Mosin – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Three Mosin-Nagant Loads

By Joe Berk

Here’s a quick look at what I’ve found to be three Mosin-Nagant accuracy loads shot off the bench at 100 yards using the rifles’ standard open sights. I didn’t try to get too sophisticated for this quick comparison; I simply shot a 10-shot group with each load. All were at 100 yards. I used the NRA 25-yard handgun target because it’s what I had on hand (the bullseye on that target is slightly smaller than the 100-yard NRA rifle bullseye target, and it gave a decent aiming point). You’ll see the targets below.

My jacketed bullet Mosin. It’s one of my favorite rifles.

My first two loads were with a rifle I use strictly for jacketed bullets. It’s my Tula 1940 round-top receiver. All you purists and keyboard commandos look away; this rifle is not for you. I refinished the stock with TruOil, I glass-bedded the action, and I reworked the trigger. As I’ve explained in earlier blogs, this rifle has a very rough bore, but the rifle remains blissfully ignorant of that fact and it shoots well.

My Mosin reserved exclusively for cast bullets. It’s another favorite.

I shot the cast bullet load in a Mosin-Nagant rifle I use for cast bullets. It’s a 1928 Ivshevsk hex receiver with a relatively clean (i.e., unpitted) bore. When I first shot this rifle with jacketed bullets, I found that it shot a foot or more above the point of aim at 100 yards with the rear sight in its lowest setting. I could have compensated for that by finding a taller front sight, but I decided instead to use the rifle with cast bullets. It shoots cast bullets within the rear sight’s adjustment range.

The Ammo

I shot 7.62x54R Russian reloaded ammo for this article. Two of the loads used jacketed bullets; the third used cast bullets.

Three Mosin loads. From left to right, it’s the Hornady 150-grain polymer tipped bullet, the PPU 150-grain jacketed softpoint boat tail bullet, and the 200-grain cast bullet. The cast bullet is Lyman’s 314299 bullet sized to .313.

The jacketed loads were identical other than the bullet and cartridge length: For one load, I used Hornady’s 150-grain polymer-tipped jacketed bullet; in the other, I used Privi Partizan’s 150-grain jacketed softpoint boattail bullet. I didn’t crimp either load, and I didn’t attempt to find the best seating depth. The seating depths I used, though, worked well. Both loads used a charge of 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 propellant.

A bag of PPU 150-grain bullets. When these go on sale, I tend to stock up.

The cast load used a 200-grain cast lead bullet with a gas check. I didn’t crimp the cast bullets, either, although I did use the Lee factory crimp die to remove the case mouth flare that prevented bullet shaving when the bullet was seated. This load used 18.0 grains of SR 4759 propellant.

The astute reader and reloader will notice that several of the components I used for these loads are no longer available. The Hornady polymer-tipped 150-grain .312 bullets went out of production some time ago, as did the IMR 4320 and SR 4859 powders. It’s annoying, because when I get a load that works, I’d like to be able to load it again. I’ve got a good stash of IMR 4320 and that will probably last me the rest of my life (it’s a powder that works well for .30 06 and several other cartridges). I’ve also got a good stash of SR 4759. That’s been a favored “go to” powder for cast bullet loads and reduced .458 Win Mag loads, and I’m working through it at a pretty good clip. Trail Boss and 5744 are two powders frequently mentioned as also being good for reduced loads and cast bullets, so at some point I’ll have to start developing loads with those powders. I’m probably good for the next two or three years with my SR 4759 stash.

The Results

To cut to the chase, here are the loads and the results:

The Hornady polymer-tipped bullet was the clear winner:

Not too bad, I think. 10 shots with the Hornady bullets at 100 yards. I’ve shot tighter groups. I’ve shot worse groups, too.

The Hornady polymer-tipped bullet put all 10 shots into a 3 1/2-inch group at 100 yards, which is not too bad with iron sights and geezer eyes. That’s almost a 10-ring-sized group (the 10 ring on these targets is 3 1/4 inches in diameter). I’ll call it close enough for government work.

