Swedish Mauser sighting accuracy

[RogerD]

I have a quick question that has to do only with the accuracy and sighting of Swedish, M/96 rifle, and no others.

A friend got himself a Swede and we took it out. Of course I expected it to shoot high, and it hit about 5-10"s high from POA at 100 yards. So I put the sights about 5-10"s below where I wanted to hit, to see if I was as I expected. Sure as I was, it was shooting 5-10"s high, and I even got a bullseye.

But here's the question:Like most Mosin-Nagant rifles that shoot high unless they have the bayonet attached, are Swedish Mauser's meant to be shot with the bayonet attached, so to improve the accuracy at 100 yards, and compensate for the 5-10"s it otherwise shoots without a bayonet? I know that on the rear sight, the lowest is 300m, but on the Swedes could that just mean possibly, that within that 300m range the sights needed no tampering with and were flat shooting/accurate out to 300m?

Or could it possibly be, that 100 yards is not within the optimal range of accuracy for these rifles? That 100 yards is too close, and the rifle is really just starting out at 300m?

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[Aragorn243]

Battle sights are designed for battle, not target shooting. If you aim at center of mass of a man anywhere out to 300 yards with the first setting of the sight, you will either kill him or injure him severely. If you want to shoot at 100 yards without "guessing" you can glue a small object on top of the front sight and that will lower the bullet hits and bring them into the proper sight picture for that range. The M96 and the Swedish round are extremely accurate and until the age of wildcat and specialty rounds were considered one of if not the most accurate rounds and were used in competitive shooting. I believe it is still used in competitive shooting, the round anyway if not the rifle.

To my knowledge, only the Nagants of the major rifles were designed to be fired with the bayonet on. Everyone else had scabbards to store them in and fixed them only when needed. I guess the Russians and later the Soviets weren't all that concerned with poking someone's eye out and in reality, men were cheap and weren't valued greatly by either the Czars or the Soviet leadership. A scabbard costs money and is excess if you can keep the thing on the end of the rifle.