I am a big fan of the Mosin-Nagant rifles. What can I say the com­mies knew how to make a great rifle, though this rifle was designed and in use before Lenin and com­pa­ny came to pow­er.

There are a few vari­ants of the com­mon Mosin-Nagant rifle that most peo­ple are famil­iar with. The 91/30, M38 car­bine, and M44 car­bine with a side fold­ing bay­o­net, all cham­bered in the 7.62x54R and hold 5 rds in a fixed mag­a­zine that has a trap door just in case. These rifles were made by sev­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ers includ­ing , Sako, Tik­ka, Rem­ing­ton and New Eng­land West­ing­house. Also they were made in sev­er­al coun­tries includ­ing the US, Fin­land, Czecho­slo­va­kia, and of course Rus­sia / USSR.

These guns are still in use today in war zones around the world includ­ing Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now for the sur­vival aspect.

These guns are cheap, and no I do not mean they are poor­ly built, to pur­chase. I bought three M44’s for $59.00 each a few years ago from Big 5 in Ari­zona. After spend­ing a whole day strip­ping the rifles and clean­ing the cos­mo­line out of every nook and cran­ny I took them out to test accu­ra­cy. Now I have heard that they shoot high but mine are dead on out to 600 yards. Now that I was sat­is­fied with the rifles I went on EBay and bought the ATI syn­thet­ic Monte Car­lo stocks for them at $30.00 each. So now I have a good look­ing accu­rate rifle that I have a whop­ping $89.00 into.

I also have a few 91/30 that cost a lit­tle more because I bought them 5 years lat­er than the first three. They ran me $125.00 each from pri­vate par­ties. Being the ever pre­pared kind of guy I had bought sev­er­al of the syn­thet­ic stocks to have in reserve.So now I have $155.00 into these rifles. I then want­ed to mount a scope on these rifles. For one I went with the new Brass Stack­er scope mount that attach­es to rear sight mount by replac­ing the pins in the rear sight. This method requires no gun­smithing and does not destroy the rear sight. So that is anoth­er $50.00, now I am up to $205.00. I had to go with a long eye relief scope aka the hand­gun scope, because the scope mount is way out there. OK so I went with a rel­a­tive­ly cheap AIM 2–7x32 scope from Sports­man­’s Guide for $41.00 and the rings were includ­ed. So for $246.00 I have a great rifle that has proven itself in bat­tle and can take down most large game that looks fair­ly mod­ern with the addi­tion of these acces­sories.

The oth­er one I went with the ATI scope mount for $30.00 which allows me to use a reg­u­lar scope but does require a lit­tle drilling into the receiv­er. Pay a good gun­smith to do this that will war­ran­ty their work because if they screw up you have a very heavy club. I have the skills to do this so I did it myself and saved the $50.00 gun­smith fee. I went with a Bush­nell Ban­ner 3–9x40 on sale at Wal-Mart for $87.00 and the rings for anoth­er $20.00. So for this rifle I have a total of $292.00 into it.

Both of my 91/30 rifles are eas­i­ly accu­rate to 600 yards, though that was what I shot with the iron sights a scope makes it quite a bit eas­i­er. If you need to shoot fur­ther than that you need to work on your stalk­ing skills.

The down­side , as some peo­ple see it, for these rifles is the lack of a safe­ty. I believe peo­ple are a lit­tle too reliant on safeties and we get a lit­tle com­pla­cent and next thing you know some­body shoots some­thing they should not have because they thought the safe­ty was on. So for me this is not a detri­ment. My old marks­man­ship instruc­tor told me all safeties fail and every gun is loaded so don’t be point­ing it at some­thing you don’t want to kill.

Ammo for these rifles is cheap. How cheap? I just bought 880 rds of 7.62x54R FMJ Czech sur­plus ammo for $137.00. These are great for work­ing on those marks­man­’s skills but suck for hunt­ing. Thank­ful­ly Wolf Gold came along and hooked us up with a soft tipped hunt­ing round for around $20.00 a box. Most of the sur­plus ammo is cor­ro­sive so you real­ly need to clean that rifle after a days shoot which is some­thing you should have been doing any­ways. Bal­lis­tics wise it lies between the .308 (7.62x51) and the 30.06 so you know it can get the job done.

Because it looks like a reg­u­lar hunt­ing rifle peo­ple are a lit­tle less like­ly to notice this rifle as com­pare to and AR or AK or any oth­er “evil assault weapon”.