Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm out at the range today because
I'm getting set up to shoot at Finnish Brutality in February,
and I don't yet know if it'll be feasible for me to take
my own rifle with me, but I'm going to try.
And ... I'm going to be shooting the match in Finnish Winter War, or Continuation War, kit.
And that of course means a Mosin-Nagant.
This is an M39, which is not quite appropriate for the Winter War,
but totally appropriate for the Continuation War.
It's also, just for what it's worth,
it's an interesting straight-stocked variant of the M39, a fairly early one.
Anyway, the M39 is particularly notable for having really good sights for a Mosin.
And they go all the way down to 150 metres which is unusual.
Now if I'm going to be shooting this thing in a Brutality match,
I really don't want to have to be taking up mental processing time
figuring out how far to hold over any given target.
I want to find ammunition that actually shoots to zero on these sights.
Because they are adjustable,
but one of the things that people run into when they shoot surplus rifles,
and Mosins are a particularly good example of this,
is the sights are way high, or way low,
or they just don't fit the ammunition that's available today.
Now, when the Finns were shooting these they were using a bullet just over 200 grains.
And there's not a whole lot of that available on the market.
Most of what we have is either light ball, at like 148 grains,
and I have a box of Czech silver tip light ball that I'll be trying out.
PPU makes a 182 grain, what they call a match load, so we'll be trying that out.
I've got some soft-point Brown Bear 174 grain.
And then there is a little bit of heavy bullet 7.62x54 that has been available from time to time,
and this is pretty much all hunting ammo type stuff.
So I have 200 grain Wolf. I have 204 grain "Hunting Rifle Ammunition",
I honestly don't even know exactly where this came from,
I've had it for a very long time.
And then I also have (I think this is Barnaul originally) 203 grain soft-point hunting ammo.
So, we're going to try out all six of these.
I'm going to shoot each one, probably five shots,
to get an idea kind of for the accuracy, but more to see where I'm actually hitting.
So I'll be aiming at the very centre of the target, we'll save all six separate targets,
and once I'm done we'll take a look at ... how much variation
in point of impact do you get with different bullet weights.
So we'll just go ahead, and, let's see, I'm going to go ahead and start with this guy.
So, nice paper packet in there.
Five rounds. That's a big honking bullet there.
This much prone shooting with a Mosin and particularly heavy ammo should be lots of fun.
Alright, so my target is at 150 metres because that is the bottom sight setting for the rifle,
... If I can find a round that actually hits on at 150, I need to be shooting at 150.
[ The rifle sounds very quiet because my lavalier mic is cutting it out. ]
Alright, that's the first one. I'm not going to bore you with
some static footage of me firing all the other groups.
So I'm going to go get that target, label it, bring it back.
That will give the barrel a chance to cool down
so that I don't overheat the barrel during this whole operation.
And we'll be back with all six targets to see where they were hitting.
OK, bunch of shooting done and we have some good results.
So I started with Barnaul 203 grain, and I was both way off to the left and way high.
So you can see 3 hits here, I had 2 more that were like here and here just off the paper.
And at this point I figured well, OK, I was a little surprised that 203 grain was so high,
because that was one I was expecting to be pretty much on.
But I also figured I'll go ahead and fix the windage,
that's not what I'm out here to try and find out today
but it'll make everything look better.
So don't worry about the windage on this one, we fixed it.
For our next target I was curious about that heavy bullet hitting high,
so I did another one next. This is Wolf 200 grain and I've got 4 hits on here.
1, 2, 3, 4 and the fifth was like right here up above the target, above the paper.
So I fixed the windage pretty much, but I'm still substantially high.
Centre of this group is 6 or 7 inches high.
That's not what I want.
If I'm going to be shooting Finnish Brutality with this Mosin,
the last thing I need is on top of all the other issues
is to also have to be calculating holdovers in my head.
So next we went to Brown Bear 174 grain, which is better.
Again, a little surprising to me, but I've got all five hits actually on paper here.
But I'm still 3 inches high, maybe 4 inches high for the centre of the group.
And it's not a very good group, maybe that's me, maybe that's Brown Bear.
Next up I figured what the heck, let's try the really light stuff.
And I was extremely surprised to find this.
The Czech 148 grain shot almost perfectly to zero, it's just the tiniest bit high.
But frankly this is open sights at 150 metres, and my eyesight's not perfect.
Like this is very likely me aiming slightly high, or certainly within margin of error.
So the Finns did not have a light bullet like this,
they used 185, and 200 and I think 5, or 4, or 6: slightly over 200 grain projectiles.
So I was extremely surprised to find this.
But I did actually shoot a second group to make sure that it wasn't just me,
and, lo and behold, the second group shot just about perfect.
Now the downside was the Czech silver tip stuff stuck in the gun.
And I had to really whack the bolt open each time, and that's not a good thing.
I also don't want to be dealing with that in a match.
So that led me to PPU 182 grain match,
which, again to my surprise, patterned almost perfectly.
This is basically dead on for range.
I'm surprised because the 148 shot right here, the 182 shot right here,
and then that Brown Bear 174 was high.
So there's more going on here than just bullet weight.
Obviously there are also going to be issues of velocity.
And I do not have a chronograph out here to actually check
(or chronometer ... chronograph ...)
to check the velocities of all of the rounds that I'm shooting.
So that's something that I will do.
... If I can't get this exact PPU in Finland for the match,
I will check the velocity and see what the closest thing out there is.
But, I wanted to make sure also that this wasn't some sort of fluke,
so I shot a second group.
Again at 150 metres.
A little bit high, very nice group by my standards.
That's 150 metres and that is a 3 inch wide group,
so that's 2 MOA with a Mosin and open sights, and I am thrilled by that.
So my one final follow-up was
I'm pretty sure that our Finnish Brutality stages are going to max out at 150 metres.
What's this going to do at 100 metres?
Which is also a range that I'm going to have to be shooting.
Is it going to be substantially off for whatever reason?
And that was my last target, so it's still taped to the silhouette here.
And it was still bang on at 100.
So my conclusion is that PPU 182 grain match 7.62x54
is a fantastic match for my [M39].
That doesn't necessarily mean it'll be perfect for everybody's,
there's all sorts of variability in surplus rifles.
But if I were going to pick out another Mosin, another Finnish Mosin,
to do some shooting with and I wanted it to be on zero,
PPU 182 is definitely what I would start with.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this.
This was originally just going to be a little bit of desert practice on my own
as part of my prep for the match, and I figured, well, why not film it?
It's an interesting question that maybe I can save some people some ammo purchasing experiments.
Anyway, like I said, hopefully you enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.