Just want hear about peoples experience with using these cheap rifles in the field.
I'm particularly interested in using them with the standard open sights rather than with optics.
Any thoughts or stories to share?
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Just want hear about peoples experience with using these cheap rifles in the field.
I'm particularly interested in using them with the standard open sights rather than with optics.
Any thoughts or stories to share?
Anything is possible. I hunt with my ar. Better range with the 223 and easier to mount optics on.
ive shot quite a bit with an sks both scoped and open sights. good for 150m on goat, pig and the smaller deer.
@stretch 's last goat with an SKS (that I know of) before he moved onto an AR.
Attachment 62138
I've taken 50+ goats with various SKSs in the last few years. At up to 100m, but mostly within 20m. Initially with iron sights, then with a red dot.
Best day was when I ambushed 7 chilling in a clearing around midday. I dropped 6 of them before getting a misfeed on the last round.
Another time, I shot two, then several more jump up out of the long grass. It became a reaction shoot. Good times.
Good soft point hunting ammo would be a great place to start.
Several years ago went up gizzy with some guys to cull goats. All used ARs, but one bought an sks along as well and we all had a turn till the ammo ran out. At the end the sks was voted the winner, more 1 shot kills better knockdown, more reliable! It was admittedly in a ati stock, and had a red dot on it. All the ammo was barnaul, soft point for the sks, and 55 gr hp for the ARs. Bought one soon after.
They work great
I like my SKS a great deal more than I thought I would. I got it as a curiosity and because it was cheap, and now I find I have a soft spot for it. It is a very friendly rifle. Easy to shoot well off hand, which is a big plus, something not many people have mentioned and important to me.
I have found mine as accurate as it needs to be with its open sights, about 3-4 inch groups depending on ammo, and since no one I know can get better than that with the scope mounts they have on them, I cant see the point in putting a scope on it. Would wreck a perfectly handy carbine. It only weighs 7.4 pounds as well, which is a full pound less that what they say on the interweb.
I have not shot a deer with it yet, but I have been seriously thinking of taking it for the roar, simply because I have often felt the lack of a quick follow up shot in the bush. I have wanted one sometimes but the bolt was too slow, but a semi with not much recoil would do the trick.
I had two occassions last year when a semi would have proved itself worthwhile, once when I shot a deer and wanted to shoot it again, but I was too slow on the bolt, and another time when I shot and missed one but didnt even try a follow up shot because I knew I couldtn do it in time. Both times I would have probably done what I wanted if I had that cheap Soviet designed Chinese communist semi auto with me.
Yes I am sorely tempted to take it for the roar this year even though I have many more expensive rifles to choose from.
As for the cartridge, a 125 grain .310 bullet at 2400fps is going to do as much damage as a 150 grain .30/30 at 2200 fps on a soft deer I would think; and frankly, its got to be an improvement on a .222, and the .222 kills big deer.
I didnt expect to like that classless totalitarian machine gun. I felt that disassembling it would be like peering into the heart of the dead Soviet empire. But it turns out shes just a friendly Russian peasant girl, with a thin blouse, who is crap at cooking anything except potato soup, but you don't really care.
Have you seen what Russian peasant girls can do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches
They can shoot too...
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psoahibjm7.jpg
CH grab a box of the hornady sst with the steel case and give them a whirl......they absolutely poleaxe big wallabies , havent tried to recover projectiles but by all accounts they doing the bizo very well. being all pointy like a fmj they should feed well too.
A mate was using one for 10 years or more until he got into bow hunting. He shot hundreds of deer and pigs with it just using open sights. The only bad thing was after spotting a deer when it's time to chamber a round he would have to back track 50m-60m and chamber a round so the deer didn't hear bolt getting slammed forward then stalk onto the deer again.
I had a Ruger mini 30 during thoses years and the Ruger was the better gun being stainless steel and better scope mounting at the time. But he shot more deer than me with that sks and he never cleaned it.
A 16" version as rough bush gun. Perfect!
Keep an eye out for a Russian made one as their the one to own. Nearly bought one for shits and giggles and yet may do.
Cheap, accurate enough, hit hard with soft point ammo...not much you can fault them on really considering the price.
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/a...brary-1474.jpg
Kj
I had one for a while, didn't really expect too much from it. I really enjoyed it, ammo was cheap and effective.
I got a rail in from Canada from memory that I mounted a cheap scope on. It made a huge difference, groups went from 4-5 inchs at 100 with open sights to around the 2 inch mark and best ever was an inch.
I loved the no bull shit rugged engineering , just a clever effective design.
If set up right and you get a good one they can be surprisingly accurate, not tack driving but very acceptable as a hunting rifle.
The Russian ones are considered the better build quality and more collectible. However once the Russians moved all their manufacturing plant to China and set up over there to help their fellow Communists out I believe the early ones out of China were also good as Russian supervisors were still present. Serial numbers and factory stamping can be very interesting and hard to decipher but even from the history point of view they are interesting rifles.
Regretted selling my first Norinco SKS which was a 16". Shot it with open sights and managed mostly 3-4" groups at 100m with romanian milsurp. And yes it poleaxed many pigs for me in the bush. Reason for selling was I got another AR for hunting as I wanted to suppress my rifle effectively and keep more meat from my kills. Now I'm on the hunt for another 16" for sentimental reasons.
