History: BSA Sportsman 15 .22 LR rifle

The Sportsman 15, a bolt-action rimfire rifle with a long 15-round tube magazine under its barrel, was probably the most successful sporting rifle BSA ever produced, and you can still find decent ones for sale today.

Twenty-twos are often regarded as something cheap to take to the range for casual plinking, for serious small-bore competition, and as a gun for young shooters to learn the basics of firearms safety, marksmanship and responsible handling. They’re still common farm guns for dispatching small pests.

BSA Sportsman 15 history — A BSA Sportsman 15 .22LR rifle. These rugged rifles were made between 1950-1955 and can still be found in decent condition 70+ years later

Throughout much of the 20th Century, .22 LR rifles also played an important role in putting food on the table of countless rural homes.

The 15 was one of a range of Sportsman .22s introduced by Birmingham Small Arms just after World War II to help the company diversify production in the peacetime world.

The first Sportsman was introduced in 1947 and was a single-shot bolt-action design similar to most other rifles of its type, including the Lithgow Model 1 so well known to Australian shooters.

The next year, a box-magazine fed version, the Sportsman 5, was released and plans were underway to increase the magazine capacity even further, ideally to 10 rounds.

Rather than just making higher capacity box magazines (which seems like the obvious thing to do), BSA opted for an under-barrel fixed tube magazine, like those found on lever-action rifles, creating the Sportsman 10.

Officially, this rifle was introduced in 1948, but is clearly included in the Parker-Hale 1947 catalogue, suggesting that even if it wasn’t rolling off the production line yet, it wasn’t far away.

Bolt-action rifles with tube magazines are an oddity today but were more common at the time. A number of them existed, including the Winchester Model 72 (introduced in 1938) and the Remington Model 34/341.

Someone at BSA realised there was still a bit of real estate left under the Sportsman’s 25in (640mm) barrel, with room for a longer magazine tube, increasing capacity by 50% to 15 rounds, and the Sportsman 15 was born.

This was a vast amount of ammunition for a .22 LR rifle at the time, and was only exceeded by the 19-round magazine of the lever-action Marlin 39A.

The loading mechanism is somewhat similar to that in other tube-fed bolt-action rifles such as the Lebel M1886, in that pulling the bolt back causes a spring-powered transporter block to lift up, bringing a cartridge from the magazine into the action. The rising cartridge also ejects the fired case, which has been extracted by the withdrawing bolt.

Pushing the bolt forward simultaneously cocks the gun and feeds the round into the chamber while also lowering the transporter, which receives the next round from the magazine in preparation for the cycle to repeat.

It sounds complicated but it works effectively, and from a firing perspective it’s the same as any other .22 LR bolt-action rifle.

BSA Sportsman 15 rifles were only manufactured for five years, 1950-55, but proved very popular and at least 53,247 are known to have been produced.

Production of the Sportsman range as a whole ended in late 1956 but the guns were retailed as new old stock for some time afterwards; the 1957 Parker-Hale catalogue noted that “while stocks of their five-shot model are completely exhausted, our purchases of the two remaining models [the single-shot Sportsman and the Sportsman 15] are adequate to enable us to provide supplies for some time to come”.

A 1956 UK ad for the Sportsman 15 lists the price as £9/10- (roughly $850 today), indicating these were affordable rifles even for their time.

The Sportsman five was upgraded and somewhat redesigned (particularly its bolt) before being reintroduced as the BSA Supersport, but the single-shot and Sportsman 15 versions were not so fortunate and disappeared from BSA’s offerings.

SHOOTING THE BSA SPORTSMAN 15

There’s still quite a few Sportsman 15s kicking around. They are well-liked rifles which shoot well and have knocked over their fare share of bunnies and other small game over the years.

The Sportsman 15’s stock is proportioned for adult use and the rifle comes to the shoulder well, is easy to hold, and has effective V-and-blade iron sights; some rifles have been modified over the years to accept scopes, too.

A single large king screw holds the action into the stock; removing it allows the entire action, trigger assembly, barrel and magazine to be removed as a single unit, making cleaning very easy indeed, and also allowing the rifle to be taken down to save space in transport.

The tolerances on the Sportsman 15 are surprisingly tight – so tight that the firing pin impact obturation on aluminium .22 LR snap caps is enough to cause them to hang up in the magazine if they are re-used in the rifle.

There are no issues with factory ammunition, but I would advise against loading dirty or dusty cartridges in the tube to avoid feeding issues. As with all .22 LR rifles, individual guns have their own preferences as to which brands/types of .22 ammo they like.

The rifle has a two-stage trigger with a pull of 4.5lb (2kg), which is at the higher end of average for a rifle of this type but is still perfectly suitable for the sort of work the rifle was designed for.

There’s a safety catch on the back of the bolt; when the rifle is cocked the knob is grasped and rotated, allowing the bolt to operate but preventing the gun from firing.

While the tube magazine can be a bit of a hassle to load – an issue shared with lever-action .22 rifles as well — it does make the BSA Sportsman 15 highly practical for prone use. There’s no lever-action to hit the ground, and the horizontal nature of the magazine means the BSA can be easily pivoted while on a rest — whether it’s a backpack, a ute light bar, a tree branch or a proper gun rest.

Being a tube-loader, the usual precautions must be taken when ensuring the rifle is cleared, with special attention being paid to the transporter to ensure no rounds have become snagged there.

These BSAs were designed for practical use and while they lack the fancy extras many shooters like these days, there’s a reason they are still kicking around nearly 70 years after the last one left the factory.

The Sportsman 15 might not be as accurate as modern .22 LR rifles, many of which are quite capable of putting five rounds into a ragged group at 50m, but it is still more than effective enough for hunting, plinking and club-level competitions.

SPECIFICATIONS