Of Scopes and Hunting Model 81

[Wildgoose]

My first "Spring Pole" was a Model 81 in 30Rem. It came with one of the old Lyman #4 side mounted scope bases attached but missing the rings and of course no scope. I didn't just want to pull the mount off and have the four holes in the receiver left so I went about finding what I needed to do to get a vintage scope set up on the gun. Pictured is the result. Not a bad deal and workable with a few issues but I thought it would work to take the rifle deer hunting sometime. In doing some reading I found that there is a good reason so many of these old guns have had scopes mounted and then later removed. It has been postulated that many hunters equipped with the non nitrogen filled scopes of the period suffered fogging over issues in the colder, damper conditions some found themselves hunting in. This got me to thinking that the old Weaver K4 I have mounted on my 81 may well suffer the same fate. After all to even mount it one has to remove the eye bell and slide the tube into the solid non-split rings. Now granted this fogging thing may or may not actually happen but I didn't want to go to all of the trouble to drag my old carcass out into the field and up into the tree stand to find that the vintage scope wasn't going to work out. So in order to "upgrade" I have mounted a Burris 2x7 MINI I had laying around.
Of course as with all things related to Model 8/81's this proved to have its little challenges as well. First off I need to go to a split ring type mount to install the scope as taking it apart to get it into the existing solid rings would kind of defeat the "nitrogen filled" part of the deal. Lucky for me that Lyman still makes the #4 mounting system and the rings supplied with the "newer" unit will fit on the old base and have split rings. Second off when I had it all installed I found that the higher profile adjusting knobs on the Burris caused jamming problems by blocking ejected cases from clearing the rifle during firing. This was solved by rotating the scope to the left. Of course this made sighting in some what confusing but it was workable. The pictures show the installed unit and resulting five shot 3.5 inch group fired at 100 yards. So this fall I think I may give it a go. All in all this was just another excuse to do some tinkering and shooing with this great old gun.

[imfuncity]

Looks like a workable solution to me... got a couple like that. Will be great to see your "results" this fall before - he goes to the freezer.

[81police]

excellent looking setup you got there! And 3.5" is not too shabby with the JMB "springpole". She looks ready to hunt!