Mossberg 42MB

Kind of not the greatest of weekends.  I left with a buddy to go out to western Wisconsin to another buddies farm for some squirrel hunting and shooting fun.  But got called back early because my father had to go to the ER.  He's OK, and doing better now, but will be in the hospital for the week.

So obviously my mind is on other things, but since this is a gun blog, the topic that popped into my head first was a .22, the Mossberg 42MB.  This was the first rifle I ever hunted with.  It was his, a military surplus firearm.  I remember, he didn't have a magazine for it, so we searched high and low for one, and it being the 80s, Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet.  And, being a small, farming town of 1012 people in rural Wisconsin, there wasn't a bustling Gun market, either.  He ended up finding the magazine through Gun Parts Corp (formerly Numrich).  The shipped the magazine, along with Catalog #13a, which I still have.  The magazine didn't feed perfectly, but it was better than single shot.

I took that rifle hunting many times and carried it proudly.  I would like to say many a squirrel fell to that rifle, but I lacked the patience to be a good squirrel hunter, and the rifle's accuracy far surpassed my hunting abilities.

In 1990 I left for the Marine Corps, and my thoughts returned to that old rifle several times.  However, when home on leave I never was home during hunting season, and I never shot the rifle.  When you're used to shooting M16A2s with 3-round burst, and M249 SAWs, M60s, Mk19s, M2 .50 Cals, etc, you don't know how to appreciate a rifle like the 42MB.

Fast forward to 2009, and my old man, age 79 decides to give me his rifle, since he can't really shoot it anymore, and hadn't shot it in over a decade.  I can't even tell you how it felt to have that old war horse in my hands again.  And now by a man who could appreciate the rifle, not he teenager who held it before.  It hadn't been cleaned probably since I left for the Marines, so it needed some work.  And some of the worn parts needed replaced.  So I stripped it apart, replaced some worn/broken parts, thanks again to Gun Parts, Corp, which is now apparently using Numrich in its name again.  So I got her cleaned up, fixed up and took her to the range.  That stubborn old magazine still didn't work well.  So I looked in the catalog again, and saw there were two models of magazines made, depending on the date of the rifle.  So, I forked over $40 (ugghhh) and got the proper one, and feeds like a champ now.  The neat thing about it, you can shoot .22 LR, .22 L, and even .22 Short out of it.

I enjoy shooting it.  Now that I've had formal marksmanship training, that thing will shoot a zit off a fly's arse at 100  yards.  I've always had an appreciation for peep sights -- I think all kids should learn to shoot on a peep before they get a scope.

Anyway, that's a little trip down memory lane, and if you don't have a Mossberg 42MB, look one up, it shoots great.  The last I looked, in 2009, you could get one pretty cheap, for under $150.  And, being a military surplus gun, you can find tons of parts for it.