The PPU bullets are still available, although you don’t come across them very often. Sometimes the big online reloading shops (MidwayUSA, Midsouth, Natchez Shooting Supply, Powder Valley, etc.) have them on sale, and when that happens, I’ll stock up. Here are two PPU-bullet, 10-shot, 100-yard targets:

A 10-shot, 100-yard group with the PPU bullets.

I shot another 10-shot group with the PPU bullets because I forgot to chronograph the first 10 shots. Nobody’s perfect.

Interestingly, the velocities of the two jacketed bullets (Hornady and PPU) were about the same. The Hornady bullet had a much larger velocity spread, but it turned in the tighter group.

And finally, here’s the 10-shot, 100-yard target I shot with cast bullets:

A 10-shot, 100-yard group with cast bullets. These are much easier to shoot. Less noise, less recoil, and lots of fun.

I was pleased with the cast bullet target, too. I wouldn’t ordinarily expect a cast bullet to group as well as a jacketed bullet, but these hung right in there.

So there you have it: Three loads that return acceptable accuracy in a Mosin-Nagant.

We have several articles on Mosin-Nagant rifles and on different loads for these rifles:

Mosins, Sewer Pipes, and Lunar Landscapes
A Tale of Two Mosins
More Mosin Loads
Mosin Cast Bullet Loading and Shooting
Enemy at the Gates
Chonographing Mosin Loads
A Tale of Two Old Warhorses
Home on the Range
Stupid Hot 7.62x54R Ammo
Lee Ermey’s Guns
Revisiting World War II
Sniper!
Motorcycles and Milsurps

We also have a bunch of articles on other guns (and my preferred loads) on our Tales of the Gun page.

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A Tale of Two Mosins

By Joe Berk

When I first saw Mosin-Nagant military surplus rifles for sale in a Big 5 sporting goods store years ago, I dismissed them as junk. Wow, was that ever a mistake. I’ve previously written about being smitten with these Russian rifles, and my appreciation for them continues unabated. Back in the day, you could pick them up for $79. That was after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians were sending Mosins over here by the boatload to raise cash. Then, during the Obama administration, the flow of these rifles to the US stopped. Today, a Mosin will set you back $300 or more (and it’s mostly more). I recognized the inherent quality and probable appreciation after shooting the first one I bought. I knew Mosin prices would climb and I picked up several. My two favorites are the ones you see in the photo above.

I use the first Mosin I ever bought (the one on top in the above photo) for shooting jacketed bullets. It has a bore that looks like a sewer pipe, but it is accurate. Here’s a recent 100-yard target.

There are 20 shots on this 100-yard target. The two that went low? Chalk it up to operator error.

I don’t use surplus 7.62x54R ammo in my Mosin-Nagant rifles. Surplus ammo used to be cheap and readily available, but not anymore. Even when surplus ammo was around, I didn’t use it because the primers were corrosive. I shoot only my reloads in the Mosins. Just about any 150-grain, .312 diameter jacketed bullet works well with 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 propellant. That powder is no longer available, but I have a stash. When I use it up, I’ll probably switch to Varget or IMR 4064 (both powders are said to work well in the 7.62x54R cartridge).

My Mosin-Nagant jacketed bullet load. It’s very accurate.

The other rifle Mosin you see above (the one on the bottom) is a beautiful hex receiver with a bore that appears to be brand new. When I fired it with jacketed bullets, it grouped very well, but it also shot very high with the rear sight in its lowest setting. I thought I would have to find a taller front sight, but I tried a few cast bullets and to my surprise, the rifle shot to point of aim at 50 yards. When I tried my cast bullet load at 100 yards, it was a scosh low. I went up one click on the rear sight and it was perfect.

My first 5 shots at 100 yards went low, wo I went up one click and put nearly all the rest in the 10-ring. Cast bullets can be very accurate.

