When I was a kid and later living up the coast on a small island, I encountered four P14 rifles and later when I moved to Vancouver, another one.
They were common as dirt when I was younger and I wonder if they were even cheaper on the surplus market than Lee Enfields there were so many around.
The first one belonged to a friend of my dad's. He came hunting with us once, but he wasn't serious about it and I never saw it again.
The second one was hanging on a neighbour's wall. He had dug it up in the garden and it was just a rusty barreled action with the bolt in. It had a certain artistic charm I guess.
I got a job as a deckhand on a friend's crab boat and hanging on nails behind the stove was a P14, crudely sporterized the way they commonly were, with excess wood cut back. I attacked it with a can of WD 40 in a spare moment one day, got the bolt out and with no bore brush, but a piece of thin rope and a rag managed to open the bore up. There was some ammunition on board but I never shot it.
Then a friend bought an old gillnetter and there was another boat-rusty P14 hanging on nails. He was something of a gun snob (he'd worked for Lever back in Vancouver) and I don't think he ever even took it down. He got severely injured fishing (being nearly blind he should never had attempted being a fisherman) and sold the boat.
A few years later I got a job on a herring collector and when I went down to make my bunk there was a big lump under the mattress. Peeled it back and there was a P14. The engineer was a Canadian Ranger and a bit of a gun nut too. We played with it a bit and an empty cartridge case. The ejector spring was broken so you had to pick the case out when you opened the bolt. We left it upright in a closet when we finished for the season.
They were common as dirt when I was younger and I wonder if they were even cheaper on the surplus market than Lee Enfields there were so many around.
The first one belonged to a friend of my dad's. He came hunting with us once, but he wasn't serious about it and I never saw it again.
The second one was hanging on a neighbour's wall. He had dug it up in the garden and it was just a rusty barreled action with the bolt in. It had a certain artistic charm I guess.
I got a job as a deckhand on a friend's crab boat and hanging on nails behind the stove was a P14, crudely sporterized the way they commonly were, with excess wood cut back. I attacked it with a can of WD 40 in a spare moment one day, got the bolt out and with no bore brush, but a piece of thin rope and a rag managed to open the bore up. There was some ammunition on board but I never shot it.
Then a friend bought an old gillnetter and there was another boat-rusty P14 hanging on nails. He was something of a gun snob (he'd worked for Lever back in Vancouver) and I don't think he ever even took it down. He got severely injured fishing (being nearly blind he should never had attempted being a fisherman) and sold the boat.
A few years later I got a job on a herring collector and when I went down to make my bunk there was a big lump under the mattress. Peeled it back and there was a P14. The engineer was a Canadian Ranger and a bit of a gun nut too. We played with it a bit and an empty cartridge case. The ejector spring was broken so you had to pick the case out when you opened the bolt. We left it upright in a closet when we finished for the season.
