[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I have never heard of that being used under that name in the US. Of course, we don't use the European nomenclature here and especially didn't in the 80s-90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7%C3%9757mm_Mauser

.....has the common US designation being "7mm Mauser" and it appears to have primarily been used before WWII. Even the wildcats it fathered in that time period are no longer truly common.

Unless you're going to plant a couple of crates of century old military ammo somewhere I'd say availability in the US and surrounds will be near zero.

Originally Posted by Rupert

My recollection from gun literature of the time was that it wasn't non-existent, but is was definitely an 'uncommon' sporting round at the time. 7mm Remington Express and .270 Winchester were far more common rounds of about that calibre, and .30-30, .30-06, and increasingly .308 more than anything else by a big, big margin.

While 7x57mm Mauser was a popular military round in a lot of the world before WWII, it was never adopted by a major military power, so it didn't see the absolutely massive production and distribution that 7.92x57mm, .303, 7.62x54mmR, or .30-06 did, especially distribution into the US civilian market immediately post-WWII when a huge number of bolt-action battle rifles became surplus.

In South America, 7x57mm rifles were ubitiquous because of their wide adoption by armies there. I don't know the civilian markets there, what there are of them, but in Africa, at least, the same conditions translated into the 7x57mm Mauser becoming a common hunting round and being easily available in stores that caters to hunters, at any point from the 1920s to the 1990s and beyond.

That being said, nearly all American shooters of 7x57mm rifles have been reloaders. 7x57mm brass is common (the round was adopted by numerous militaries and was one of the most popular hunting rounds in Africa most of the 20th century), decently cheap and there is a good selection of bullets in the caliber.

I think that the armourer who oversaw acquisitions from 1987-1995 might have owned a custom takedown Mauser of his own before this. He did a lot of traveling in Africa from 1969-1986 and flew in light aircraft where space was at a premium. During his service in the British Army, he spent five years as an Armourer (Artisan) and a few more year later in his career as the NCO in charge of an armoury. At work, he used a Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 (T), but personally, he preferred sporterized Mausers.