Mosin Nagant for deer hunting?

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BloodOmen911

New member
I've recently purchased a Mosin Nagant for a sweet $90! The bore is nice, I varnished and polyurethaned the stock, I'm having my bolt bent by a guy who goes by blazen999 on eBay, and I'm currently having a firefield repro PU scope mounted on it in Shreveport :cool: I mostly purchased to make it a "project gun" but my dad ( who is a die-hard weatherby guy) has been talking a lot of smack, saying I can't take down a deer past 100 yards with it! I've never heard of anyone hunting with a Mosin Nagant, much less a scoped one, and I'd like to prove my dad wrong this upcoming deer season :D

What are your thoughts on this? Have any of you hunted with a Mosin before? Would I be better off not trying it, in fear of simply wounding a deer and watching it run away because of inaccuracy? Or do you think I should prove the old man wrong? :p
 
As soon as you "prove" him wrong, he'll just say it was a lucky shot anyway. Nothing wrong with hunting with a MN, but don't do it just because someone says you can't; the people who hate these guns are going to hate them no matter what.

You'll have to shoot yours and see how it does. Some of them can't seem to keep it on the target and others are capable of 1-2 MOA out of the box. There was a thread recently on another forum about accurizing them, I'll PM you the link as I don't know the policy about linking to other forums.

Do you load your own hunting rounds? There's no doubt that can make a difference.
 
Back in the 70s Gun digest published a story about a guy of Finnish decent who used a Mosin, Finnish manufacture of course, to take several deer.

With a good hunting bullet you should be able to take a Louisiana white tail out to 300 yards.

I am playing around with Camp Perry match. Pull the bullets from my MIL Surplus ammo and replace it with a good hunting bullet. I don't have any results yet but it looks promising.
 
I have a close friend who has more expensive rifle - including some Weatherby rifles as well as a couple of Remmington 700s and a Ruger M77 in various calibers but every year he'll reach for his sporterized Mosin Nagant M91 first. He consistently takes deer out to 300 yards every year with it - bent bolt handle with a 4x Leupold scope. I'm sure he'd take deer further out with it but that's about the longest shot he can get where he hunts.
 
It's a repro, The mount and scope were from Accumounts. The scope is "dated" 1942, but it is nitrogen filled and the turrets turn the FOV, not just the crosshairs. I'm a pretty big fan of it.
 
I don't really like the rifle so I never had one, but I know about a guy who was hunting about everything from deers to pigs with a short Mosin. He might have a custom made stock but I'm not sure.
 
I was thinking accumounts for a moment when selecting a scope and mount, but firefield was offering a nice chinese repro mount and a scope for 169.99. The firefield was a steal ;) everything looks pretty high quality, just need to see if it handles recoil. It should seeing how it was made for a Mosin Nagant
 
If it's accurate it will absolutely kill a deer. Not much different than a .308/30-06. Mine is about a 4MOA gun so I've never used it. If it shot worth a darn I would have used it. I have killed a deer with most of my unconventional deer guns just to do it, Ar, M1A, Arisak, .458. I'm going to kill one with my .50 when I get it. It's fun to use something other than a modern, scoped, bolt gun.
 
As said, depends on how accurate the rifle is.
You'll need to use factory SP's as mentioned-although I sent some match SMK handloads I shoot to a guy in NY that swears he gets great expansion from them and uses them for deer (and mebbe Bear).

FWIW, my sporter shoots moa with those handloads, and I shoot it at 565 yards. So yeah- it's accurate enough to take a deer...;)

Hate to say it, but Dad needs and edumacation...
 
Anything over 500 yards with a Mosin is great! :eek: Are hand loads for the Mosin really that effective? I might need to buy a hand loader then! :D I've been wanting to reload for awhile now but I never saw the need to since the only gun I really wanted to reload for accuracy purposes was my 6.5x55 swede. But after hearing that I might need to look into it ;)
 
My main deer rifle is a H&R handi-rifle in .308 but here are my 3 back up guns:

M38
m91/30
M1 Garand



I recommend Hornady® Custom Classic Military Ammo with the SST bullet.

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Considering the muzzle velocity is a little higher that the 30-06 and once it is sighted in you should be good to go to 600 yards.
Long shot for any hunter with any rifle, yes
 
300 yards? That's pretty good, I hunt on a pipeline ROW. The scope is 3.5 magnification. How will that limit me range-wise?
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Well your range limit would really depend on how good a shooter you are. My friend can hit break dessert plates at 500 yards with his M91/30 with a 4x scope which isn't that much more magnification than your 3.5x. If you put the shot where it counts I'm fairly sure the bullet will kill deer out to 500+ yards with a good heavy soft point.
 
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