Trego's Mountain Ear

Last month, Rock Island Auction sold John Buhmiller’s African rifle (along with a lot of memorabilia). It’s on a large commercial Mauser action – and, frankly, not one of the Buhmiller rifles that interest me the most. I’d prefer to see the rifle he used at the end of his African hunting – either 470 or 500 magnum, built on a model 1917 Enfield action.

The Mauser failed him once – he was running dry, dropped a cartridge in the magazine, and the controlled feed in the Mauser action jammed the rifle as the old man was running from an angry elephant. I admit, the Mauser makes a prettier custom rifle – but I heard the story forty years ago from Leonard Bull – who once hunted large game (and men) on the African continent. Leonard described the stock as ‘fence post ugly’ – so I suspect it might not sell for as much as the rifle that was sold in October.

My own Buhmiller barrelled rifle is in 257 Roberts – built on a Springfield 1903 action. When Laird Byers was dying (the iron crab) he had his attendant call me – offering to sell the rifle for what he had in it. When Leonard Bull looked down the bore, he agreed that I did have a Buhmiller, and pointed out what he termed the ‘square cut’ rifling. Leonard was a Kenyan – Buhmiller’s hunting was in Tanganyika. Little things like national boundaries didn’t keep Africa’s big game hunters from meeting each other in the mid-1950’s.

So what’s the relevance? John Buhmiller started making rifle barrels in Eureka, where he spent his working days in the rail road office, as a telegraph operator. My small caliber Springfield probably comes from those Eureka days – though the barrel may have been made in the early fifties before he moved operations to Kalispell. I’m guessing it was Eureka – by the Kalispell days he was stamping his name onto the barrels. Come to think of it, I don’t know if he was stamping the name onto barrels that wound up installed in P-17 Enfield actions.

Buhmiller, as an old man, managed to make friends with Tanganyika’s equivalent of Fish and Game, and served that bunch, unpaid, hunting problem elephants that damaged crops and fields. He had a farmer who provided meals and housing, Tanganyika’s game department took all of the ivory, and life was good.

Before Africa, Buhmiller was a competitive service rifle shooter, competing at places like Camp Perry. Even then, he was producing some of the world’s finest gunbarrels – though Leonard (who knew him only in his African days did look at my 257 Roberts and comment, “I didn’t know he made barrels in such small calibers.”