My cast load for the Mosin is a 200-grain bullet sized to 0.313 inches over 18.0 grains of SR 4759. Like the IMR 4320 propellant mentioned above, SR 4759 is a discontinued powder, and like my situation with IMR 4320, I also have a stash of SR 4759. When I run out of it, there are other powders that work well with cast bullets. I’m looking forward to developing a new load with them. The load you see here sets a high bar, but I’m sure I can find a load that will match it.

I hadn’t shot cast bullets in my Mosin in a while. It didn’t matter; the rifle still shoots this load superbly well.

With both the Mosin-Nagant rifles you see above, I’ve refinished the stocks with several coats of TruOil (I sanded the stocks as little as possible to preserve the original cartouches). I’ve also glass bedded the actions and cleaned up the triggers. Both rifles are fun to shoot and both are superbly accurate.

If you would like to read more on our Mosin adventures, you can do so here:

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Home on the range…

The stream crossing to the West End Gun Club has been too deep to cross in my Subie Outback since early January. I tried it once back then and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

My January Meyer Canyon Road mishap. The Subie is not a submarine and I am not a U-boat commander, although we both came close that morning.

I’ve been going to the Magnum Range in Ontario (an indoor pistol range), watching the West End website for updates and occasionally driving out to check the stream. The Magnum Range is a good place to shoot, but I missed shooting my rifles. Then a good thing happened earlier this week: Good buddy Duane offered to pick me up and attempt a stream crossing in his Toyota 4×4. I was in.

Duane’s Toyota 4×4. It’s an impressive vehicle.

I’ve known Duane for years, going back to my work with CSC Motorcycles in their early days of the replica Mustangs and the RX3 250cc adventure bike. Duane and I both owned the CSC bikes and we traveled extensively on them.

The Meyer Canyon Road stream crossing was still deep and the water was moving swiftly, but Duane’s Toyota had no problem crossing it.

I knew which rifle I wanted to shoot when I received Duane’s email invitation: My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It’s the one you see at the top of this blog. The Mosin is a favorite. It’s accurate, I reload 7.62x54R ammo, and it is fun to shoot.

My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. The Russians built 17 million of these rifles. They are becoming hard to get and prices have risen substantially. These rifles are surprisingly accurate.

I’ve owned this Mosin rifle for maybe 10 years now. It came about almost as an afterthought. To me, the Mosins appeared to be cheap pieces of junk. Then one day after a class about engineering creativity, a student asked about the cover photo on a book I wrote. He told me he and his father owned a Mosin and enjoyed shooting the rifle. I saw a Mosin on the rack at a sporting goods store a short while later for $139. It looked crude, but for $139, I thought I’d take a chance. The guy who sold it to me did not know there was a bayonet in the Mosin’s cardboard box, and when he put the rifle back in its box, the bayonet scratched the stock. Neither of us knew this until 10 days later (after California’s silly waiting period). The store offered to sell me a different Mosin, but that meant starting the 10-day waiting period all over again. I viewed the scratch as an opportunity, and indeed it was. I refinished the stock (10 coats of TruOil worked nicely). Then I glass bedded the action, reworked the trigger, polished the bolt, and worked up a load. It was fun and I learned much about the rifle. Mine has matching numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. I know it’s weird: I own some really nice rifles, but the Mosin is one of the ones I love the most.

Serial Number 2339, built in 1940. Production rates ramped up sharply in 1940, but this rifle was built before that occurred. Fit and finish nosedived that year; mine is one of the good ones.

When Duane and I arrived at the range, I set up a target at 50 yards. Like always, shooting the Mosin felt good. It had been too long.

Duane is a milsurp rifle enthusiast, too. He has a beautiful 8mm Mauser K98 that his uncle took home from Germany after World War II. I keep trying to buy it from him. He keeps saying no.

Nazi markings on the Mauser’s barrel and receiver.

Like me, Duane is a reloader. He had reloaded reduced loads for our outing. A reduced load is one loaded for lower velocity, which means the rifle has significantly less recoil. One of Duane’s loads had cast bullets. The other had jacketed 150-grain bullets. Both were loaded with Trail Boss powder, and both shot well.

