And then attend an Appleseed .

Downside ALWAYS to the Carbine is ammo. It is a pain to find, pricey (or sketchy) when you find it, and mostly loaded to the military pressure with the FMJ bullet.

A good pump in .357 or .44 would do a lot of business I think.

Then again, a .44Mag/12ga combo gun would be nice to.

A MilSurp Enfield (even with great optics) will post 4" groups at 600 or 8" groups at 1000? Unless I'm mistaken (which is possible I'm not an expert on Enfields by any stretch) I think most folks would be thrilled with getting an Enfield to shoot one MOA after a good deal of work; let alone off the shelf.

No argument on the versatility of the cartridge or the Enfield rifle.

FWIW I'm not sure that shooting >600 yards is going to be likely for many of us in a survival situation anyway.

Hi 7point82,



The first time I had used a Lee Enfield No4 was when I was about 14 years old on the Local Barry Budden ranges viewable on google maps here at

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=N+56.4823+W+2.7901&ie=UTF8&ll=56.482295,-2.790098&spn=0.00865,0.02223&t=h&z=16&iwloc=addr

There might be some differences in terminology but I'm not really an expert in shooting. A distance group is the maximum distance between the holes made on a target for five individual shots (where the shots landed on the target is of no importance). There might be some differences in defining a group by the expert marksmen over in the US.

Using the iron sights I was getting 4 inch groupings at 200 metres or 220 yards within the first 10-20 rounds I had fired using the standard Lee Enfield No4 again without any special preperations to the weapon. Going on to use the No 4 with a scope was pretty good fun as well. Actually it would have been a Enfield No4 with 3.5 scope not a 4x (as I first mentioned) as in this photo,



45 Royal Marine Commando do most of their live firing at this range in preperation for their tours in Afghanistan. Apparently there have been some complaints about the increased noise by the members of the local Monifieth Ashludie golf course putting them off their aim.

A buddy of mine has a Jungle Carbine version of the Enfield. I've never compared the accuracy of the full size to the jungle, but even with the short jungle carbine I was having no problem hitting #10 cans from 100 yards. It's a neat rifle and certainly packs a wallop. The metal butt on the stock certainly puts a hurting on your shoulder firing it all day.

Hey Fear!

4" at 200 sounds reasonable (2 MOA) but that's a long way from 4" at 600 (.66 MOA).

A 1" group @ 100 yards = 1 MOA, 2" @200 = 1MOA,,, 10" @ 1000 yards equals 1 minute of angle (MOA). Ten shot <1 MOA happens at 1000 yards but not with any off the shelf rifles that I'm aware of.

Edited to add: Wow. It only took me two and a half years to make Journeyman! lol

The biggest drawback I see to the Enfield for those of us in the US is that other cartridges are so much easier to find. You can find .270, .30-30, .308 & .30-06 everywhere over here. .303 is a might harder to come by. At least it is in my neck of the woods.

Hi 7point82,

The Lee Enfield No4 Mk 1 (T) with the 3.5x scope was actually regarded as a sniping rifle. The rechambered 7.62mm NATO round offered very little improvement over the 0.303 round especially compared to the Mk8 ammunition.

A number of No4s were converted to 7.62 NATO (Enfield L39A1, L42A1 )and became the standard sniper rifle, which was still in use well into the mid eighties. There was very little difference in terms of performance between the Enfield No4 Mk1 (T) and the L39A1, L42A1.

The L39A1 and L42A1s were replaced with the L96A1 (L96) in the mid eighties giving a somewhat marginal improvement in accuracy. The L96A1 can shoot less than 2" (51mm) groups at the distances of 600 yards (550m) or greater than 0.5 MOA using boat-tail match ammunition.

Try using two empty 12 guage and two empty 20 guage shells. IIRC the 20 will slide into the 12 rather snugly. Trim whatever one to use as a cap/plug for the other. YMMV.

Hi MoBOB,

Thanks for reminding me of this shotgun shell container trick.

I have done this in the past but I used a 12ga. hull and a .16ga hull. I used them as matchcases when I was a Scout and I think I still have one in the toolkit of my snowmobile (I should check those matches, that was 30 years ago). I first learned this method from the Bradford Angler book "The Art and Science of Taking to the Woods" (page 276, Homemade Gear). I have the book in front of me now and had forgotten how good a reference it is.

In the case of my Savage 24 combo-gun buttstock storage idea I would have to enlarge the hole to accept the larger 12ga. shell, I will have to measure the available space to do this; or try the trick using smaller gauge shells.

My first thought was to use a thin-walled plastic tube like you used in your recent EDC photopost, or maybe an aluminum cigar tube (think I borrowed that idea from Hacksaw).

At present I am very busy at work and with the youth group so the making of "combo-gun buttstock mini-PSK" may have to wait till the dull days of next January!

Mike