Stupid Hot 7.62x54R Ammo

When good buddy Jim and I became interested in Mosin-Nagant rifles about 10 years ago, we bought a few boxes of PRVI-Partizan 7.62x54R ammunition mostly to get the brass so we could reload it.  Boy, oh boy, that stuff was stupid hot.

We could feel it in the recoil and the pressure pulse of each shot.  After a few rounds we called it quits.  I didn’t want to fire any more through my Mosin and neither did Jim.  The primers were sharply flattened, the bolts were hard to open, and the brand-new cartridge cases were fracturing.

We only fired two or three rounds from each box, but that was enough.  Prior to that point, Jim and I had fired only our reloads, and those were about in the middle of what the Hornady manual recommended.  The PRVI-Partizan ammo was way hotter than our reloads.

When we returned home, I grabbed RCBS inertial bullet puller and pulled the bullet out of one of the cartridges.

I thought maybe the bullets were slightly oversize and that was causing an overpressure condition.  But they weren’t.  They miked in at 0.312 inches (right where they were supposed to be).

I dumped the powder from the cartridge case and it weighed 52.7 grains.  I had no idea what the powder was, but the powders I had loaded 7.62x54R ammo with in the past (primarily IMR 4320) had always been at 43.0 to 43.7 grains.  My reloads were hard-hitting and accurate, and they felt about right to me.  They recoiled and had a muzzle blast roughly comparable to a .308 Winchester, which is about what the 7.62x54R Russian cartridge is ballistically equivalent to.  I didn’t see any powders in my reloading manual that went north of 50.0 grains.  Nope, this PRVI ammo was just way too hot.  Stupid hot.

I pulled the rest bullets with the RCBS inertial puller, dumped all the PRVI propellant (whatever it was) in my RCBS powder dispenser, and reloaded them with the original PRVI bullets, brass, and primers with a dispensed charge of 44.0 grains.

I wasn’t trying to be too cute or too scientific; I just wanted something that filled the case to about the same level as my IMR 4320 load.  I didn’t have more of the PRVI propellant, so I wasn’t seeking the most accurate load.  Jim and I had only bought the ammo because we wanted the brass.  We just wanted to shoot it up without blowing up our rifles.

That revised PRVI load worked well.  It fired, it expanded the brass to obturate adequately, and I now had once-fired PRVI brass in good shape.  The revised PRVI load was reasonably accurate enough, too.  I think somebody at the PRVI ammo factory just wasn’t paying attention.

The next day when Jim and I were on the range, a funny thing happened:  A small group of deer wandered out in front of us, oblivious to our presence and the fact that they made an easy target.  But it wasn’t deer season, were didn’t have our licenses with us, they were the wrong sex, and bagging one could result in a $40,000 fine here in California.  Jim and I sat quietly, and the deer walked to within 30 feet of us.

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