8mm Mauser reloaded ammunition. The upper rounds have 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets, the lower rounds have 150-grain cast bullets.

As soon as Duane fired his first shots, I knew he had reduced-load ammo. Check it out in the video below.

Duane and I both brought handguns, and to my surprise, we both decided to bring our Smith and Wesson 9mm Shields. I’ve written about the Shield before, as well as the custom work TJ (of TJs Custom Gunworks) did on my Shield. I shot my Shield at 50 yards. Using a short-barreled 9mm concealed carry handgun at 50 yards is not a formula for accuracy, but I managed to keep all of my shots on the target. The group was large, but at least they were on the paper.

My Shield in flat dark earth. I shot my reloaded ammo with Gardner powder-coated bullets.

My Sheild and Duane’s. Duane’s has a Crimson Trace laser just forward of the trigger guard. The laser is actuated by a pushbutton below the trigger.

One of the things I like about my Shield is its bright sights. Duane’s Shield has white dot sights and a green Crimson Trace laser mounted beneath the slide. The laser is a cool touch for close in work. My Shield has high visibility fiber optic sights (they catch light from the side and light up green and red dots). They’re good if there’s any light at all. If there’s no light, the sights don’t light, but if there’s no light, it’s not likely you’d be shooting.

A comparison of the sights on both Shields. My pistol’s Hi Viz sights are the best I’ve ever used on a handgun.

Before we called it a day, Duane let me try a couple of shots with his Mauser. I shot at the same 50-yard target I’d been using with my Shield and the Mosin-Nagant.

The proof is on the paper. The upper red circle surrounds the shots I fired with my Mosin-Nagant (with one exception, all are in the 10 ring…that one exception was the first shot I fired). The circle around the two shots below were mine, fired with Duane’s 8mm Mauser and his reduced-load ammo. All the other shots were with the Smith and Wesson 9mm Shield.

After the West End Gun Club visit, we stopped at our local Mexican restaurant. I had albondigas soup and a chile relleno. As always, both were outstanding.

A toasted chile relleno. It was excellent.

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More Mosin Loads

I used to not think too much of Mosin Nagant rifles. They looked cheap, they were crusted with cosmoline, and how good could a rifle be if it was made in Russia and sold at Big 5 for under a hundred bucks? (That under a hundred bucks thing, incidentally, is no more…prices on these rifles have climbed substantially.)

It was a grand day on the range with two old warhorses…a Mosin Nagant and a 1903 Springfield. It’s hard to say which one I like more.

Then one day after I taught an engineering creativity class at Cal Poly, one of my students approached me to ask if I was a shooter. He had noticed the 1909 Mauser on my book.

A Modelo 1909 Argentinean Mauser on the cover of Unleashing Engineering Creativity. Don’t wait for the movie. Buy the book!

I told him I was and we talked about the Mauser a bit. He told me that he and his father had recently purchased a Mosin Nagant and they were having a lot of fun with it. That got my attention for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that prior to that, I hadn’t spoken with anybody who owned a Mosin. The second reason was that I always like hearing from young folks who enjoy shooting. This was a young man who was enjoying the Mosin he and his dad owned. You don’t hear that too much these days, and I enjoyed the discussion and this young engineering student’s enthusiasm.

The next time I was in a gun store….well, you can guess where this story is going. I pulled the trigger, and 10 days later, I bought my first Mosin home.

20 rounds from my Mosin at 100 yards with my accuracy load: 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 and the Hornady 150-grain jacketed bullet. I shot this in one of our informal West Gun Club Milsurp matches two or three years ago. The shots crept up as the barrel heated. Still, that’s not a bad 100-yard group from an 80-year-old combat infantryman’s rifle.

The first time I went to the range with the Mosin, my opinion changed completely. The rifle was reliable, it was fun to shoot, and wow, it was accurate. Don’t let a Mosin’s appearance and price fool you. Trust me on this: The Russians knew what they were doing. These are fine rifles.

