Well I’m a pround owner of a Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1 bolt action rifle and I always get strange looks and a few questions about my enfield when I take it to the range. The main reason is the rifle is sporterized, (for those of you that don’t know what that means. It is when the stock of a military surplus rifle is cut down to make the rifle lighter for sporting purposes and also it gives it the appearance of a sport rifle.)
The fact that I have put a front sight guard on the rifle is always the focus of conversation…These are almost always removed in the process of sporterizing the rifles and in my opinion for no good reason.
Now the questions that always come up about it
“Why do you have that on there?” Answer: Well I chose to put a front sight guard on my enfield becuase I usually do not bench rifles that do not have optics on them, if I’m using a rifle with just iron sights, I find myself better at firing it standing. I usually do this with a target at about 50 yards, ok, the grouping isn’t too great becuase I’m standing, but it is fun and good practice for steadying a rifle while standing. The sight guard actually proves as a good marker to line the target with the front sight, and thats pretty helpful when you’re shooting standing.
Naturally there are other reasons, such as it looks cool and it was cheap, which leads to the other questions
“Where did you get it?” Ebay, and it was very cheap, there are a number of online stores you can find this item on for incredibly cheap. I wouldn’t count on any gun stores having a ready supply of these so you might have to support the evil internet people instead of supporting your local gun store on this one.
Now the question that should never be asked “how did you put it on?” Like I said, I have no Idea why people ask this but they have in the past… the sight guard is bolted on with a single screw that threads through the base of the front sight….I didn’t have a screw that was black so once I had installed the sight guard I took some matte black model paint and painted the top of the screw, to keep with the look of the sight guard, muzzle and barrel of course. Finding a screw and painting it were the hardest step in the installation.
If you own and enfield and ever come across one, buy it providing it isn’t unfairly priced. It helps while shooting, looks cool and also is a must have if you are restoring a sporterized enfield back to the military configuration.
Pics: You’ll have to forgive the quality…my camera isn’t that great.
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- Enfield Sight guard.
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- angled shot of the enfield Sight guard fitted
