I picked up a similar one from Westrifle a few months back. Was in awesome shape and the bolt was nice and tight. The bayonet fits extremely tight and they are made to be that way. The Russian doctrine was that a bayonet was to remain fixed at all times, with the only exception of traveling in a vehicle. This is why it is so hard to take off. You can rectify this by a bit of sandpaper and a dowel to ream the inside of the bayonet. The Mosin rifle was also designed to shoot with the bayonet on. The groups will be as much as a foot high when shooting with it off. Mostly due to barrel harmonics and balance. The front sight of the Mosin is not adjustable and you will have to use a bit of wire insulation or electronic heat shrink to raise it up, thus bringing your groups down on the target. Or you can simply shoot it with the bayonet on.
As beautiful shape as mine was in, it badly need a re-crowning job. Group shots at 50 yards was over a foot. After the crown job, it was down to an inch or two at 50 yards. After playing with some reloads, I got the 100 yard groups down to 2 inches, but still playing with loads to draw a final conclusion. If you are hunting with it, the safety is quite stiff and makes a bit of noise, more when putting it on than taking it off. But any metallic noise while hunting is something that I try to avoid. In all fairness to the rifle, it wasn't designed to have a quiet safety, it was an infantry rifle.
I quite like shooting the Mosin and took it with me for half of this years hunting season. Dropped a nice size deer at 160 yards, but I feel both the rifle and my old eyes would be pushing it to be taking shots much past that distance with iron sights. The wood is very attractive, but its softness easily takes on small dings and marks from normal hunting use. Not a huge deal, but I'd like to keep it pretty for as long as possible. My Mosin tends to favor 180grain soft points, but again still playing with loads and have not received the crates of ammo from Marster yet to say what the Russian surplus rounds will do? The Czeck surplus stuff is OK, but works much better in my SVT-40 than the 91/30 Mosin.
Its one of my favorites, I just haven't got to finding the perfect load for it yet. Very surprised that it doesn't shoot as well as the SVT-40, but I'm not done yet. I really don't find that it kicks that hard as it is quite heavy, almost 10 pounds with ammo and sling. The 180s kick a bit more than the 150s, but thats obvious math.
Anyway, awesome rifle and I really like how it looks and I enjoy shooting it.
. Make sure you give the chamber a good cleaning, some mosins suffer the sticky bolt syndrome, when rounds are fired they heat up old lacquer on the chamber walls and throat and the bolt tends to stick, sometimes needing a good whack to open again. Other than that, make sure she's clean and try her out, you'll love it. Cheers.
