A good shooting week-end

Saturday morning saw me on the firing line at the local CMP shoot, this time with my old friend, my 1944-manufactured General Motors M1 carbine. I've had this rifle since the late 1980's, and it used to be my constant companion on my backpacking forays along the shore of Lake Superior. It's light weight (5.5lbs) and compact size along with it's potent punch and 15 round magazines gave me peace of mind while I hiked, and not a little recreation when targets of opportunity presented themselves. Alas, it was eventually replaced by a succession of other backpacking rifles once President Clinton came into office and banned re-importation of surplus US military that had been sent abroad. (This one had been given or sold to the Israeli government back in the 1960's.) I have owned many M1 carbines over the years but this one has always been a favorite due to it's reliability, it's accuracy, and because it was my first one. So when the gun club announced that they would have carbine ammunition available for shooters who wanted to bring these little rifles out, I decided to give this one a day in the sun. And even though I haven't shot it in six or seven years, it didn't let me down. I most probably would have scored higher with Garand or Springfield, but the little carbine still put every round on target, and that target's still smaller than the chest area of an enemy soldier or garden-variety bad guy at 100 yards, so I'm not complaining. It never failed to fire, and it held the 8-ring with only an occasional flyer, one of which was caused by a spent cartridge from my neighboring shooter's rifle striking my barrel just as I was squeezing the trigger. (That was a six-ring hit. Damn.) But karma repaid my friend a bit later in the shoot, when a cartridge from his neighbor on the other side actually went down the neck of his t-shirt during the standing off-hand stage. It was funny when it happened, but it left him with some pretty visible burn marks all down his back. Ouch!

Sunday afternoon friends came over and we again headed out to the range, this time to help my friend zero his new Ruger Mini-14 and test some pistol loads that I'd worked up. Almost as an afterthought I decided that I might as well try out a Finnish Mosin Model 39 that I'd picked up some time back but hadn't taken out to shoot yet.
This rifle also dates back to the Second World War, having been manufactured in 1941 at Valtionkivaarehtedas (VKT), the Finnish State Arsenal located in Jyväskylä, Finland. Coming into existence too late to participate in the Winter War against the Soviet Union (1939-1940), it was definitely on hand for the second phase, known as the Continuation War, that saw Finland resume fighting against the Soviet Union and also indirectly against Britain and the other nations which were allied with the Soviets against Nazi Germany. (The United States never took a side officially, but did provide significant materiel support to the Russians, some of which was used against the Finns.) These rifles, though patterned on the Russian Mosin-Nagant, were made to a considerably higher level of quality, and are typically much more accurate than a comparable Communist-bloc Mosin, which it resembles in many ways. But then the Russian rifles were churned out en masse to be handed to conscripts that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin couldn't have cared less about, whereas the Finns were fighting for their homes and families and every rifle was crafted with the thought that the man it was being issued to--who might be a relative or a neighbor--was part of that last line of defense against the Russian invader. They were well-made and most were kept in Finland's Ready Reserve after the war, carefully stored and cared for until they were declared surplus in the 1990's and sold.
This particular gun has matching serial numbers on every part, meaning that it's original as it left the factory, and not cobbled together from spare pieces of other rifles. The bore was sharp and bright, and even though it wasn't zeroed, it only took two shots to put hits on a 12" paper plate at 100 yards, and three more to start consistently pegging a 4" orange disk in the center of the plate. Most impressive for a rifle that's approaching seventy years old. I could easily see a dedicated Finnish marksman knocking off Russian invaders at a distance with this particular rifle. This one may well be one of the most accurate Non-US surplus rifles that I've come across. My only regret was that I didn't bring more 7.62x54mm ammo to the range. I didn't bring much because I really don't care for Mosins, but I didn't want to stop shooting this gem, and the 40 rounds I'd brought were gone way too quickly.

Ah well... Still a good day on the range, and a nice week-end all told.