So there ' s a number of things here . Firstly the video and the related videos are not really very scientific . In fact they are not scientific at all . There is not even an attempt at obtaining blind , never mind doubleblind , result so its really one person on the internet ' s view of which WWI era rifle works best with a bit of mud slathered on it . The second thing is , why is he doing this ? Well as he says in the first video in the series . you have a lot of trench warfare , and it was just nothing but mud . Which is a fairly common misconception . Yes , things were pretty muddy . Sometimes . As they would be anywhere in the north of Europe at certain times of year . But its wrong to suppose that it was always like this . For most of summer , Europe is dry enough that dust and hard clay ground would have been more troublesome to the men on the western front than mud . Indeed , the first day of the Somme was fought in blazing sunshine , while much of 3 rd Ypres , almost synonymous with glutenous mud in the British folk memory , was fought in the dust , rather than the mud . The question therefore is , how important is it , for the purposes of determining the relative merits of a WWI rifle , for the rifle to be able to function well in the mud ? There are after all many other metrics we could use . For example any one of the following could be just as important as the ability to fire when a bit muddy magazine capacity , rate of fire , accuracy , weight , sturdiness , length , muzzle velocity , cost of manufacture , ease of manufacture , ability fire wet , ability to fire dusty and so on . so even if we accept the premise that the M 1917 Eddyson fires better when rubbed down with mud , still doesn ' t mean it ' s the best rifle , just that it ' s scores best in one particular metric . The third thing is that WWI was really a war of high explosives . According to John Terraine The war of 191418 was an artillery war artillery was the battlewinner , artillery was what caused the greatest loss of life , the most dreadful wounds , and the deepest fearIndeed , most respected sources coalesce at around twothirds of all casualties in WWI being caused by artillery . Grenades , or bombs , and machine guns were almost certainly the second and third most important causes of casualties in WWI . Actual small arms fire was relatively insignificant for most of the war . Indeed , the British general staff were by 1917 becoming alarmed at the fact that infantry were paying little heed to musketry , instead favouring the grenade as the infantryman ' s personal weapon . Thus , even if we accept that mud resistance is the single most important metric of a WWI rifle and even if we accept that the M 1917 Eddyson is the best rifle according to that metric , the impact of this on the outcome of the war would have been negligible .