June 2011 Archives

A couple people have asked me how this match went, and I said "pretty good."

As far as scores go, it was fair at best (haven't seen the scores though), but I overcame something and that made it better. I've always had this mental block preventing me from "running and gunning." At this match, I can honestly say that at times I was really moving about as fast as my old fat ass can. At the end of the first stage, I was bent over and breathing like I had just run a 100 meter sprint.

Another thing that I did better was knowing when to get a good sight picture and when to just hose the targets.

The match was really interesting. We had run and gun stages, hose-fest stages, and some insanely long shot stages, and one was a mix of all those. On one stage a guy took out his rangefinder and from the box you had to shoot from the targets were 42 yards away! They weren't even the farthest shots of the match though, just the only ones I heard the range on.

The distance gave me trouble. I can stand there and hit an IPSC target pretty consistently at 50 yards, but throw in having to move through a course against a timer, and my shooting fell apart. I had a lot of misses on stage 1. I think the closest shot on stage 1 was 15 yards and the farthest was probably 50 yards or more. I had problems on the stuff in between. (Actually got an A-C, and A-D on the 50 yard targets. I'll take that any day.)

Also, I had my second double. It's weird, I go probably 2 years of shooting matches of one sort or another without ever getting a double, and then I have one in two consecutive matches. I don't know if getting a double is good thing though. It could mean I'm taking too long to aim, or it could just be random. *shrug*

Spent the morning at the range shooting my new to me M91/30.

This was my first time shooting more than a handful of rounds through a Moisin. I have to say that I have a lot of respect for anyone who shot one of these in battle. I don't know what the average weight of a Russian WWII soldier was, but it was likely on the light side by today's standards (probably less than 150 lbs), and even women were carrying these. It must have really packed a wallop. I suppose if you are fighting for your life the last thing on your mind is recoil, but physics still apply.

Anyway, I shot 40 rounds through it and I definitely feel it in my shoulder.

I left the house and I forgot the targets, and my sandbag. So, it was difficult to get a true measure of the accuracy. Most of my rounds were low and to the right at 100 yards, but the grouping was not very good, almost basketball sized. One of these days I will bring everything and something to drift the front sight with so I can get as close to a zero as possible. I'm not sure what kind of accuracy can really be expected from a 72 year old surplus rifle with 35 year old steel-cased surplus ammo, but I think I can do better with it.

The trigger is not great, it's not horrible, but I can't think of a rifle I have fired with a worse trigger.

The bolt was really sticky for the first 5 shots, but for some reason after that it was much easier and the more I shot it the smoother it got. I would have thought it would have gotten worse and not better, but it did. Maybe some cosmoline that was gumming it up melted off.

All in all, considering how cheap they are, they are not bad shooting rifles. If I had paid $700 for it, I would feel differently of course, but I am pretty pleased with it. I'll have to remember to aim left until I can get the front sight drifted.

There's a plethora of videos and posts out there on how to do this, but I need blog fodder, so here's some pics.

First you get some tin snips out to snip the metal band around the case, and forget to take a picture of it on. You have to hand it to the Ruskies, they sure know how to case ammo for long term storage. I think the 10 27-76-60 means it was made on June 27th, 1976. It's like a Soviet time capsule. (Nope. Apparently 60 is the factory ID. So my guess is October 27th, 1976.)

Grab the straps and pull.