My Mosin was made in the Soviet Union’s Tula arsenal in 1940 and it has matching serial numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. The trigger guard/magazine is what we call a forced match. That means it had a different serial number, but Ivan struck through it and stamped a new serial number to match the others. That didn’t concern me at all. What I worry about are the serial numbers on the bolt and the receiver. If they match, the headspace is most likely good. If they don’t, you’ll want to make the seller show you with headspace gages that the headspace is within spec.

I’ve done a bit of work to my Mosin…glass bedding, a trigger job, and a TruOil refinish. I’ve also done a fair amount of load development (the last time my Mosin saw factory ammo it was in the hands of a Russian soldier; I’ve never shot factory ammo in my Mosin).

Note the star signifying Tula Arsenal production, and the 2339 serial number. Mosins will have another serial number on the side of the receiver stamped there by the importer, but that’s not the one you need to worry about.

The bolt serial number matches the receiver serial number on my rifle, and that’s good. If the serial numbers in these two locations don’t match, you should always check that the headspace is within specification.

Note that the butt plate serial number also matches. That’s cool, but it’s not necessary from a headspace or functionality perspective.

A forced match. Ivan grabbed a trigger guard (the trigger guard and the magazine floorplate are a subassembly) that wasn’t on the rifle when it was originally manufactured at the Tula Arsenal in 1940. Nyet problemski thought the arsenal rebuild crew; we’ll just strike through the old serial number and add the new one.

My 7.62x54R ammo “go to” accuracy load is 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 under a Hornady 150-grain jacketed bullet. That load groups exceedingly well at 100 yards. But that’s when I can find the components I want, and that’s a tough thing to do these days. IMR 4320 is no longer made and it’s hard to find bullets, primers, and brass.

Fortunately, I have always tended to overbuy components and when I spot a good deal on something I think I can use, I scoop it up. When the pandemic and civil unrest shortages emerged a couple of years ago, I didn’t feel the impact from a components perspective. I had plenty of 7.62x54R PRVI brass, I had primers, and I had bullets. That was two years ago, though, and this is now. I shot up a lot of what I had, including my Hornady .312-inch diameter jacketed bullets. But when components were available back in those good old pre-pandemic, pre-Portland-anarchy days, I had spotted a couple of bags of PRVI Partizan 150-grain jacketed bullets. Being the curious pack rat sort of fellow I am, I bought them.

PRVI Partizan (or PPU) 150-grain jacketed softpoint bullets. If you see these, buy them. They’re good. If you see these and don’t buy them, let me know and I will.

Most recently, my components dealer had a few powders on the shelves, and I picked up some new propellants. I wanted to see if I could work up a good load with the PRVI bullets for my Mosin. One propellant was IMR 4166, which is a powder designed to prevent copper fouling. I’ve already tried it in a couple of 30 06 loads and I was happy with the results, and I wanted to see how it would do in the Mosin. Another was Ballsy 2 (that powder is designated BL(C)2, but everybody calls it Ballsy 2). IMR 4166 is a relatively new powder. Ballsy 2 has been around for decades, but I had never used it. When I saw it, I grabbed a couple of bottles. The time to buy components is when you see them, especially these days.

Ballsy 2 is a spherical powder. It meters through the powder dispenser well.

IMR 4166 is an extruded rod powder that looks a lot like 4320 and 4064. It doesn’t meter as well as Ballsy 2, but it meters well enough.

I also wanted to try my previous accuracy load (43.7 grains of IMR 4320) with the PPU bullets first. It didn’t take long to load the ammo I wanted…my previous accuracy load with IMR 4320, two load levels of Ballsy 2, and two load levels of IMR 4166.

Seating the PPU bullets in my RCBS Rockchucker press.

After charging the cases and seating the PPU bullets, I then labeled the ammo and it was off to the range.

7.62x54R reloaded ammunition. It looks good. It shoots well, too.

That labeling thing is important. I always label my ammo as soon as I finish loading it. I can’t rely on my memory to know what I loaded.

