Remington’s Model 798 is a pure Mauser, shown as tested topped with a Swarovski PVI-2 High Grid scope with digital illumination.

I never thought I’d see the day when a 98 Mauser bore the Remington name, but it’s happened, and it’s a result of Big Green’s push to become a major importer as well as a manufacturer of sporting arms. It started three years ago with the Spartan line of Russian-made over/under and side-by-side shotguns and single-shot rifles. The line has since grown to where there’s a gas-operated autoloading shotgun, combination rifle/shotgun O/Us and even a double rifle.

Prior to this year these guns bore the rollmark “Spartan by Remington.” But since all of the growing line of imported guns must pass Remington’s own quality-control, safety and performance standards, management has decided that the guns are worthy of carrying the Remington name by itself. A suffix “SPR” is in reference to the former Spartan name.

Because of the growing number and diversity of products, the company recently formed a new ISP division, an acronym for International Sporting Products. It is this department that is responsible for all Remington imports, including the Genesis line of rotating-block muzzleloaders made in Spain and the Serbian-made Mauser, which is being designated as the Model 798. There’s also a scaled-down 98 designed around the .223 cartridge family that is called the Model 799. Let’s take a look now at both of them.

The Model 799 (below) looks very much like its larger brother but does not feature controlled-round feed.

Many of you may be aware that this line of commercial Mausers was previously imported by KBI under the Charles Daly name and before that for many years by the old Interarms Corporation as the Mark X. Remington, however, is bringing these guns into the country as barreled actions only and stocking them in its Mayfield, Kentucky, facility using an all-brown wood laminate, the blanks for which are supplied by the Rutland Plywood Corp.

RPC furnishes blanks to just about every manufacturer in the world who offers production rifles with laminated stocks. Also, virtually every custom and semi-custom gun builder, as well as gunstock manufacturers like Boyds, use Rutland blanks. The stocks for the 798 and 799 are patterned after the old Model 700 ADL, which until just two years ago had been the flagship model of the 700 line, which is to say it’s a very conservative Monte Carlo.

The Model 798 sent to me for testing was chambered in .30-06 and the 799 in .223 Remington. Other calibers available for the 798 are .243 Win., .308 Win., .270 Win., 7mm Rem. Magnum and .300 Win. Magnum. In the 799 you can have a .22 Hornet, .222 Rem., .22-250 or even a 7.62x39. I had the good fortune to field test the 798 on a black bear hunt in Alberta in May, but more about that later.

The 798 is a pure 1898 Mauser, meaning that the bolt body, receiver and bottom-metal unit are literally interchangeable with those of a military Mauser. Just to reassure myself, I took a military bolt from a 1909 Argentine Mauser, and it fit the 798 receiver like it belonged there; ditto for the 798’s bolt in the Argentine.

This, of course, was done purely out of curiosity; you wouldn’t want to attempt this and fire the gun because the likelihood of the precise fit needed between the locking lugs and their bearing surfaces within the receiver, and the correct headspace, would be unlikely.