Martini 577 'tater masher...

[ovenpaa]

I can remember being in the butts when someone took a shot with a 577 from 200m, it hit the left hand wooden upright and all but destroyed it sending me scurrying for cover from flying wood splinters. I radioed the firing point asking the shooter to correct and the next shot hit the left hand side again an inch or so high leaving the frame destroyed. A freight train is a good description...

[FredB]

WE ARE CONFUSED: probably because Badger called the Martini a 577----it isn't, it is a 45. If the target frame was hit by a 577, it probably came from a Snider-----or a muzzle loader, or a 577 sporting rifle.
I shot a Martini for a few years, but never liked the 577-45 calibre. The case is far too big and the rifles have sloppy chambers because early military ammunition was made from coiled brass. I am a short range shooter and I prefer the original 577 Snider for this. If I need best possible accuracy I also have a Mauser 71/84 in 11.43 x 60.
Much as I love the Martini action for target rifles, for military use it was an evolutionary dead end, being difficult to impossible to convert to a repeater. The Snider was a conversion of a muzzle loader---hence the 577 calibre--- and served its purpose very well, but for a clean sheet of paper design, executed after the Americans had shown the way to repeaters with tubular magazine lever action, the Martini just should not have happened.
Fred