Loaded and labeled. Reloading is as much fun as shooting, I think.

I shot all of my targets at 50 yards as a first look, and I had 10 rounds each. The first target I shot printed a little low, so I raised the rear sight a couple of notches and that put me in the black. The Mosin has great sights.

The rear sight on a Mosin Nagant. You slide the slider forward to raise the rear sight.

The Mosin has a crisp, easy to use front sight post. I actually prefer the sights on the Mosin to most modern rifles (I’m not a brass bead fan). Simple is better, and because the Mosin’s length, it’s very easy to get a crisp front sight picture.

How did I do and what loads worked well? Here are the targets:

The bullseye on the left was shot with a 1903 Springfield (covered in another blog). The other four bullseyes were Mosin targets with IMR 4320 propellant.

Mosin results with two levels of BL(C)2 propellant.

Mosin groups with IMR 4166 propellant. Everything shot well in the Mosin.

The results from the targets shown here are tabulated below.

The bottom line is that my former accuracy load (with Hornady 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets) didn’t do as well with the PRVI Partizan bullets, but the PRVI bullets shot very well with BL(C)2 and IMR 4166. That’s good because even though I have a good stash of IMR 4320, it’s no longer in production and the other powders (BL(C)2 and IMR 4166) are available and they are accurate with the PPU bullets. Good times.

About now you might be wondering…how can I get a Mosin-Nagant rifle? It’s not as easy as it used to be. We’re not importing them from Russia like we used to, and you can’t pick them up for cheap at places like Big 5 any more. I felt they were exceptional bargains at those earlier price levels and I bought several (none are for sale), including a sniper Mosin I’ll write about one of these days. I checked on Gunbroker.com and you can still find Mosins, but they seem to be starting north of $300 now, and going up sharply from there. I think they’re still a bargain, even at those prices.

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Lee Ermey’s Guns Go To Auction

R. Lee Ermey was the real deal. A United States Marine and a drill instructor hired to advise the actors in Full Metal Jacket who was so impressive in showing the phonies how to be a real Marine the folks in charge hired him to play the role (or so the story goes; there are various versions floating around). We’ve all seen the movie; I watch it every time it airs.

What grabbed my attention is that the late R. Lee Ermey’s gun collection is about to go up for auction. I looked through the guns listed out of curiosity to see what Gunny Lee had, and he had good taste in firearms. Lee Ermey owned a lot of shotguns, a few handguns, and a few rifles.

Here are a few of the Gunny’s guns that got my attention.

The first is a Colt Python that is part of a three gun cased set Colt offered several years ago (the set included a Python, a Single Action Army, and a black powder revolver). What’s interesting to me is that Gunnery Sergeant Ermey used his Python (it’s got the scratches and finish wear showing that).

Another one that’s interesting is the Model 62 Winchester. I have one of those that my Dad left to me; he bought it when he was a kid. One of these days I’ll do a blog on it.

And one more of the many that are going on the block. It’s a 1932 Mosin. If you’ve spent any time on the ExNotes blog, you know I love shooting my Mosins. Gunnery Sergeant Ermey was a man who knew his guns.

You can view the complete Lee Ermey auction here. I’ll be watching the auction as it unfolds, especially on the Mosin pictured above. It’s likely it will quickly go beyond my pay grade, but you never know.

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Mosins, and Enemy at the Gates

My initial exposure to the Mosin-Nagant rifle occurred when I saw the movie Enemy at the Gates a few years ago. At that time, I didn’t know anything about Mosin-Nagants other than I had seen them for sale at ridiculously low prices in Big 5 sporting goods stores. I never took Big 5 as a serious gun store (I went there when I needed jogging shoes), nor did I think of Mosins as interesting rifles. But Enemy at the Gates got my attention. It was very well done, starting with the opening scene when Vasily Zaitsev nailed a wolf with a Mosin, and progressing to the now famous “Can you shoot?” scene near the beginning of the movie.

