Mosin Nagant at 300 yards

I took the Mosin last week and the old girl (1942) still shoots pretty good. I was hitting things at 300 yards prone and standing at 100 yards.

I thought to myself a soldier that got to live long enough to understand how his/her rifle worked had a good weapon in the Mosin Nagant.

Mine shoots high to the right with the bayonet on and shoots really high to the right with out it.

I'm just an average shot with open sights and this thing just shoots for effect if not groups. The Chinese ammo does bind in the mag.

https://youtu.be/-VairiP8Z6E

My own MN 91/30 shot to the right when I got it, I drifted the front sight a little with a brass hammer and it's more or less on for windage now. Some of them shoot quite well I have found.

Was that video shot on the old CFB Summerside ranges? If so, that would have been the same place place that I fired my first PWT Level 1 with the C7A1 rifle as a Cadet in 1999.

MY son gave me a 91/30 and then put in a Timney trigger in it. The chamber was a little rough so that has had some polishing (needs a little more) and he can consistently knock a standard clay pigeon off a post at 300 yards, the trigger is all the difference.

Yes the trigger cost more than the gun.

I did the cheap version, polishing all of the trigger, bolt, and striker bearing surfaces with 2000 grit sandpaper and jeweler's rouge and installing a thin brass shim under the trigger leaf spring. Pull improved from a crunchy 8-9 lbs down to a very repeatable 4.5 lbs (4.0 lbs is my personal safe limit for a field gun).

There is a bit of free play before you hit tension, and the overtravel could be improved with installation of a stop screw, but externally it looks unaltered and that is important to me.

I bedded the action and had considered corking the barrel but it shoots quite well as is, slightly under 2 MOA with 1967 Czech 174gr heavy ball surplus.

I don't even think it is the trigger. My friend reloads 7.62x54r and with his reloads he is able to get 1-2" groups consistently with a mid-war M91/30 (nothing done to the rifle, no trigger mods or bedding the rifle). Mosin Nagants are accurate rifles, provided you feed them good ammo. I don't even shoot surplus anymore as it is just not nearly as fun, the grouping size is 4-5" with surplus compared to 1-2" with handloads.

These rifles get a bad reputation for being inaccurate primarily because people are shooting cheap crappy ammo through them, and most people shooting them are newer shooters (or generally inexperienced with iron sights).

I agree, and the iron sight can be a challenge on their own. The main thing I find with a MN is the barrel is heat sensitive, but if you run a group or two and allow them to cool they hold a respectable pattern.

However they are a dead simple design, a tube with a chamber and rifling and a fairly squared off bolt. The whole design has two screws, three springs, two which are leaf springs, and a single trigger axis pin. I think the medieval shoulder fired ballista (crossbow) was more complex.

Like pulling apart a PPSH, heavy bolt block, a spring, and a simple trigger, most complex item is the magazine.

One thing I think they could have done to improve using the Mosin Nagant (of all variants) which I am surprised no one thought of was to lengthen the bolt handle a bit more. That extra leverage would have made a big difference. It is almost funny I can use these rifles faster left-handed than most people can right handed as I get more leverage from using the receiver as a rest well pulling up on the bolt than others have pushing up.

We are using milsurp ammo, the old girl has never seen a commercial round.

That is why I think with ours it is the trigger.

Well, the thing to recall is a "good" trigger is a shooter aid, it has it's greatest effect on accuracy based on the ability of the shooter to fire the round with the least amount of disturbance to the sight alignment (bore) as well as offering repeat-ability and predictability to the same. This dovetails into sight alignment if shooting in a manner where proper breathing and shot release timing is important.

If we had the gun in some sort of absolutely stable, laboratory grade test rig, with a remote firing solenoid the trigger would be irrelevant to the performance of the rifle. We would be testing the performance of the barrel and ammunition combination.

However in the real-life situations of standing, sitting, prone, and even bipod, sandbag, and field grade sleds, a trigger can have a very large impact on the performance of the rifle in the way of shooter influence at the time of shot release.

I imagine that most of us will benefit from a good trigger in the conditions we all shoot.

Another aspect to the MN rifle is they vary hugely in their quality, condition and performance.

I have tested a a number of factory triggers on these rifles and they are anywhere from 12 lbs down to a surprising 3.2 lbs on a Polish M44 Carbine. So if a guy gets a nice, smooth, sensible weight trigger it would be easier to shoot well, however the next rifle on the rack may have a bending nails through broken concrete for the same.

After that comes sight alignment, they are blocky sights with a less than ideal radius, the first thing I noticed as I have aged from a teenage target shooter to now is my eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be, Mainly noticed in my former favorite, open-iron sights, it's a lot of strain to use them, and that can make a group open up, because of again, the human interface.

Bedding is another maybe-maybe not, if the rifle's factory bedding is correct, there is not much to gain bedding it, but if the stock is a sloppy fit, which some are, that is where we will see the improvement.

In all, the core fact of these somewhat crude and inelegant rifles is that they simply work and surprisingly well.

Taking my example, I have a 1942 complete forced match MN 91/30 that sold for $130 Canadian dollars with shipping, and for less than $5 of JB weld and some shim stock, I have a rifle than turns in sub 2-MOA groups with .38 cent ammunition from 1967.

That is hard to beat at the price point.

I had the opportunity to test a friends Mosin Nagant a couple of weeks ago. I rarely shoot anything other than my Enfields; it was an interesting experience. The rifle is reasonably accurate, but the trigger pull was awful; not heavy, just vague with no obvious point of release (for me anyway). My friend has obviously got used to it. I'm sure it could be improved. Secondly the bolt! I'm sorry but that really is clunky and slow. I know it's probably the rifle that contributed most in shortening WWII; but if the Russians had used Enfields, it would have been over quicker;)

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Originally Posted by 30Three

Secondly the bolt! I'm sorry but that really is clunky and slow.

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Again some are better than others, especially because the cock-on-open effort is dependent largely of firing pin spring pressure and internal bearing surfaces fit and finish. Even a bad one can be easily smoothed up, however, even the best MN bolt is not as fast as a rack grade Lee Enfield.

I have mine polished up in a manner that it will run very fast, but if trying to keep the weapon in the shoulder during cycling, the stiffness of the action and short bolt handle slows delivery down to nearly as slow as a Martini-Henry.

Given the circumstances, if it weren't for the rapid production guns such as the MN and the PPSH, the Soviets would probably been down to fighting with stones and pitchforks before long.

It is interesting that the Russians originally designed the rifle NOT to have a clear point of release for the trigger. The logic being is it is supposed to be a surprise, and what better way to get a surprise than not having a clear break point (technically makes sense if you are following all the proper marksmanship procedures, practically not so much). However on the M91/30s one of the updates was to make it so there was a clear break point.

As mentioned the Mosin Nagant was very fast to produce, if I remember correctly about one produced from scratch in every 7 hours! It is likely a good thing they didn't have Enfields, I don't think they could have kept up.