.30-40 Krag

Shooting the .30-40 Krag–Jørgensen (Springfield 1898)

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• published: 19 Sep 2015
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Here is a video of me shooting my .30-40 Krag–Jørgensen (the American Springfield 1898 model). I try to show off some fast bolt manipulation. I got this tastefully-sporterized Krag rifle back in late August of this year at a gun show in Austin, Texas. I feel like a paid a bit too much for the rifle itself, but I got a sweet deal on ammo for it so I snatched it up. It was a long rifle that was chopped down to carbine length and re-barreled. I like this rifle quite a bit, but it has some decidedly-annoying quirks, both in design and the rifle itself. I was sad to see it go, but I feel it was for the best. The Krag–Jørgensen (correctly pronounced something like "craw yergensen") is a 19th-century bolt-action rifle design jointly produced by two Norwegians, Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik Jørgensen, hence the hyphen. Ironically, it was first adopted by the Danish in 1889 rather than its country of origin and soon two other nations followed suit with their own variants, Norway in 1891 and then the United States in 1892. The Krag was loosely based on the extremely-popular Mauser bolt design. However, a unique rotary magazine mounted on the side of the rifle, differentiated it from Mauser-types of the time, which had either tubular magazines or integral box magazine that feed from the top with single rounds or a stripper clip. The rotary magazine opened from the right side of the rifle and the shooter could load rounds singly quite quickly compared to a tubular magazine. This was not a huge issue for the Norwegian Krags, which used the rimless 6.5x55mm cartridge. For those rifles, one could simply dump several rounds into the loading box at once without any real need for careful placement; upon closing, the spring tension would align the cartridges with little effort. This wasn't true of the Danish and American Krags, which used rimmed cartridges. The shooter would need to carefully load only one or two at a time to ensure that the rims of each cartridge were not in front of the one before it, unless he wanted to get an infuriating case of rimlock. Naturally, in a heated firefight it wasn't always easy to accomplish this task, leading to many cases of jammed Krags. In addition, the cartridge that the U.S. Krag was chambered for, the .30-40, was somewhat slow and weak compared to it contemporaries. It was utterly dwarfed by the 7.92x57mm Mauser and even against lighter bullets it often paled in comparison. This was proven during the Battle of San Juan Hill, when the Americans went up against the Spanish. During this battle, the Krag rifles used by the Americans lacked range and loaded extremely slowly compared to the Spanish forces' 7mm Mausers that loaded from stripper clips. The Americans got their asses kicked in this battle, which led to the gradual phasing-out of the Krag in favor of a more Mauser-like design. That rifle was the Springfield M1903 and the rest is history. My rifle in particular has the problems mentioned above with the added negatives of higher recoil due to the shorter length, a hard-to-see front sight, and lacking wood on the top of the barrel, which means that after about 10 or 15 rounds touching it is like resting your fingers on a frying pan. Hence the baseball cap, if anybody was wondering what the hell I was doing in the latter half of the video. But at the end of the day I still rather like the Krag. It's a very unique rifle, that's for damn sure. It's also a hell of a lot more precise than I am; I was genuinely surprised at how well it preformed in the hot Texas heat. The loading gate, while finicky and kind of awkward, is quite fascinating and allows you to top of the magazine with ease. The magazine cutoff, a cool feature I wish gun manufacturers would bring back, allows you to load one round at a time while keep the magazine full; it's also a great safety feature. The bolt-action is also perhaps one of the best ever made. It's cock-on-open and 90 degrees but smooth as butter nonetheless; I'd wager that that it's actually smoother that the Lee-Enfield by a good degree, which is coming from someone whose favorite firearm of all-time is the Lee-Enfield. I accidentally limp-wrist the action a few time in this video, but that was my fault more than the action's. I'm a bit more used to the cock-on-close mechanism used by the Arisaka Type 99 and the Lee so I sometimes forget that pulling the bolt up on the Krag requires a bit of force. All in all, the 1898 Krag is a fine rifle with some annoying quirks, but I'd still recommend buying one if you can find it cheaply enough for anyone who likes these kinds of guns. It's extremely well-made and is a lot of fun to shoot.