At a crossroads here fellers...

[gsd]

As many of you may know, I have an 1891 Argentine Mauser that has been in the family for close to 80 years. She's been a faithful deer rifle for many of those, but recently she stopped holding groups as tight. Im afraid she's fired her last solid group.

Cross roads here is, do I rebarrel her or retire her to safe duty? If I retire her I'm left with close to 300 rounds of hand loaded ammo, but rebarrelling isn't exactly cheap. And I'm broke.

Opinions?

[Lmbass14]

Dave, keep it as is, and let her retire and be a safe queen.  You can always sell the handloads at the gun show.

[Mudinyeri]

How bag are the groups?  I have a couple old rifles of my dad's that have the barrels pretty well shot out of them but they still hold "minute of deer".

[bkoenig]

I still say just get the barrel relined.  Cheaper than a rebarrel and it won't change the looks.  And you can DIY with tools from Brownells.

[gsd]

Toby, it went from 1.5" to roughly 4" in one year. While I agree, minute of deer is minute of deer, old rather not chance wounding an animal with a shot outside the kill zone.

Brian, I still think you have more faith in my abilities than I do haha.

[GreyGeek]

Maybe all it needs is to be re-crowned?

[monkeyboy]

Maybe somewhere between a recrown and a reline would be a counterbore.The military did it all the time during a rearsenal if needed.FWIW  Mike.

[unfy]

Take it to a reputable gunsmith that can say what's causing the loss.

Then decide course of action to take.

I'd personally be torn between "keep it as is" vs "make her right as rain".  While 'as is' as has a nice family history to it - you gotta decide on when "inaccurate" is more harm than "family heirloom" is good.  Not a choice I hope to have to ever make.