Trego's Mountain Ear

I went through the golden age of Hunter Safety – Danny On taught the wildlife section and Ed Ruhl taught firearms.  Danny On was a forester whose intense hobby was wildlife photography – Ed Ruhl was a retired Marine Warrant Officer who had specialized in firearms throughout his career.  Mr. Ruhl felt that the ultimate 22 rifle was the M65 Reising, built by Harrington & Richardson for the Marine Corps, and left me knowing that I needed one.

It wasn’t immediately possible – the Reising was semiautomatic.  The only thing automatic on the single shot Remington Targetmaster that my mother bought for me was the safety.  Remington made almost 560,000 Targetmasters.  H&R made fewer than 10,000 Reising M65s . . . and the Marine Corps supposedly got the first 6,000.  The Reising is a training rifle – built to match the weight of the M1 Garand, and the magazine can be limited to 8 rounds like the M1. 

The Reising below showed up on a Rock Island Auction website in their catalog #69.  They expected it to sell for $900 to $1,400.  It brought $2,588.  I’m not sure why the market has raised the value of the M65 so much – scarcity on one hand, and a rear sight that can be adjusted so that the 22 can hit the target at 500 yards are two drivers that I can see – but the big one seems to be that the folks who own M50 submachine guns want one of the 22 training rifles to accompany that collectible into the gun safe.  (They made over 100,000 of the submachine guns.)

I was well past 50 when I finally got the opportunity to get a Reising.  It was in Cabelas, in Mitchell SD – and the previous owner was obviously named Bubba.  Bubba had removed the front sight, sanded down the barrel threads, and glued on a globe insert front sight designed for an air rifle.  It looked bad – but that helped make it affordable.  The sight was aluminum, and designed to take inserts like these:

Getting that sight off turned out to be easy – heating it a little with a propane torch, then taking the rifle outside into a very sub-zero night cracked the glue, and the sight was easy to drive off.  It turned out that the front sights from the M-50 submachine gun were the same, and Numrich had bunches of them.  The threads were still adequate to put one on, and after I had tightened it, the rifle again shot to point of aim.

I had no idea I was getting a collector’s item.  There’s still a bright mark circling the barrel where Bubba’s sanding went too far.  The sling is 8 or 9 years newer than it should be.  The parkerized front sight I replaced clashes with the blued barrel.  There’s a slight, non-structural crack to the stock – yet all in all, Bubba’s mistreatment shows up more to me than anyone else. I don’t know if my Reising did a tour with the Marine Corps before winding up as a Civilian – but the link shows the corporate letter sent with the few that didn’t wind up in Marine hands.