Using a Mosin for hunting

The Mosin safety should LOCK DOWN... are you sure you're rotating it ALL THE WAY TO THE LEFT and setting it down into it's place? If you don't rotate it all the way, yes it can sit wrong and be bumped off, sending the cocking piece into the sear. It SHOULDN'T discharge, but if the trigger is depressed in any way while this happens with a round chambered, it will go off.

The best way to engage or disengage a Mosin safety is to place the butt of the rifle in the crook of one's elbow, then use the fingers to grasp the cocking piece and pull back and rotate to the left ALL THE WAY. You then ease the cocking piece forward and you'll feel it go into it's little slot. The bolt handle should lock up firm and the safety should NOT be able to be bumped off. This takes some strength and it is rather easy not to engage the safety fully.

With practice and this method, you can take the Mosin on and off safe. It can still be stiff, but is much easier to do than normal. This comes from someone with close to 10 years of Mosin experience as my first rifle and I now own a half dozen of them.
 
Is a Mosin a good option to use as a hunting rifle? Brown Bear has 203gr JSP 54r that seems like a good round. I plan on using it for deer/elk, good size Coloradan game.
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If you've ever watched "Life Below Zero", Agnes Hailstone uses her Finnish M39 Mosin-Nagant to slay everything from Seals to Caribou to Bull Moose- so yes, the cartridge is up to the task within reasonable parameters.

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I have an M39 Finn.

Great shooters, accuracy is high compared to most models. Not quite as long, rather weighty but great ergonomics and trigger. I couldn't think of a better Mosin hunter for that location. In closer in brush, an M44 or M38 would be ideal.
 
I cannot understand the necessity of having a round chembered for hunting.
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for the same reason that soldiers don't pack in condition 3 in a war zone. you have to be able to bring your rifle to bear on your target and engage in the fewest steps possible, while still operating with some degree of safety. a well trained/practiced person can disengage the safety on most rifles in the same motion as shouldering, I don't know a lot of people that can chamber a round during said motion. so that reduces your response time and as has already been pointed out, generally the animals being hunted have a better set of senses than we do and are easily alerted to your presence by the sound of a round being chambered.

mosin's knob safety functions pretty well to me. It is not ergonomic to operate, but it never impressed me as unsafe
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well I don't know much about engineering myself, but it seems like any design that requires extra tension on the firing pin spring in order to engage and then in disengaged by allowing all of that added tension to rock back forward sounds extremely unsafe to me. I've never seen it happen but I have heard several reports of the mosin having negligent discharges by people trying to take the safety off by pulling back, rotating back into firing position and letting go of the knob instead of easing back into the firing position.
 
Tahunua, that's interesting and something to think about. I have yet to hunt with a Mosin. I've only used them off the bench and I don't really mess with the safety. I do think that timney trigger set up is the ticket, with its modern style safety. I wonder if another trick would be to chamber a round but only rotate the bolt down to its first notch / detent, then when the need arises rotate it the rest of the way down to full lock up. As you could do that silently.

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that was actually how I was taught when I started hunting with my dad's remington 700(and the wonderful reputation their safeties had) I was taught not to use the mechanical safety and instead only close the bolt enough to keep it from flopping open and to drop the bolt handle when I was ready to shoot. I never knew why until I was old enough to research the safety issues with the 700. I suppose I had never though of doing that with the mosin.
 
This is what I heard from my hunter friends. They take shots 200yd and beyond on regular basis. If they are in the mood to discuss "long range" this and that, they bag games way way beyond that. If the animals can be spooked that far, even you chamber gingerly, I don't know what to say.

They must chamber a round when looking for games because there are too many hunters but no enough games. If they don't fire fast enough they may go home empty handed. How longer does it take to chamber a round? A few seconds? If they can't even wait a few seconds for that, are they taking 30 seconds or so to survey what's behind the targets? Perhaps that's why they are taking long shots. I don't want to be in the same county when they are doing that.

A lot of bolt guns' safeties work by lifting the cocking piece off the sear, one form or another, mostly involving compressing the main spring further. The mosin has a rather cruel form. The knob may slip off the firer's hand, but the sear will catch the cocking piece. It is no difference than flipping the safety flag off on a Mauser. It is equally safe, if the rifle functions correctly. If the rifle has problem to begin with, it is certainly not safe.

-TL
 
well most hunting in the US is done at 100 yards or less and yes, even at 100 yards I, with my inferior human hearing can hear a round being chambered by most rifles. if your friends hunt at distances of 200 yards or more, the sound may not spook the animals, but they can still see the movement and at those ranges, my previous comments about the average accuracy of the mosin nagant still apply. if you shoot a gun that averages a 8 inch group at 200 yards and you're shooting at a 6 inch moving target at 200 yards, your odds of making a humane hit on the animal are quite slim.
 
I have plenty of Deer hunting options around. But I have taken my M44 and my M38 out a couple times.

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But I did have one built for a specific task. I do have a use for a fast pointing, quick shooting brush gun when I am out tromping around for that swamp buck.
Had a 91-30 turned into a brush gun. I love it fills that roll perfectly.
It will do just about everything that $800 Ruger scout rifle will do but for a whole lot less cabbage.

