Amusing story (at least it is to me).

Every now and then someone would call us or would return one of these Swedish Mauser conversions back to us saying that it wasn’t very accurate - but when the rifles were returned they often shot at least reasonably well, within two inches at 50 yds. One guy that stands out in my memory called and I was the one who took his call. He said that he and his gun range buddies (all great shots, according to him) had tried his recently purchased Kimber Sporterized Swedish Mauser and none of them could group “within a washtub” with it at one hundred yards! He was pretty PO’d since he had bought a top quality rifle scope for this Kimber (a $150 rifle) because Kimber had a reputation for very accurate rifles.

Being very polite and showing true concern for his dilemma, I did point out though that our military conversions did not come with the same guarantee of accuracy that our .22’s did, but even I expected these conversions to shoot better than he described. I told him to go ahead and return it to us and I (the plant manager) would personally check it out.

Sometime later his rifle came in. He had mounted an over $600 Pentax rifle scope unto to it (for a $150 dollar rifle?). The first thing I noticed was that the parallax adjustment was set to 25 yds. Taking it to our 50 yd indoor range, I set the parallax adjustment to 50, and then proceeded to shoot a couple of dime sized five round groups with the rifle. This gun was proving to be a moa rifle or better! All other fit, finish and quality were within our company standards.

Now I had to call this customer back and explain to him that he and his gun range buddies (all great shots, according to him ) really needed to learn something new about shooting. What I did was to call him back, compliment him on the great rifle scope he had put on that rifle and ask if he had had the parallax adjustment on this rifle scope set to be parallax free at 25 yds when he and his friends did their shooting. He asked “what’s parallax”? I tried to explain parallax and informed him that the forward bell of his scope had an adjustment to set the scope to be free of parallax at given ranges and added that if he had it set to 25 when he did his 100 yd shooting he and his buddies would have had trouble with cross hair “drift” when they viewed the 100 yd target. I told him how I had made the adjustment for the test groups I fired and told him the results. He was a bit flummoxed, but thanked me for the information and assistance.

I thanked him for his concern for the quality of his recently purchased rifle and then said I would personally sign the test targets, as would our normal test shooter who had witnessed me shooting these test groups, I would include them and some information on parallax when I returned his rifle to him that day. I never heard from him again.

In Pursuit,