Last evening I had the ten minute opportunity to shoot the beast with one of my brothers, and with a cardboard box set at 100 yards I proceeded to miss the thing entirely with five rounds. No worries though; I have no idea what grain the ammo is that I'm shooting, nor do I know if the sights are set up for it, so we moved up to 25 yards and fired off some more rounds with success.
Shooting a short barreled Mosin with horrible ammo on the edge of darkness is a wonderful experience; if this were on a battlefield somewhere I am sure I would invite a volley of hot metal from anyone within a one mile radius:
That's no KABOOM!!; the rifle is supposed to do that. It reminds me of another gun that I used to have that produced amazing fireballs.
You can see the white edge of the box on the left there in the first picture. Being proper Hicks, we stapled a blaze orange hunting license sleeve on the middle of the box as an aiming point and shot off hand. The ammo was grouping nicely at the upper left of the box, so there was no way we were going to get hits at 100 yards. It also didn't help that I had the rear sight set to 200 yards, or that the front sight post was painted with dull orange fingernail polish.
My plan is to shoot the hell out of this gun when I get some brass cased ammo for it that won't eat away any more of the bore. For some odd reason considering the economical availability of these rifles, the market for 7.62x54R is awash in the shittiest possible loadings, as nobody seems to give enough of a damn to make non-corrosive cartridges that may have the potential of being accurate.
Just about every major ammo manufacturer has a budget line of cartridges that have perfectly acceptable accuracy, so why don't they make any of this stuff? The only casings that you can buy for it is made by Norma, and it must be stamped from metal retrieved from some alien temple on Neptune as it costs a fortune. I really don't even think that Norma produces as much as they just advertise it to see if anyone is stupid enough to try and order it.
Hopefully the boxer primed ammo that I'm looking at buying will hold decent groups. This rifle is going to get some use.
8 comments:
Those pictures are fantastic. I think I shoot because I'm a pyromaniac at heart. That would explain my love of the matchlock, with the wooden bottles of loose powder in one hand, and the burning slow match in the other ...
Living dangerously is cool!
Why make only fire when you can make fire, lots of noise, aaaaand send hot metal projectiles all at the same time!!
http://www.ammunitiontogo.com/product_info.php/pName/20rds-762x54r-wolf-148gr-fmj-ammo/cName/762x54r-fmj-ammo
prvi is probably your best bet for affordable brass cased stuff for reloading.
I love my m38. I keep saying I'll scout scope it for a better rifle, and never seem to actually do it.
cool pics!
Great post, and great pictures!
Awesome pics! I need to get some snapshots of mine at night one of these days.
Speaking of which, I bought some Winchester White Box - brass-cased, boxer primed, non-corrosive - at around $18/20rd. for my M44. It was either Sportsman's Guide or Cheaper Than Dirt, both of which don't show it right now. Figures. But it's out there, if'n you're interested.
tweaker
Thanks much! How did it shoot? I think I'm more interested in the brass for reloading and the fact that it won't corrode the bore than I am with accuracy, but in the end, accuracy still makes the list.
Wow, that Mosin Nagant has huge fireballs! It's crazy that they do that. What other guns do you own? Do you have a place you could tell me about that has ammo for sale online?
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