1914 Hotchkiss, 1928 Browning & Vickers Machine Guns | Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot 2023

During the Big Sandy Machine Guns Fall 2023, we spoke to Mike Duke about his incredible collection of rare machine guns.

My name is Mike Duke and I’m one of the shooters at the Big Sandy. I’d like to bring out all the historical stuff [when I come to Big Sandy], maybe a few things that people haven’t seen so much. I’ve got a 1914 Hotchkiss Machine Gun over here and it’s on the 1915 Omnibus tripod. I’ve got a water cooled 50, a little Japanese gun, there’s a 1928 Colt commercial firearm over here that was back from Argentina, it’s got the original optic on it and the anti aircraft sites. To the left of that is a British water cooled Vikers. I’m going to shoot that today in 8mm Mauser. To the left of that is a Colt Vickers Aircraft Machine Gun originally in 11 mm gras but today we’re going to shoot that in your grandfather’s 45-70.

1914 Hotchkiss Machine Gun – the Gun of World War I

My 1914 Hotchkiss machine gun is a favorite of mine. It’s got a really unpopular cartridge that’s going to be 8mm LaBelle but it’s actually a very wonderful cartridge. It shoots similar to 308 and about 222 – 200 grain. It performs really well. It’s got a 36 inch heavy barrel on it so it’s extremely accurate! You can hold the trigger down and you can just absolutely beat your targets to death with it. It’s a strip fed gun which was back from the time period when they were introducing different magazines and a lot of people were going with belts made of cloth. Benjamin Hotchkiss decided he wanted to try with metal strips because they’d be more rigid and a little more weather resistant.

I wanted a box that held everything, so we put together a box so I could bring all the strips out because they’re a little awkward to carry.  This is all handmade by myself and my father-in-law, Nick, and I’ve also got a scope on that I made at home. I figured some nice optics would really let me see how such an old firearm performs, and it’s absolutely frightening what the guys had to put up with in World War I. The gun is an absolute tack driver and set up properly is just about unstoppable.

Browning Machine Gun

The Browning Machine Gun here is a Colt manufactured 1928 commercial gun. After World War I, Colt was kind of at a loss on who to sell their water-cooled machine guns to, so they made a lot of really nice upgrades to the guns and sold them across the world.  This specific one is made from parts put together from Argentina. Argentina was one of the big contract buyers at the time, and they opted for a lot of different accessories. This is the original scope for the gun, it’s one of the first scopes to ever be used for machine gun fire that has an illuminated reticle. I have all the original stuff: little, tiny incandescent bulbs light up the hole inside so you can see your targets at night, the anti-aircraft sites were an option that they bought too, I’ve got the original parts for the anti-aircraft stuff. It’s got a commercial tripod on it, and it’s a little bit different then the 1917 and 1917 A1 but it’s just as effective. Originally, it’s in 7.65 Argentine but that’s kind of a difficult caliber to get, so I’ve changed this one over to 30 OT 6because 30 OT 6 is a wonderful cartridge.

Vickers Machine Gun

Next to the left is a Vickers Machine Gun this was fielded by the British in World War I. It was sold all over the world, it has about 15 different calibers that you can convert it to. Today we’re shooting 8mm Mauser that was a proprietary cartridge of the Turkish military. They made tons of this stuff so we’ve got literally just a plug and play system in it that goes in, it’s wonderful. Colt made it in 30-06, the Argentines had it in 7.65, South Africa had their own in 7.62mm NATO, which is very difficult stuff to find. But everything is dropped in. It’s a water-cooled gun, you can actually shoot it continuously until you run out of water, and once the water runs out, you have to either refill it or stop to let it cool down.

Colt Vickers Aircraft Machine Gun

The last gun I’ve got here is a Colt Vickers Machine Gun. This was originally an aircraft gun, you can tell because the water jacket obviously won’t fill with water since it’s got serrations in it, and it’s been vented. That particularly gun right there came off an airplane that fought the Germans over France. It originally had an interrupter mechanism on top. The original cartridge was 11x59mm French gras, which is a large cartridge that they used incendiary to light each other’s planes on fire. Because why wouldn’t you, it’s World War I. And it’s almost impossible to find good 11x59mm gras at this point, so I have a custom barrel I made for that in 45-70. And 45-70 is roughly the same size as 11 gras, maybe a little bit bigger, but It’s a lot more available. Had to make belts for it and had to alter a feed system, but it’s absolutely a riot to shoot and works fantastic!

The Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot is always a wonderful place to come and see strange and exotic machine guns of this sort, like the 1914 Hotchkiss. I highly urge you guys to come check this out. Everybody has such a great time here and there’s unbelievable things that you never get to see anywhere else. There’s a lot of friends, a lot of contacts and people in the industry where you can often acquire things and is a safe setting where you can use everything. I hope to see you guys out here.   

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