RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

My friend if you can shoot tight groups at 75 yards with that beast than hunt with it. An awful lot of guys swear by the 30/30 and balistically you have them beat.
It's NOT how expensive your gun or glass is is where you hit the target.. Rock on bud and enjoy.

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

Hey, you asked for opinions and you got them. Don't cry because they were not what you wanted. I didn't see anyone attacking your manhood or calling you names. They just don't like the rifle and don't see why you would want to hunt with one. That is their opinion, if you don't like it no big deal. You are free to do what you want, they can't tell you what to do.

And I would say most on here do not shoot 1000 dollar plus guns. Lots of members here are very fond of the savages and stevens, which are not expensive guns at all.

Paul

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

Any Russian Mosin can potentially be a decent "truck gun", but that can be a process of weeding out the used up and overworked specimens. For the average deer shot, it's proably fine. In Michigan in my 40 years of deer hunting I still haven't shot a deer farther than 70 yards away, and most shots were 40-60 yards. But I hunt thick stuff and am often in swamps.
The 7.62 X 54 round is a fine cartridge, and the Mosin "Crude" design is actually a good example of simple and sweet engineering. The Savage 110 is strong and simple, not pretty, but practical. Same for the Russian design. The triggers are typical military heavywieghts, with plenty of lag, creep, and grit....they were never meant for benchrest.
If you can find one that shoots as yours does you've got an adequate and extremely affordable hunting rifle. I have two of the short variants and one of the long ones. The long one and one of the short ones won't group for crap. They are simply shot out and have atrocious triggers. One of the short 44's is decent but not what I would choose to carry. But for 50-75- or even 100 yards on a stationary target it is adequate. I'm going to leave it up at a friends U.P. cabin with a couple boxes of soft points for the occaisional 100 yard deer that shows up out the back door.
My father owns a very old octagon receiver long (91/30?) model that was captured and re-worked at an arsenal in Finland....it is pristine and gorgeous, and it will shoot excellent groups at 100 yards with iron sights. I would say that with my 54 yr old eyes and a good rest that 4-6 inch groups at 100 yards with iron sights is pretty damn good. A younger man with real eyes could probably improve on that significantly, and adding a peep might be the ticket, unless a scope is desired.
Every gun is capable of being a dog or a beauty.

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

Those are at the very top end of the spectrum for Mosin Nagants. Finnish standards were for the rifles to be capable of accuracy of about 1.5 MOA and were rebuilt by factories with funny sounding names like Tikka and Sako. Not only are they very accurate, but the actions were slicked up, the triggers honed, and the barreled actions carefully bedded to the stocks.

The other end of the spectrum are the wartime soviet issued Mosins. They were made for relatively close engagements- the 91/30s had a bayonet that was to be attached semi-permanantly, and the accuracy ranges from ok to dismal. If all of the planets aligned correctly and fairly accurate rifle was made, it was turned into a sniper rifle. The wartime russian carbines tend to be even more poor of shooters.

If I were to pick a cheap milsurp for hunting it would be:
K-31- these are easy to mount a scope to and can potentially outshoot rifles that cost 4-5x as much with a little tweaking.
No4Mk1/Mk2 enfield- halfway decent accuracy, good sights, readily available ammo.

It should be noted that I do own M-Ns, in fact 6 of them. Only 2 of them are what I would consider accurate enough for hunting, one being a Finn rearsenalled 91/30 and the other being a pre-war Russian 91/30, both of which I consider too long and unwieldy for hunting. The other 4 are a wartime 91/30 and 3 carbines- none of which could reliably hit the vitals on a deer outside of 25 yards.

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

How old are you? And I don't necessarily mean physically![:@]

Have you considered that no one here may have used a Nagant in the field because most of them don't really come up the to standard of a sporting arm? Or that there are MUCH better choices out there for not that much more money? A NEF Handi-Rifle is a MUCH better rifle and I've see them sell for as little as $150 brand new.

You asked about the Mosin/Nagant rifle, and stated that it's a "sweet gun," which leads me to believe that you either have extremely poor taste in rifles, or it's the only one you have and therefore have nothing better to compare it too. One thing you'll get here is honesty for the most part. If you ask for opinions, you'll get them, whether you like them or not. If all you want is everyone to pat you one the back and say how wonderful your choice of a Mosin/Nagant rifle is, you're in the wrong place. I'm sure that there are Mosin/Nagant echo-chambers...er, I mean forums somewhere on the internet where they'll tell you how great your rifle is. Maybe you should go there.

When you grow up enough to handle criticism, you're more than welcome to come back here where I, at least, won't water down my opinions for the sake of your feelings or "self-esteem".

I'm done with you.[:'(]

Mike

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

I honestly have no idea as to the shooting capability of the M/N rifle. Again, for me getting there is half the fun. It's like the guy who buys the rust bucket car or truck and drops money in it just because he likes to turn wrenches and want something to occupy his time on a "working man's budget." I figure that for 50 bucks (actually I got TWO for 50 bucks) plus another 50 bucks for the ATI Black Synthetic Stock and 50 bucks for the bent sniper bolt and who knows how much I'll spend on an inexpensive (most likely NcStar) scope, I'll at least have a conversation piece in the gun cabinet that most folks don't have.

As for wanting one I feel the same way about ugly a** chevelle's, but that's just my opinion and I tend to keep it to myself rather than insult other peoples preferences. As for it being junk, go over to the Mosin-Nagant forum and tell them that and see how fast they bounce you out on your keyboard. And as for that half-truth fact about not using them due to thier use in "killing Americans", it seems when the rest of the story fell (thanks to Eldequello) it seems that not only were Americans armed with these "cheaply mass produced surplus Soviet peasant conscript battle rifles" but they were made by Americans as well. Imagine that?

If you want to own it, own it. If you want to sporterize it, sporterize it. If you want to shoot it, shoot it. If you want to hate it, that's fine too. It's unfortunate that the old adage of our elders has fallen by the wayside along with manners, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything". And IMHO (in my humble opinion) these days seems to contain no humility or kindness.

Driftrider, I appreciate and admire your constraint in "not degenerating this thread." Greatly appreciated.

DougK, your inability to "imagine how anyone would want one" demonstrates a myopic viewpoint with regard to the appreciations of others. You are however are entitled to your opinion of them as being "a real piece of junk" is noted and respect as just that (OPINION) none the less.

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

At least do yourself a favor and shoot the rifle before changing the stock, installing a bent bolt, and mounting a scope. If it doesn't shoot well as-is, none of the changes that you want to do to it will make it shoot any better. If you have a post war build carbine or a 91/30 that has a pristine bore, it might shoot 1/2 decent or it might not.;)

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

I set up a K 31 with a clamp on after market scope mount, and a Zeiss Conquest scope. I was getting some nice groupings of 1 inch without any tweaking. Had $400 in the scope, $200 in the walnut stocked K31 , and $80 in the mount. Not bad.
The K31, if you take it apart, doesn't have a mill mark on the metal ANYWHERE! Like a $1000 custom rifle!

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

I'm partial to the Swedish Mausers for hunting,but many Lee Enfields used up here in Canada.Nothing wrong with any accurate military gun for putting meat on the table.A Finn 7.62x54R would be best followed by the Polish Factory #11 model 44 carbine.No tooling marks on these ones and great shooters.................Harold

RE: Hunting with Mosin Nagant
 

Or a $2000 factory rifle with a chewed up stock. :D