You see comments that individual rifles are very sensitive to ammo and I have a good example. My Finn M39 is counterbored with only fair bore and refuses to group with any quality ammo (including my handloads) but shoots quite well with the Chinese light ball surplus that I have (filthy, smelly stuff). On the other hand, I have a refurbed but genuine PU ('43 Tula) that will do 3 shots sub-inch with Chinese or Soviet surplus and also shoots every other type of modern ammo I've tried in it very well. It has a near perfect bore and perfect bedding. So, my experience has been that most Mosins will shoot surplus pretty well and a rifle in excellent condition may prove to be extremely accurate with it. For fun (cheap) shooting it can't be beat.
milsurpo
Its been my experience, over owning/shooting hundreds of different surplus firearms, that if the bores are in excellent condition and the stocks are in similar condition, or at least not cracked or broken, that the firearm will function and shoot very well, sometimes extremely well.
Its also been my experience that many shooters just can't handle the recoil generated by milsurp rifles and their steel buttplates. Not only that but many don't know how to shoot with open sights.
The people on this site, that love and shoot milsurps, are often exceptions to what I just wrote. Still, I've tried to introduce people to shooting milsurps and they've fallen into the above category.
Poor groups, because they're recoil shy and won't admit it, don't know how to use fixed, open sights etc. Their usual retort is "It's just old junk, or it doesn't fit me properly and other often heard excuses."
It's my contention that if a rifle is in VG to Exc condition, inside and out, been bedded in the manner it is supposed to be, it will shoot well with consistent ammunition.
The person shooting those firearms needs to be properly trained in their use as well. Especially how to use different types of open iron sights.
Mosins are very accurate rifles, when fed consistent ammo they like, just like any other milsurp.
It's extremely difficult to judge which ammo is best, simply because the reason ammo has been sold for surplus has either been found to be unreliable or often just reached its best before date.
We were a bit spoiled, for a long time, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They dumped everything that went bang and they had hundreds of different storage facilities all through Eastern Europe and Asia. They never threw out anything. They dumped their old equipment all over the world to any third world nation that asked for support. Now that most of the Soviet stores have been depleted, the third world nations are opening up their warehouses of obsolete firearms/ammo and a lot of it hasn't been stored properly.
I've gone through storage facilities that boggle the imagination for size and content. One facility, just outside of Belo Horizonte' had ammunition stored, containing black powder cartridges, that still looked like they were made yesterday. That was 45 years ago, but it's indicative of what's out there.