Enemy at the Gates was set in Stalingrad. I studied that battle. Stalingrad was one of the world’s epic struggles. Hitler sent two million men into Russia; fewer than 3,000 returned to Germany. Incredible and awesome stuff, and snipers played a key role in turning the tide for the Russians.

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I didn’t run out and buy a Mosin-Nagant after watching Enemy at the Gates, but the seed had been planted. I also knew a bit about the history of modern sniping in the US military. I read a book a few years ago about Carlos Hathcock, our famous sniper of the Vietnam War (that book, incidentally, is awesome).

Available on Amazon, Marine Sniper is a great read.

So, fast forward, and my interest in rifles ultimately extended to the Mosin-Nagant. I purchased my first Mosin-Nagant (a round receiver Tula; more on that in a moment) and I was impressed with it. For $179, it was cheap fun. I started reloading 7.62x54R ammo for the Mosin after I bought a couple of boxes of factory PRVI Partizan ammo. The PRVI ammo was stupid hot, not very accurate, and I knew I could develop a better load than the factory stuff. And I did, but that’s a story for another blog.

I told my shooting and riding buddies about my Mosin and how much fun I was having with it. After listening to me babble on, my friends started buying Mosins, too. One of those guys was my good buddy Paul up in Hollister. Paul picked up a real nice hex-receivered Izzy (Ivhevsk was one of the two Russian arsenals that produced Mosin-Nagant rifles; my first Mosin was made by Tula, the Russian other arsenal). Then, like most of us, Paul convinced himself one Mosin was not enough. Paul wanted a round receiver (the other Mosin receiver configuration).

After picking up his second Mosin-Nagant, Paul shot an email to me explaining that he found a couple of holes on the left side of the receiver filled in with threaded plugs, and that the outside of the receiver over these holes had been welded and filed smooth. He had researched it and, to his great surprise, Paul learned that his Mosin had been a former sniper rifle. It seems that after World War II, the Russians refurbed these guns (including their sniper weapons), and they returned the snipers to a non-sniper configuration by welding in the receiver’s scope mounting holes.

Let me go tangential for a minute and explain how the Russians made sniper rifles during World War II. Unlike us, the Russians did not build a sniper rifle from the ground up to be super accurate. They built more than 17 million Mosins, and they test fired every one. If a particular rifle was found to exceptionally accurate during their routine post-production test firing, it was marked to be a sniper rifle. And my good buddy Paul scored one.

I thought that was beyond cool. An actual Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle. It was Enemy at the Gates come home to roost. I was happy for Paul finding such a great rifle, and I was jealous. I thought that the entire Mosin thing was great…my getting into Mosins, Paul buying two Mosins based on my enthusiasm, and then finding out that one of his was a sniper rifle.

My interest was pumped, and remembering the scenes from Enemy at the Gates, I started looking for stuff on Vasily Zaitsev. That’s when I came upon these videos…

Enemy at the Gates certainly played up the Zaitsev-Koenig sniper duel, and so did The History Channel special. To hear it straight from the man himself (Vasily Zaitsev) it was just a chance encounter. Ah,Hollywood.

All the while this was going on, my interest in Mosins continued to develop. Just like Paul was convinced he needed a round receiver Mosin, I convinced myself I needed a hex receiver. Hey, at these prices, Mosin-Nagant rifles were like potato chips. You couldn’t have just one. So I found a 1935 hex receiver Izzy at Big 5 (Ivhevsk was the other Russian arsenal that built Mosins), I pulled out my credit card, I waited my obligatory People’s Republik of Kalifornia 10 days, and it was mine. The bore on the new-to-me ’35 Izzy was about in the same condition as the 1940 rifle, which is to say it looked like it had been rode hard and put away wet. Maybe I’m being too kind. It looked like a sewer pipe.

Then, on a motorcycle ride through Big Bear, California, I stopped at their Big 5. Like most Big 5 stores, the kids that worked there didn’t know much about these rifles, and the one rifle they had on display looked pretty decrepit. I asked the same question I always did when seeing a rifle on the sales rack, and they dutifully pulled out the other Mosins they had in their safe. To make a long story short, I found another 1935 hex receiver rifle with all matching numbers and I pulled the trigger (figuratively speaking) on that one, too. Another 10 days went by and I made the trek back up to Big Bear to pick up my latest Pringle.

