What were BC Hunters using in the 1930's

MiG25

MiG25

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Lately I've been reading through old accidents reports, in many cases the type of arm is only vaguely mentioned. Now this only represents the guys who were doing stupid st#t, like clubbing trapped animals with their rifle, or pulling a loaded gun towards themselves, but the most common caliber mentioned is:

The 30-30, but the 32's outnumber it when you add up the mentions of 32 Winchester Special, 32 Winchester, 32-40, and 32 Stevens (rimfire I suppose).

Others mentioned in singles are 35 Remington Auto Loader, 25-35, 303 Savage, 303 Lee Enfield, 6.5mm, 300 Savage (this is the famous case of the lady losing an eye to a tang sight).

These incidents are greatly outnumbered by minors, 10-14, shooting themselves or others with 22's, and guys shooting themselves or others with shotguns, very often hammerguns.

It's likely safe to say that lever guns predominated. I speculate that the 6.5mm was a Cooey Carcano.

None of the big bore lever gun cartridges are mentioned, nor the 44-40 which supposedly was common, nor the 270 or 30-06.
 
6.5 Mannlicher - schoenauer was very popular among those who could afford it, especially for mountain hunting. Cooey Carcano nearly unknown. As mentioned, lever guns in Win 94 and 95 ( .303 Brit very popular in mod 95's) savage 99 in 303 Sav and 30-30, lee Enfields, P14 Enfields, 8 mm Mauser and because this was long before scopes were common, various older big bores like Win Mod 1886 in 40-82, 45-70, 45-90 and 43 Mausers and different older single shots were still in regular use depending on where you were and the intended game. Interior hunters after moose and bear in grizzly country needed more firepower than Vancouver Island deer hunters just like today. Using iron sighted rifles is a big range equalizer, most calibers would have a similar effective hunting range.
 
Well, those guys weren't having accidents.

My money is on a Cooey Carcano, $13 from Eaton's compared to $140 for the Mannlicher. I doubt a guy who shot himself clubbing a trapped animal with his rifle had a Mannlicher.
 
The question regarded hunters, not people who had accidents. Trappers commonly carried a pistol or a .22 in 1931. Kids had accidents with any gun they got their hands on, often the barn gun which was likely a .22, usually without permission. And hunters loved the little mannlicher carbines, this was like the peak of perfection to many. I knew many old timers in the 40's and 50's that still had one as their pet rifle. Never saw or heard of a Cooey Carcano in those days. Rosses, mostly .303 but some 280's yes. Lots of Early Lee Enfields. An occasional Remington # 8, mod 94 in 25-35, the odd Savage in .22 Hi Power. In the 1950's the old Chilliwack second hand store had a whole wall of old guns for sale, these would have been current in 1931 but were now being sold because the owner had upgraded to a 'modern' bolt action with a cheap scope. Another way to look at this is to look at a current cross section of surviving rifles in BC that were actually made 1890-1930, I imagine this is what the picture looked like in 1931. For sure very few were buying new in the depression years.
 
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MiG25 said:
Well, those guys weren't having accidents.

My money is on a Cooey Carcano, $13 from Eaton's compared to $140 for the Mannlicher. I doubt a guy who shot himself clubbing a trapped animal with his rifle had a Mannlicher.
Click to expand...

Not available in quantity until 1946.
 
In his book "Sleeping Island", Prentice G. Downes tells his story of his travels by canoe in 1939 ... and through Manitoba and Saskatchewan and up to the Great Barren Lands.

He himself used a Mannlicher-Schoenauer on that trip/expedition ... and one of his observations was that most of the natives used 30-30s.
 
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It is a small cross section but the Winchester 94 smokeless cartridges turn up far to often to have not have been one of, if not the most common rifle.

The Cooey Carcano was on the market in the early 1930's, it was the cheapest centerfire sporting rifle on the market.

One needs to be careful post WWII, many of the Euro rifles like the Mannlicher were brought back then as souvenirs, mine has German proof marks on it.

All guns had to be registered in 1940 as part of the Defence Regulations, it appears the provinces were responsible for this, a list likely exists in the archives.
 
