7.7x58 Arisaka legal for deer hunting on private land this fall?

[Broom_jm]

Heh, my sympathies to you! My "special" .308 has a .310 groove x 10" twist barrel. Loading with .311 diameter jackets work. Haven't tried any light weight AK slugs in it yet but would bet they shoot fairly well. It's the rifle that Brett Havlin recently brought back from the dead for me (THANKS BRETT!).
Looking forwards to seeing how long heavy paper patched work out.

That sounds interesting, NKBJ. Is there a thread on it? I'd like to read what you have and what was done to resurrect it.

Some old bores can be cleaned up with JB Bore paste and made to shoot lead bullets surprisingly well. I can just see going out with a 30/40 Krag, shooting 210gr cast lead bullets for deer. What would the CO make of that?!

 

[NKBJ]

There's pictures on the gunsmith horror story thread. The bore is in great shape though.
I don't think it has ever been fired much because probably nobody wanted to shoot it once they tried regular .308 ammo.
Regular .308 diameter bullets are undersized and as they say they kinda shoots a pattern rather than a group.

I'm trying to get another rifle shooting, one with a corroded bore. It's a 1915 Dutch 6.5x53R that was shot by it's previous owner with military soft silvery nickel jacketed ammo that was designed for the base to expand and fill the rifling. The soft nickel coats the bore and the corrosive products of the ammo is sealed up behind the coating. When I removed the nickel coating, well then the iron grit that used to be the bore started falling out. I've been polishing it to get it good enough to shoot cast and paper patched. Right now it's about .277 in front of the chamber and .273 towards the muzzle. Using #266469 with two thickness patch, two wraps at the rear (.270 diameter) and three wraps at the front (.274 diameter) with Clover compound fine grade. It's just about ready to do another chamber pound cast and to mike the bore again. I want to try and get more cast up this weekend to see if the bullets are stabilized and no longer tend to keyhole.
It's all fun.