The next day I went to the range with all three of my Mosins – the first 1940 Tula, the second 1935 Izzy with a hex receiver, and my latest 1935 hex receiver Tula (the Big Bear rifle). Of the three, I had previously only fired the 1940 Tula.

The Big Bear Mosin, waiting to surprise me.

I shot the first two Mosins, and they were good shooters. Then I tried the Big Bear Tula, and at first, I thought the accuracy was terrible. My first shot was on the paper at 50 yards, but my second shot had missed the paper completely (that’s how it looked through the spotting scope). I fired a third round and that one was satisfyingly only about 3/8 of an inch away from the first. I walked downrange to inspect the target, and wowee!

My first three sniper rifle shots…two went through one hole!

That second shot wasn’t off the paper…it went through the same hole as the first shot! Thinking that this was just a fluke, I fired another group of three shots, with similar results! Wowee again! With open sights, this was iron sight accuracy I just wasn’t used to. It was stellar. Bear in mind these were the first shots I had put through this rifle. I was elated.

Knowing that this Tula was a shooter, I took the rifle apart later that day to give it a good cleaning. I noticed the little nicks and dings you see when you do this sort of thing, including what looked like painted over weld spatter on the left exterior of the receiver. Even though Paul had explained the findings on his sniper rifle to me, it never occurred to me what I was working with. I didn’t think about sniper rifles; I just thought that due to this particular rifle’s condition it probably saw action in World War II and the Russian refurb arsenal did the best they could to clean it up. And I knew it was a shooter. The thing was just flat accurate. Amazingly so.

I snapped a bunch of photos when I reassembled the Tula, and here’s the money shot…

Lots of markings. The red arrows point to the sniper designation. The star means the rifle was manufactured at the Tula arsenal.

I didn’t know what all the markings on it meant; I simply liked the photo and I posted it on one of the Mosin Internet forums.

Well, the Mosin forum lit up, and the comments started pouring in. The first one was a simple one-word comment:

Sniper.

Hmmm. How do you know that, I posted, watching more comments pour in about my Mosin being a sniper.

It’s the markings that look like a C and an N, the forum dudes told me. One guy wrote “Look inside the receiver and you’ll see the two plugs on the left side…I know they’ll be there.”

Wow, before I even looked, it all came together for me. The weld spatter on the outside of the receiver. The overall condition of the rifle (rode hard, put away wet, definitely not pristine). I pulled the bolt back, looked inside, and there they were…the plugged holes where the sniper scope used to be. Awesome! I had hit the jackpot, just like Paul did!

So this whole Mosin Sniper thing really had my attention. I poked around on the Internet a bit more and these photos showed up…

That’s Roza Shanina, “the unseen terror of East Prussia,” holding a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle. She’s credited with 59 kills during World War II. Her story is fascinating and would make for a great book. It all sounds like a hell of a story.

You’ll notice there’s a scope on Roza Shanina’s rifle, which is what the sniper rifles had. The mount for it required two threaded holes on the receiver, the two holes the Russians plugged when they refurbed the rifles. The sniper rifles also had a longer, downturned bolt handle that allowed the shooter to work the bolt with the scope mounted. All very cool stuff. The Stephen Hunter novel references to a fictionalized Shanina are oblique and like most novels, some of the technical stuff is wrong. But it’s a great read.

You can still buy Mosin-Nagant rifles, but the prices are climbing sharply and these rifles are not as readily available as they were just two or three years ago That’s probably a good thing, because my credit card can stay hidden away in my wallet. But I still like to look, and if I see a Mosin on the rack in any gun store, I’ll check the receiver for the sniper markings and the two weld plugs where the scope used to be. I haven’t seen a single one since I scored mine, and that’s a satisfying feeling.

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