Live Fire: Shooting the M1917 at 700 Yards

A month ago I posted a short video from a range trip shooting the Remington M1917 at about 100m, getting a feel for the rifle and checking zero. I said in that video that I was planning on stretching the M1917s legs in the near future and last week I got the chance. I had the opportunity to shoot the rifle out to 700 yards (640m) which was a lot of fun.

rrem_soft — The view down range from the firing point (Matthew Moss)

With some 147gr S&B I managed a half decent score only missing twice out of 20 rounds. I’ve never shot out to 700 yards especially not with iron sights so it was a fun challenge, amazingly my last round was a bull, which was a real bonus!

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Live Fire: Remington M1917

This week’s episode is a short video of my first trip to the range with the Remington M1917. I basically wanted to get an overall feel for the rifle and see how the zero was. It was a beautiful day, and shooting the M1917 was a lot of fun.

I did take along my proper video camera but in a profoundly rookie move, I forgot to check it had a memory card in it. So had to improvise and use my phone, the results aren’t too bad!

The only range available that afternoon for zeroing was a 100 yard range. The first increment on the M1917’s ladder sight is 200 yards, so I set my aperture a little lower and put 8 rounds of 123gr SAKO .30-06 through the rifle, just to see where point impact was.

A view down range from my firing point (Matthew Moss)

The results were better than I expected. With a six-oclock hold on the 7 ring I got a spread of about 7 inches. This was entirely due to me get used to the rifle and forgetting to bring along a rest. I was just pleased to see rounds on paper. My groups tightened up as the afternoon went on and I’m definitely looking forward to getting to the range with the M1917 again – hopefully with a memory card!

We’ll take an in-depth look at this rifle in the future, and we’ll hopefully have videos on its British predecessors too. In the meantime, bonus video here.

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TAB Short: Pattern 14 Cutaway

During my recent research trip to the US I was lucky enough to handle and examine a lot of very interesting firearms. This short video is a bonus, while we were opening one of the cases at the Cody Firearms Museum to examine another firearm (that video is coming soon) I noticed a sectioned British Pattern 14 rifle, made by Winchester for the British government during the First World War. It was too good an opportunity to pass up so I filmed this quick video taking a look at the P14’s internals.

The P14 would go on to be the basis of the US M1917 rifle built by Winchester, Remington and Eddystone.

Cutaway of a Winchester-made Pattern 14, note the rear volley sight and sectioned magazine and chamber (Matthew Moss)

The cutaway shows the internals of the rifle’s actions as well as the barrel, chamber and magazine. It was cool to see a cutaway of the P14 up close and I couldn’t resist grabbing some footage.

My thanks to the Cody Firearms Museum, at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, for allowing me access to their collection. You can find out more about the CFM here.