A good International will shoot every bit as well as an Anschutz of much lesser age. A colleague was still using his Mk.III in County competition with a high degree of success in the late 1990s. The Mk.III has a fully floating barrel, but the main consideration with these is the aluminium hanger to which the fore-end is fixed. Where this is clamped into the action body below the barrel there is a risk of movement if the aluminium has been bent or damaged, or if the clamping screws have been incorrectly tightened. Replacement hangers are almost impossible to find. A good Mk.III will perform as well as any if the hanger is in perfect trim. With the later Internationals, there had developed a general feeling that they are "unforgiving" of indifferent position, hold or technique; particularly also trigger pull - but that is true of almost any firearm. However, master these aspects and you will not be disappointed. We have Mk.I to Mk.III rifles being shot, in the Post-Veteran class of our historic leagues, at a level which many modern Anschutz users would be pleased to match.
If you were to make a one-piece stock including the fore-end and thereby obtain a fully floating barrel with the sling attachment solely on the furniture, then you would have produced a formidable rifle. BSA should perhaps have done this themselves. Also, the fact that BSA did not provide the customising accessories with their rifles, such as were on offer from other European manufacturers, was no doubt a factor in poor sales in the final years. Additionally, whilst the Marks IV and V were re-tooled, the configuration was, for all practical purposes, returned to that of the Marks I and II rather than progressing beyond the Mark III. One might suspect that this did not help very much, particularly at a time when Anschutz and their contemporaries were significantly updating their rifles aesthetically as well as technically. It could today be argued that modern fashion trends are selling rifles more than technical advances in design. One of the .22RF TARGET RIFLES designed and built by Dr. M.K. Jurek in, we believe, the late fifties has recently achieved a score of 97 ex 100 on the current 1988 NSRA target . The rifle came with a thumbhole stock and adjustable hook butt-plate from day one - as did the Finnish Lion and other equivalent models of the time. BSA produced some of the best barrels of the day, fine Martini actions and excellent triggers, but were left behind in many other respects. Very sad. An International is still the rifle to use for any timed competition, e.g. the Queen Alexandra second stage.
what should perhaps have been expanded upon in the preceding paragraphs is the fact that the problem with the Mark III, in respect of the aluminium fore-end hanger, was probably what most damaged the International's reputation. The Marks IV and V were not wholly successful attempts made toward the recovery of that reputation.
The prototype Mk.III rifles had steel fore-end hangers which were quite satisfactory in all respects except weight. These were very heavy rifles that would have been unacceptable to rifle shooters at large. The alloy replacement for the production rifles caused problems because it was easily bent or damaged if the rifle fell over from a rack, for instance. The clamping of both the hanger and barrel in the action body could then be affected. The torque applied to the clamping bolts was critical and, because the bolts were centrally placed between the steel barrel and the alloy hanger, the same clamping force was applied to dissimilar metals. The alloy, being more ductile than the steel, could eventually become more loosely held than the barrel and affect the whole setup. In the subsequent models, the Mark IV, ISU and Mark V, the reversion to only the barrel being clamped into the action body cured this, but was not sufficient of an advance to restore anything other than the status quo achieved by the very successful Mk.II.
