Of course, I could just as easily title this thread "Why I don't trust my wife with my checkbook while she's recovering from surgery". Or even "Why look, yet another Mosin thread!" I came home Tuesday after work to find a big, long box on the kitchen table with a bow on top. I open it up to find a brand spankin' old Mosin 91/30. My wife had taken it upon herself to schlep over to the local gun store and buy that Mosin. I'd been talking about getting one, though I'd not seen this one in particular. It's a 1926 Tula ex-Dragoon. The furniture is solid and the rifling is strong. It came with the bayonet but not the demon cat. I couldn't wait to shoot it (rifle, not the cat. Well... maybe the cat if I can get it to stand still).
Being the stickler for history I am, I wanted to observe this icon of the Communist regime in its natural habitat. So I took it out to my brother's place in Illinois. His old shooting berm was looking a little weathered and small, so we carved a new berm out of the compost pile and quite literally got down to shooting the s---. Our small but idealistically superior band of workers quickly dispatched some Imperialist watermelons with spectacular results. Our little range was very short due to space constraints, so I can't say much about the accuracy of the rifle since just about anyone (except my brother
) could hit a watermelon at 20 yards from kneeling. We then obliterated a number of clays and soda cans and great fun was had by all. (mild language in the video below, sorry)
Recoil was less than I remembered from my one experience borrowing one of these rifles. As long as I remember to settle the butt of the gun down lower than I'm accustomed to doing with my smaller rifles it felt similar to the recoil from a 20ga. I was overall very impressed with the rifle for the price and researching all the marks and matching them to the historical record kinda makes me want to start collecting them.
Being the stickler for history I am, I wanted to observe this icon of the Communist regime in its natural habitat. So I took it out to my brother's place in Illinois. His old shooting berm was looking a little weathered and small, so we carved a new berm out of the compost pile and quite literally got down to shooting the s---. Our small but idealistically superior band of workers quickly dispatched some Imperialist watermelons with spectacular results. Our little range was very short due to space constraints, so I can't say much about the accuracy of the rifle since just about anyone (except my brother
) could hit a watermelon at 20 yards from kneeling. We then obliterated a number of clays and soda cans and great fun was had by all. (mild language in the video below, sorry)
Recoil was less than I remembered from my one experience borrowing one of these rifles. As long as I remember to settle the butt of the gun down lower than I'm accustomed to doing with my smaller rifles it felt similar to the recoil from a 20ga. I was overall very impressed with the rifle for the price and researching all the marks and matching them to the historical record kinda makes me want to start collecting them.