Nothing wrong with the 7.62 x 39
My first deer was with a mini 30 and plenty of goats with my SKK
All about shot placement and as with any semi auto a bit more emphasis on safety
Only reallyy worthwile mod imo is to lengthen or change the stock, the originals very short. I fitted an ati montecarlo that added 50 mm to the lop and made a huge improvement to both comfort and accuracy. A thumbhole like kimjons, might he better especially for off hand shots
loved my old sks. it was the first centre fire rifle i bought. ammos cheap and they take a beating. mine came with a scope rail and a cheap 4x32 scope but it did the trick out to 125m on pigs and goats. hadnt really used it in a year or two as i got an nhm90 so i traded it not long ago for a norinco bush ranger in x39 too as a wee hunting rifle for the mrs.
I just took my ATI off and put the orignal back on. Found a 2" butt pad on Ebay for round $40nz landed. BackQuote:
Originally Posted by Marty Henry
to nice and light again and groups tighter than the ATI. POI changed now shoots 200mm low at 100, go figure? I'll have to set the sight post again next time I'm out. It did need re-zeroing when I changed stocks to start with.
Avoid any receiver cover mounted scope mounts though.
I am leaving the stock as it is at the moment, since most of my shooting is with either a pack or a daybag on.
Shot countless goats and my first red deer with and SKS. Never jammed or failed to fire. I think the bigger slugs work better on goats than .223 but shot placement is always crucial as well as a suitable bullet. We used to pull projectiles from chi-com ammo and replace with speer soft points. Worked a treat, I was getting more than 2500fps from the 20 inch barrel.
Might buy another.
I am impressed with all of this positive feed back, makes me want to go out and buy one. Are we talking about the ones that go for about $499.00 at Gun City?
I have that particular stock sitting being useless at the moment. $80 for anyone that wants it. Comes with gas tube cover of courseQuote:
Originally Posted by Marty Henry
I have seen them as cheap as $325 in the gun city sales so it might pay to wait or go in and bargain them down a bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fawls
They're solid rifles for the money. Cheap and dirty but just work. Some of the cheap 20" one's GC sells are lemons though. They have some fucky non OEM mags that don't work that flash. I've seen afew that weren't up to the build quality of my "paratrooper". And that wasn't great...but it ran like a sewing machine.
Yes, those are the ones, although any shop can get you one, you shouldnt have to buy from Gun City. (No one should have to buy from Gun City)Quote:
Originally Posted by Fawls
But stick with the straight 'normal' ones, dont buy one that has some aftermarket magazines or are threaded or come with any accessories. Just buy Soviet rifle, as manufactured by Communist Peoples Republic. You can buy them second hand on Trademe for $300, and that would be worthwhile I would think, they are hard to break, and they have chromed bores.
A lot of people are not used to open sights as well I think, and blame their lackluster performance on the rifle, and sell them on after having a bit of a play around.
Don't get me wrong they are not sniper rifles, and a scope will not help you shoot much better, but if you can shoot 3-4 inch groups at a 100m then the rifle is doing what it was designed for, and you have a perfectly effective big game rifle out to 150 - 200 metres, which is as far as you should shoot with a little 7.62x39 cartridge anyway.
As too build quality, all the Chinese SKS's I have seen were all the same quality of fit and finish, and apart from the soft wood stocks, I couldn't really fault them. The Chinese were never cheap on their military production. (It's feeding peasants they are were not much good at.) The military SKS's are better quality in my opinion than the commercial M14/M305 rifles that Norinco have been exporting. But then, I have had two Chinese SKS's, but never a Russian one, or East European one, for all I know they may be better. Certainly they seem to have better stocks. A laminated stock would be better for an SKS, but the Chinese stocks are definitely light-weight, and that may have been why they used that Catalpa wood.
Thanks for the reply everyone. Lots of positive posts. Seems a sks might just make its way into my safe and into bush from there!
when they do their specials they are 399 or lessQuote:
Originally Posted by Fawls
my wife has as sks, dragunov stock for extra pull length. compact 4x32.
i have owned a few over the years, best one i had was a restored ruski one, made the norinco 56 and mini 30 look like crap when the groupings were compared.
I've personally found the 16" versions to be of better build quality than most of the late 20" ones. My mate recently sold his and it was fairly decent actually had really nice looking wood. My one had terrible wood but I couldnt fault it funtionally. I could count on one hand the stoppages I had over probably 2000 rounds, before I got into AR's.
Watch the guncity $1 reserve auctions. If you're patient, you can pick one up for under $300. I believe if you win an auction, you can head into the store and take your pick.
I've had a Russian one and a couple of Norinco ones to compare, and with the examples I had, the Russian one was certainly better. The receiver machining was smoother, while the Norinco ones had obvious tooling marks everywhere, including on the sliding surfaces. You could feel the difference when pulling the bolt back. Both cycle fine with cheap Barnaul steel ammo, but the Russian one felt nicer.
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Cheap rugged and reliable is what you get anything extra is a bonus I had one good rifle for what it was
most of the dings and dents can be pulled out by using a wet tea towel over the damage and carefully using a clothes iron to swell the wood out, takes awhile but most of the damage will come out.
but hell its a soviet/chinese military rifle not a holland & holland
