TOPIC:

LinneyI wrote: Hoarsecock
As far as I am aware, there was no record kept of Mauser rifles issued/provided to Burghers. Some years ago, Boer Mauser rifles and carbines were quite widely encountered here in Australia. An elderly former member of the NSW Citizen's Bushmen told me many, many years ago that his comrades usually brought back four or five Boer Mausers; for sale on the waterfront at more than five pounds each!
Some of the Boer Mausers I encountered in the 1970's onwards had stock carvings; names, places - some rustic and some very well done. I did source a copy of Kaplan's ABO roll and tried to reconcile certain stock-carved names against names on the roll. To not much luck, I can say. At least I tried. Virtually all such Mausers had mixed serial numbers on action and bolt. My opinion is that such examples were probably field captures or surrenders; "Bolts in one heap and rifles in the other". Meaning that the rifle(s) in question were immediately out-of-action if someone changed his mind.
Many thousands of Boer rifles of many patterns were captured/surrendered during the campaign. I attach a pic taken at Cape Town and taken from "After Pretoria, the Guerilla War" Vol 3 page 422, (publication date Feb., 1901).

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Noted in the foreground are Martinis, shotguns, a couple of Winchester lever-action rifles, apparent muzzle loading types and at least one Mauser. In the background are horizontally stacked thousands of rifles; Mausers, from the look of the visible butt-plates. To conclude, some time ago, QSAMike contributed a post about a Boer Mauser reportedly sourced from the arsenal at Pretoria. I tried to find it. No luck. Perhaps Mike could assist here? In any case, I suggest you gather all the information you can about the background of the Boer Mauser in your current custody and record it.
Best regards
IL.

Thats some great info thanks very much!
I've been putting some info together in a binder about the rifle for my son, and this will definitely be in the binder too.
It will be his rifle someday(as well as my Lee Metford) , see I am a South African and a descendent of a number of Boer's who fought in the war.
My son being half a rock-spider and half Canadian will hopefully have some interest in the war. (The fact that his old man is a Boer war geek will probably help)

Thanks again

QSAMIKE wrote: Good Morning Hoarsecock……

Here is the thread that Linneyl mentioned.....

www.angloboerwar.com/forum/senior-member...-from-pretoria#19731

Mike

Hi Mike
I'm not able to open your link for some reason?
I'm very keen to read the post though.

I keep getting a error:
"You may not be able to visit this page because of:

an out-of-date bookmark/favourite
a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site
a mistyped address
you have no access to this page
The requested resource was not found.
An error has occurred while processing your request.
If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site and report the error below."

Brett Hendey wrote: www.boerwarriflecarvings.net/reviews.html

The link is to three books by Dave George on Boer rifles with carvings on their wooden surfaces.

Brett

Hi Brett
I sent Dave a message a few months ago and he wrote me back, I got busy and forgot about it all to be honest.
I better get in contact with him again!

I do no know what is up but I also get this message...….

Error
You have entered information to an obsolete form from another session. Please verify that the user account is yours and please try again!

Mike

I'll see if I can get someone to help me see your post.

I saw one of your other posts where you talked about a rifle that had a tag that was in a armoury in Pretoria.
It sounds eerily like my rifle, unfortunately I do not have the tag and do not know who the chap was that had it.
(There was another owner between myself and the chap with the tag)

That is the one that I was talking about..... It was originally for sale in Winnipeg, then went to Edmonton and the last I saw of it was at the Calgary Easter Gun show in 2018...… I think it ended up with a dealer in BC maybe will see it again at this years show.....

Mike