Veterans Day at the Range

Yesterday was Veterans Day, and as I do on most such holidays, I went to the shooting range.  (Coincidentally, it was a Monday, which is my normal weekly range day anyway).  I decided that it was time to take a "veteran" rifle that I have owned for almost 13 years but had not yet fired:  a Krag-Jorgensen Model 1899 Carbine.

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army's rifle was a converted muzzleloading musket that had been modified to use a metallic cartridge.  It became known as the "Springfield Trapdoor" because the conversion added a mechanism at the breech that opened up like a trap door to load the cartridge and to extract the fired case.  It was thus a single-shot rifle, and used black powder in the cartridges.

Meanwhile, European armies were adopting repeating rifles that used smaller caliber bullets and the newly-invented smokeless powder, a huge leap forward in technology that provided significant advantages.  The U.S. Army conducted tests in the 1880s and early 1890s, and adopted a modification of a Norwegian rifle designed by Ole Krag and Erik Jorgensen, which became known as the (surprise!) Krag-Jorgensen rifle.  It was a bolt action that used a new .30 caliber cartridge that became known as either the ".30 Government" or the ".30-40 Krag".  (The .30-40 designation was a holdover from black powder days, when cartridges were given a two-part numerical designation, the first being the caliber of the bullet and the second being the number of grains of black powder it contained.)

This was the U.S. Army's first magazine-fed small caliber repeating rifle that used smokeless powder, and is the earliest rifle of the era in which I have any collector interest.  It went through several iterations and improvements, the major models being the Model 1892 rifle (first fielded in 1894), the Model 1892 Carbine (a shortened version for cavalry troops), the Model 1896 Rifle and Model 1896 Carbine (this was the carbine used by Theodore Roosevelt's 1st Volunteer Cavalry - the famed "Rough Riders" of the Spanish-American War), the Model 1898 Rifle and Model 1898 Carbine (the final refinement of the mechanical action) and the Model 1899 Carbine (the final carbine version).

In the late 1990s I had owned a beautiful Model 1898 Rifle that I bought on eBay in the early days before they decided guns were “bad" and stopped allowing them to be sold (thus allowing Gunbroker.com and others to fill that void!)  Sadly, I had to let that go in favor of other priorities, and the Krag remained a gap in my collection for several years.  I started looking for one again when I moved to Fort Bragg in 2011. I had decided that I'd really like to have a carbine rather than the rifle, as the rifle is very long and I thought the carbine would be handier and more fun to shoot.  After examining a lot of fakes that had been produced by cutting down rifles to carbine length (apparently the carbines are more popular), I finally found a nice example of a Model 1899 carbine for sale.  

I checked my reference sources, and it looked correct in all the key aspects (serial number range, correct stock and handguard, and correct carbine sight).  I wasn't sure about the sling swivel, but it was the only substantially correct one I'd seen after several months of looking.  The clincher came when I checked the date of manufacture based on the serial number: November 1901, the same month and year that the U.S. Army War College was established.  This was in February 2012, the same month I was notified that I had been selected to attend the Army War College. I decided that happy coincidence would make this my "War College Carbine", and I bought it.  It looked great hanging on my wall for many years, but I had never taken the time to get it out to the range and fire it.  Today would be the day.

I had just learned something from my collector reference book "The American Krag Rifle and Carbine" that lent the occasion an interesting historical twist:  When the Army began fielding the Krag-Jorgensen in October 1894, the very first unit to receive them was the 4th Infantry Regiment at Fort Sherman, Idaho. The original site of Fort Sherman is now largely occupied by a city park and the campus of North Idaho College, and the main street running from there through downtown Coeur d'Alene is named Sherman Avenue.  I was about to fire my first shots from my personal Krag-Jorgensen almost exactly 130 years after the first Krags in the U.S. Army were issued to the soldiers stationed right here in Coeur d'Alene!

My "War College Carbine" at the range in Coeur d'Alene.

I had purchased a small amount of factory ammunition as well as a quantity of empty cartridge cases and the necessary reloading dies, but had never loaded any ammunition for it.  The original U.S. Army load used a 220 gr. round-nose bullet, but all the commercial ammunition I could find used 180 gr. softpoints.  This makes sense, because after the rifles were replaced by the Model 1903 and withdrawn from service, they were sold to civilians in the 1920s and 1930s and became very popular hunting rifles.  They are not nearly as popular now as they were two or three generations ago, so the ammo companies only make limited production runs, typically once a year right before hunting season.  I had six 20-round boxes of Remington commercial ammunition - one bought in the 1990s and priced at $14.95, two bought a little later at $16.95, and three that I bought at the same time as the carbine for $49.95 (!)  You can bet that if I shoot this rifle much more, I'll be loading my own ammunition.

I had a collector-oriented reference book, but no books or references on shooting the rifle, particularly how the sights were regulated. For this trip, I just wanted to make sure it would fire safely, and "get it on paper".  If all went well, I'd return to the range at some later date and actually put it through its paces.  I set up an NRA B8 pistol target at 25 yards and planned to fire from the bench.  For the first shot, I stood off to the side and fired into the berm just to make sure the bolt would hold - this design has only one bolt lug, so there is no safety margin if it turns out that lug has a crack in it.  All went well, and the rifle stayed in one piece, so I sat down behind it to see where it would shoot.

I fired shots #1 through #5 from the bench, making minute adjustments to windage to try to get it centered.  I finally decided it was as good as I was going to get, given my eyesight and the increasing difficulty I have bringing carbine-length open sights into focus. (it was also late in the day and starting to get dark).  I let a friend fire a shot, and then I fired shots #6, #7, and #8 from a standing position.   I was very pleased with the results:

Two nines and a ten, standing offhand, with sights I don't really know how to adjust properly.  I'll take it for now, lol.

Now that I've finally broken the ice and fired this carbine, I really want to learn more about it and get out to shoot it some more.  Ian at "Forgotten Weapons" has a pdf version of the Army manual for the rifle available here:   U.S. Army Manual for Krag-Jorgensen Rifle and Carbine . I've ordered a reproduction of this manual so I'll have a printed version, and will be on the hunt for a vintage original for my collection.  The next time I take this carbine out, I'll know more about the sighting system and will shoot at actual service rifle targets.  But for now, I'm content to have gotten this 123-year-old veteran off the wall and out to the range in honor of Veterans Day 2024.

Mood:  Happy

Music:  Pat Benatar, "Hit Me With Your  Best Shot"