The Joys Of Simplification - Walnut Hill

I have two old hunting rifles made before 1914.

- Terry Wieland

One is a Haenel-Mannlicher made in Germany; the other is a Ross M10 manufactured in Canada to London standards. Each, in its way, is a superb rifle – carefully thought out and beautifully made. The Ross, however, is a masterpiece of simplicity, while the Haenel exemplifies the German gunmaker’s mania for complication.

From cuckoo clocks to watches that tell the phases of the moon, there is something in the Teutonic psyche that drives craftsmen to create ever-more-complex mechanisms. The Haenel’s sights are something to behold. It has both open sights on the barrel and a Lyman receiver sight on the action. The front sight, mounted on a ramp, has two blades; when one is pushed down, the other pops up. The rear sight has two folding leaves but no standing leaf. The receiver sight can swing out of the way to allow the open sights to be used. If choosing to use the receiver sight, it has a tiny hinged aperture, giving a choice of two sizes.

The one saving grace of the Haenel is that, in actual use, none of the sighting options get in the way of the others, so even simplicity itself is an option. Compare this with the Ross: It has one front blade and one folding leaf, marked 500 (yards). Chambered for the .280 Ross, the flattest-shooting cartridge of its day, the rifle was effective out to 500 yards. For precise shooting at different distances, the shooter simply sees more of the front sight, or less, in the rear leaf notch, depending on his knowledge of trajectory and his ability to estimate distance. Sir Charles Ross was a serious, life-long deer stalker in the Highlands of Scotland and knew a thing or two about rifles, cartridges and the realities of hunting; he realized the value of simple systems.