Thread: Effective range of a bolt action 7.62x39

While looking around for a 223 I’ve noticed quite a few bolt action 7.62x39’s such as the howa’s. I’ve always thought of them as big projectiles that fall out of the air reasonably quickly. Does anyone know to what range they would be effective on goats etc and what would be the longest range they would remain consistently accurate to?

Addo,
I googled " Chuck Hawks Max Pointblank range for 7.62x39" . It came back as 221 m, so I imagine if you put in some target work to check the holdover, it would be about 300m effective range. If you reload and tweak your loads you might be able to go further.

I shoot a Brno ZKK 601 re-barreled in 7.62x39 and I am comfortable shooting out to 280ish meters. I hand load and like the 123gr SST. Mostly just used on pesky goats but have shot a good number of fallow too.
A good friend just got a Howa in 7.62x39 and it is beautiful to shoot.

Ive got a norinco and shoot 2-3" consistantly and are happy with that...for deer or pigs I draw the line a 150ish both for accuracy and ethical power limits...wallabies quite happy to stretch it out to 300ish....if I can make a hit they will die at that range as they arent hard to kill.

They are similar power wise as a 30-30 but have a better shape projectile so should be better at longer ranges, the old 30-30 is no slouch it's only that flat nose bullet that lets it down over longer ranges.

An upside of this cal is that russian steel case ammo isn't hard to find, and is reasonably cheap.

Originally Posted by Mooseman

They are similar power wise as a 30-30 but have a better shape projectile so should be better at longer ranges, the old 30-30 is no slouch it's only that flat nose bullet that lets it down over longer ranges.

hornady now produce pointed ammo for 30/30 etc "leverlution"

Originally Posted by gonetropo

hornady now produce pointed ammo for 30/30 etc "leverlution"

Costs a bit more and (although it should not be a problem in this country) the Yanks have reportedly had issues with flattened bullet noses when rounds are left in tubular magazines between hunts.

thats a bit of a fallacy as a look in any loading manual will show the .30/30 is quite a bit ahead of the x39mm on power and velocity..... also a lot of the cheap x39mm ammo out there is not that fast to begin with and some of the mil serp stuff will be erratic in velocity so any sembalence of consistancy needed to RELIABLY shoot past 150 will be gone....we got given a couple of boxes of norinco in the yellow cardboard and it was as good in x39 as it is in .223 it really went off with a bang so suggest the velocity is right up there.....we tried the cheap chinasport stuff a few years back but found a case that had excess metal at the neck that had been folded back into case and had come out upon fireing....the pressure of that must have been horrendus,lucky it was in single bakail so didnt blow up....put us off using that type of ammo fullstop....the steel cased hornady with sst projectile works very well.but still wouldnt push it past 150 myself.

Originally Posted by gonetropo

hornady now produce pointed ammo for 30/30 etc "leverlution"

back in the day when 30/30 was my first rifle (winny ) i tried some pointed projectiles not having researched it much ....... noticed small indentations in the primers of the next round ....so pulled all those and went back to flat nose projectiles.

the above SHOULD read...hornady now produce pointy rubber tipped rounds for the .30/30 and other tube mag rifles......

I have seen a 30/30 marlin tube mag blown up because the owner had used some rounds reloaded by a mate with pointy projectiles.

Check the terminal velocity at range.
Most bullets won't expand under 1800 fps.