WALTHER LG300
Surrender To Love … a love for Walther Match Air Rifles (credit to Jim Edmundson)
Many of the prominent contributor to this forum who collect fine airguns, such as Gaines Blackwell, Mike Driskill, Arnold Smith, have a special place in the gun cabinet for an old Walther’s … in most circumstance a Tyrolean.
Tom Strayhorn and I both have a special devotion to Walther’s as well … Tom for the venerable early springers, and I for the match air rifle that revolutionize international shooting … the Walther LGR single stroke pneumatic. Immediately after its introduction in the mid-1970’s, the LGR broke both the individual and team 10-meter world records. This forced the international shooting union (known as the UIT back then but today the ISSF or International sport Shooting Federal) to reduce the size of the 10-meter air rifle target to where it remains today. The old and larger 10M target and new and 35% small 10M target is pictured below. The LGR also forced all their match air rifle competitors to ultimately drop the springers and move into the “no-recoil” pneumatic era.
The LGR began production around 1976 and continued on until the late 1980’s, with several models or versions … lately as seen below in their stocks. The three below represent some of these variations. Not pictured is the early LGR or the LGR Junior.
The butt sections of these models is one key to identifying their pedigree.
LGR MATCH – note fixed comb
LGR UNIVERSAL – note adjustable cheekpiece
LGR MOVING TARGET – note thumbhole stock and “easy to slide into place” wood buttplate
But Walther also produced world record setting and Olympic-winning small-bore rifles. To allow their world-class clients to practice 3 position and prone small-bore shooting during the Winter months, Walther’s also built a very few 9less then 50 perhaps) LGR-UIT models like the one below.
