I came into this rifle from an older gentleman that I would talk with a couple times a week. His wife's health took a turn and they were moving to Florida so live with their son/daughter. We often talked about guns, and he said he wanted me to have it. I insisted that he take something for it and he relented after I shoved $200 in his shirt pocket.
Finally had a chance to shoot it today. Previously, I had to adjust the magazine to get it to feed (it's still iffy on the last round). Not knowing what its history is, I strapped it to a sled and used twine to fire the first shot. After inspecting it and seeing no issues, I loaded up two clips (edit: whoops! Chargers!), fed them in, sat at the picnic table and shot off 10 rounds.
Loaded the clips low/high/low/high/low, and managed rim lock trying to feed the first round. Pushed the rounds down and they settled I guess, cuz no more issues. I wasn't 100% sure how to align the sights, so I just centered the top of the front sight post in the middle of the peep sight circle and hoped for the best.
The first shot surprised me with how much recoil hit my shoulder. So of course I threw the second shot and knew it as soon as I pulled the trigger. But I was shooting at 50 yards and couldn't see the results, hell I didn't know if it was sighted in ever.
I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised at the results at 50 yards:
Since I was resting on my elbows bent over a picnic table, I was in between sitting and prone and it beat the hell out of my shoulder (not the clavicle, the coracoid process). Will definitely need to adjust where I rest it or get some padding between me and the butt of the rifle.
Anyway it was really cool shooting an example of history. Unfortunately, my reactions to the recoil kept one of my buddies from trying it (he's had shoulder surgery before).