A few years ago I was out hunting on a ridge top near Nelson and found a very tarnished .401 Winchester casing. I like to think someone many years ago was in that same spot and managed to get a shot at something.
 
Back in those days, 6.5x54 was actually fairly common. They weren't all fancy rifles. My Dad, born in 1900, had a "6.5". He told me it was a Mannlicher. We can all rest assured that it wasn't any $140 rifle. He told me he sent the rifle to his brother who was working in the bush in Ontario during the 1930's. it was supposedly on a loan, but Dad never saw the rifle again.
 
Of course all Mannlicher Schoenauer rifles had German proof marks, that is where they were made. They were available for sale in Canada, especially in Vancouver, Victoria and the Kootenays and regionally popular although because of the cost they never sold like Winchester 94s. The period from 1910 to 1920's were a prosperous time, unlike the 1930's and there was a continuous stream of immigrants from Britain and Europe, many of them would have brought a gun with them at that time.
 
My father bought a Mannlicher in Victoria in 1926. He liked the 6.5 round, similar to the 6.5x55 he was issued in Norway in 1920. That rifle put food on the table until WW2 when he was issued a Winchester Model 94 and 2 boxes of ammo( PCMR} Went back to the M/S in 1945.
 
My Dad tells me he started off using both a 44-40 and a 38-55 that were in the family. Later he got his hands on a 30.30, a modern firearm. These were all Winchester lever actions. This was for deer hunting out in the bush on Vancouver Island, pretty much all year round, to put food on the table in the depths of the depression. He was the eldest son, and head of the family, from 14. And some kind of 22 for taking cougar for the bounty, at night, with his dog. The bounty on a cougar was a working man's wage for a week. You just stayed out all night, no tent, no sleeping bag. I believe the only new firearms he ever bought himself were a Husqvarna 1600, 30.06, and a Cooey Model 39 for shooting rabbits around camp. (Why pay extra for a repeater, when a single shot is all you need?) He never put a scope on a rifle and, even in the Chilcotin, never took a shot over 100 yards, since all he wanted was deer, which seldom went much above the tree line, and he could spot their trails and lay-downs easily. I've never been in the bush with anyone who had a better sense for the presence of game or who could get closer without spooking them. That's the result of poverty-driven hunting from an early age. Now he's 93 and has one of those nice, indexed RCMP pensions.
 
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Steyr is in Austria, a Mannlicher won't have commercial German proofs unless it was sold in Germany, how it got to Canada I can only speculate. I'm not saying Mannlicher-Schoenauers weren't available or used in BC, but I am saying that I would bet that a 6.5mm refers to a $13 rifle rather than a $140 one. And documents like this are sadly lacking in detail:20200103_225652.jpg
 

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Correct, I meant Austrian proofs, no matter where they were originally sold..and in over 65 years of gun collecting and studying in BC I have seen numerous Mannlicher Schoenuer rifles, nary a Cooey Carcano, just a couple of Terni Carcanos. At the larger gun shows in BC there is always some MS 6.5x54's, maybe a couple, maybe a dozen . Never saw a Cooey 6.5 of any kind, although I can't say that I ever looked for one. Maybe your experience is different.
 
Interesting list. I wonder how they confisscated firearms at Toronto,Seattle and Washington State? And some of those places like Ocean Falls, Anyox and Alice Arm as well as several islands were only accessible by boat and rarely at that. Game department enforcement must have been much more prevalent than you would expect in such sparsely populated areas. Don't forget, it would take you three or four days then to drive from Vancouver to Prince George - in the summer. Nearly impossible the rest of the year and there were no 4x4 model T's.
 
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My fathers family a "jack pine savage" were thrilled to have 303 enfield, as the " big rifle", far surpassing 44-40 and 25-20, for Moose. When be joined the Army in 1943, at 18, it was his first experience with eating tomatoes or eating his fill.

Noone argued the merits of 375 H&H over 30-06. Any money bought things you couldnt make, grow, or shoot....luxurious items like buttons and baking powder. Each cartridge brought something to the table or grandpa sent the boys out to cut a switch.
 
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