Thursday, December 11, 2008

Deer 5- dude at range 0

Well, it's not just me. I went to try my new Finn M39 today (I've had it for at least two weeks but haven't had a chance to get to the range). Since the cease-fires were being measured in glacial epochs I got to talking to the guy next to me, Dave Something. He was shooting a 6.5mm and a 30-40 Krag to prep for a hunting trip in Texas. That 30-40 is 109 years old and put five out of five in the black- even his "flier" was in the black!
So he was telling me about how he's been hunting in WA for at least the last twenty years and every year he's come home successful- and apparently without much effort... except for the last two years. Last year and this he didn't see any real sign, no deer and obviously came home empty handed. That's part of why he's heading to TX to a ranch that his uncle owns, or his uncle's friend owns or some such. Something about 60% die off a couple years ago during winter... I sincerely hope it gets better for all of us who aren't spending just one weekend out in the woods.

Back to the Finn... it was spectacular! Once I put about 10 rounds through its shiny bore it started to ... dare I say... group! It actually started to put rounds in the black. That's good news because it's tiring to go to the range and shoot and shoot and shoot but have the rounds going all over the place. I slugged the bores for the other 4 and the other Finn is at .310. I assume this is the same. The worst of the other Mosins is at .314! I'm not sure what to do about that but I'm hoping that using .311 bullets and not cleaning all of the fouling out will help. Of course, they need to be cleaned each time because the Berdan primers are corrosive, but I won't go so far as to use the JB Bore Cleaner until all the rifinling is shiny and the patches come out clean. Apparently a little fouling is good.

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