FrankenMauser
New member
Nah.Almost makes a man ashamed to put a lowly Browning BT-99 up on the gun rack in the midst of all the Perazzis, Krieghoffs, Ljutics and Zolis. I feel like I want to cover it up or something, pretend it's not mine.
If it works, it works.
There's no shame in performance.
I'm not a shotgunner, so I have no stories there. But I do have a recent one with a rifle:
I was proudly flying the FrankenMarlin flag a few weeks back, when I took the relatively-untested Glenfield/Marlin/Remlin .307 Win project out for a test drive.
It is comprised of parts from two Glenfield Model 30As, at least four JM Marlin 336s, at least two REP Marlin 336s, at least one 1895 (probably REP), and possibly a Model 444 (or two).
I dialed it in and got less than 1 MoA at 100 yards with five rounds of factory Winchester ammo.
There were three rounds left to fire, so the box would have an even 10 left in it. I pulled a bit high on the 380 yard steel gong.
Bang. - Clang.
Bang. - Clang.
Bang. - Clang.
*Happy dance*
The guys in a bay close by had been trying to dial in their new-looking hunting rifles for the upcoming seasons, and came over to see how I was already done and ringing steel with this crappy-looking levergun while they were still chasing their own tails.
One of them asked what "that cowboy gun" was.
I answered, "It's basically a Marlin 336, built from hand-fitted spare parts, using a barrel that was free because it was slightly screwed up while being reamed from .30-30 to .307 Winchester."
After some discussion about the rifle and what .307 Winchester was, one of them quipped, "He's got a Tasco strapped to $50 worth of used parts, and you can't hit a target with a $1,200 scope on a brand new rifle!"
(At the time of testing, it actually had more tape on it, as well as a beat-to-hell Tasco Pronghorn 4x from the '70s or '80s.)