me a lot more wobble in the sights. (Sure.) I probably could have done better if I done the same thing. (Uh-huh.)
But overall we came out like one second apart. (Not even that, a tenth of a second.) Was it a tenth?
It was 85.46 and 85.56.
So what that... (Alright!) that's extremely comparable performance.
(Yeah.) I think the reason is... (What we're seeing is my gear makes up for your skill.)
Well, I think there's two things at foot here right? The iron sights you have are so much better.
However, you have less capacity.
This has more capacity, which allowed me to only have to reload once, and you had to reload. (Well, that's true.)
(Yeah.) In in a weird way if you would put those sights on this gun, this would be far better setup.
(As long as it worked reliably.) These... Yes.
('cause they've done that, it's called the Number 4 Enfield.) Fair enough, fair enough.
But the sights on this current gun are so...
And they're, they're useful, but the problem is trying to find the fine balance between
how bad and fast the sight picture can I use, but still get a hit? (Right.)
And if you go slow enough you can always get the hit,
but if you're going that slow, guess what you're doing? Wasting a lot of time. (Yeah.) So... ehhh.
(Exactly the trade-off that people would have expected.) Yeah, exactly the same time.
(Better sights, lower capacity.) Yep, so put ten rounds in that gun. (I tried, I put seven in it!)
You need a trench mag. (That's exactly what... Oh, man. Yeah.)
(A 1917 with the trench mag would be 15 pounds, but really cool.) That would be sweet.
Alright, let's go on. We got CQB later, too, so that's gonna be interesting too.
(Alright, let's go for it.) Alright!