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Appreciation of Insight

I really do appreciate all the insight that everyone has given, and I'm pretty convinced that a Mosin could do a decent job at taking game. I'll have to get a little more used to it, get some trigger time before I can put it to the test. Unfortunately, I don't get to go out and shoot as much as I want to, being the time and money necessary I simply don't have.
 
tangolima, You need to talk to REAL hunters. The kind that walk up deer and do not sit on their butt in a tree stand all day. I walk in in the morning and usually see no one until I walk out at night. Most of my friends and I have dropped running deer we jumped from beds. Not that hard, they are usually running straight away from you. You have to be fast. A deer will be out 40 yards by the time you get the gun off your shoulder. I have used a Russian years ago, and you can use them, but they are less than user friendly. They point quick, but the safety sucks. Years back I converted one to a 30-40 and modified a Timmney trigger for it. I am guessing that the newer triggers designed for it function in the same way(Trigger block). If you think about it, they are less safe than the original safety. An old, loose, military bolt with lots of play and only the sear holding the striker back. I never liked a trigger block set up on a military rifle for hunting. We really bang our guns around in the brush and rocks. Of course, you should always have respect for a loaded gun. I have had two safety failures (Both factory guns) over the years. I had them pointed in a safe direction, but it was an unwelcome surprise.
 
I cannot understand the necessity of having a round chembered for hunting.


for the same reason that soldiers don't pack in condition 3 in a war zone. you have to be able to bring your rifle to bear on your target and engage in the fewest steps possible,
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Apples and oranges;

A bit different. Yeah I when I was a grunt in SE Asia, I carried w/round in chamber and safety on, UNLESS on point, Then round in chamber with safety OFF.

I have been hunting a long time, I and I have yet to run across a deer packing a rifle laying in wait to ambush me.

No have I ever considered shooting at a deer that jumped up in front of me and was running away.
He'll stop eventually.

I've shot enough moving targets in my time that I determined I wont try shooting running game.

I'll just wait until I find one standing still.
 
Gunplummer. The lot I know they will be rather mad if I call them anything but real hunters. They do walk to the deers, but just a bit too far away and start shooting too quickly. The sort of hunters who stalk their games to close distance and prudently survey the surroundings before committing to fire seem only exist in books.

I can't really critize as I don't hunt. Every time I try, somebody will tell me to hold my tongue till I try hunting myself. Funny that they don't really put up a defense about their practice, but ask me to "come to the real world". That makes me more convinced they are really doing that. They are the real hunters. I will stay away when and where they are doing their real hunting.

No offense to hunting friends here. I'm sure you know what you are doing. It is I who can't handle the truth.

-TL the weak
 
Yeah I guess I'm not a real hunter. I have the skill to figure out the deer. Where they eat, sleep, drink, and poop and how they travel in between and what times of the year they travel there. And I "sit on my butt in a tree stand" somewhere in between about the time they come through there. And I have no trouble filling my freezer doing so. So I guess I could be a REAL hunter if I trampled through their bedding areas and kicked em up and tried to make a humane kill on a whitetail on the run. Give me a friggen break dude!

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1940izhevsk: What kind of groups are you getting with your rifle?

What ammo have you run through it? Just spam can fodder, or have you tried any hunting ammo? Have you found an accurate load for your rifle?

Lots of good responses here. The only things I'll add are:
1. Is your rifle worth hunting with? If you can get around 2MOA or better with decent hunting ammo, then you're good to go. I've had good and bad hunting results with PPU. Last year, for my K31, I had a doe go over a hundred yards over rough ground without much of a blood trail from a well placed shot. I'll be using my own SST reloads this year (with PPU brass).

2. Safety manipulation vs. Chambering a round prior to shot: For my preferred hunting rifle, K31, I chamber a round. The safety on the K31 is MUCH easier to operate than a MN, but there's still that bare hand on a cold day grasping and turning issue. I had a 91/30 and an M44 and both of them had bolts that were not hard to work and I believe the M44 could be quieter than my K31. --> OR <-- A Timney trigger w/safety would be a good investment that may also improve your accuracy. Wish they made one for K31s.
 
As long as you know your limitations.
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Yep, and it's still a poor second choice to hunting with an M1.

Better action, better sights, and a way better trigger on the Garand than the Mosin ... Load it up with a 5-rd hunting clip, and you're GTG. :cool:
 
Yep, and it's still a poor second choice to hunting with an M1.

Better action, better sights, and a way better trigger on the Garand than the Mosin ... Load it up with a 5-rd hunting clip, and you're GTG.
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In free states, you're not limited to five rounds. ;)

Regardless... I have absolutely no interest in hunting with an M1.
Too long.
Too heavy.
Too obnoxious.
Too complicated.
Too many points of entry for debris and contaminants.
PINGGGGG!

My loaded M38, with a sling, weighs more than two pounds less than an empty Garand, and comes in 4 inches shorter.
When you're hiking all day at 9,000-12,000 feet through thick scrub, carrying an extra 2 lbs with an extra 4 inches of barrel to work through the bushes can be quite annoying, not to mention very tiring.
Inches are feet, ounces are pounds, and pounds are tons.

Not all Mosin triggers are terrible, either. My M38 may have a lot of take-up, but it breaks nice and clean, and isn't overly heavy.
Plus, I can carry nice, thin stripper clips for spare ammo, rather than a bulky, obnoxious en-bloc clip. (Not that I ever plan to need it.)

M1 - absolutely a better choice for 'longer range' work, if the barrel is up to it.
M38 - much better option for short-range scrub work.
 
although one may counter that if you need more than 8 rounds you probably shouldn't be hunting with that rifle in the first place:D

but who am I to judge? I regularly hunt with 20+ rounders:D
 
FrankenMauser, you get it. I still make aluminum and titanium parts for hunting rifles. Shave excess metal off too. You can shave enough off a surplus rifle to throw an extra canteen of water in your pack.
 
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