Why You Should By A CZ 858/ or VZ 58
- First, thank you to everyone's great input on some questions I'd asked a bit ago.
- Secondly, the VZ/CZ (8)58 (hereinafter referred to as just 'CZ') is definitively not an over-priced SKS.
In some of the threads I've seen it suggested that you skip buying a CZ because 'you might as well just by an SKS and spend the extra money on a crate of ammo.' Don't!
In comparing the two price/feature-wise, you have to figure in how much it would cost to 'upgrade' an SKS to have the same features as the CZ.
- A pistol-gripped folding stock for the SKS isn't something that generally looks that nice. Decent stocks can be had and modified so that they have a pistol grip with some trouble or one of the better Dragunov ones can be put on and they give you a pistol-ish grip but you'll definitely spend some dough there.
- Detachable mags present another problem. Finding and buying an SKS-D is harder and more expensive these days then it has been for a long time and you still have no bolt hold-open without some major modding. Modifiying a standard SKS to take mags is a chore and leads (generally) to either major re-working or significant reliability issues.
- As well, I've yet to come across an SKS that's any more then 'minute-of-zombie' accurate. Which leads into point number three (for those of you keeping track of these things).
- A pistol-gripped folding stock for the SKS isn't something that generally looks that nice. Decent stocks can be had and modified so that they have a pistol grip with some trouble or one of the better Dragunov ones can be put on and they give you a pistol-ish grip but you'll definitely spend some dough there.
- Thirdly, the CZ is a great gun; fun to shoot, 'tactical' enough for those who like that sort of thing (like me
), cheap to feed and, perhaps surprisingly, quite accurate for what it is.
I took my brand-new CZ to the range today (I have the non-restricted CZ 858 BTW) to sight it in, get some mag-changing practice and have a little fun. Laniru (Supreme Commander - Canadian Undead Neutralization Team) was good enough to let me tag along with him up to PoCo today and so I put on my CaUnNeTe 'Zombie Hunter' shirt and packed the 100 rds of Hungarian mil-surp ball 7.62x39 that I'd bought at HACS yesterday in my backpack and hit the Expo line.
As a side-note, every CZ I've seen has had a receiver coloured somewhere between dark-grey and medium-grey - I don't know how I got so lucky but mine is so dark that you can only tell it's the slightest bit grey when you're really close to it. That makes me very happy.
After sending about 80 rounds down-range this afternoon, I decided to get setious about seeing what this thing could do and shot two strings of 4 rounds each (I only shot four because I wanted the extra round to 'load-up' my other two remaining mags for some TacRifle-style 6-round fun) at two different targets I'd setup at 50 yards (or 50 meters, whichever PoCo is).
Conditions were very nice, sunny but not-too-hot, minimal wind and the range had quieted down a bit. The only drawback was that I'm a lefty and only had a right-hand bench to shoot from, which I sorted out by angling the bench so that I could keep the rifle on the sandbags while stilling being able to see.
My first four ended up in a roughly 2-inch group, which I felt was very decent for A) it being my first time shooting the gun, B) using cheap mil-surp ammo, C) using iron sights and D) not having a very stable or comfortable shooting position.
My second string was much, much better! Exactly the same conditions, really tight grouping and even one bullet so persistent in hitting the paper that it had to turn around and come back for a second pass!!??!! (Actually, one of Laniru's .45 ACP rounds from his USC overshot the backstop as his targets were up on stands ~20yds - hard to see in the pic but the 'flyer' is actually a bigger hole from a bigger round.)
(Each ring is one inch apart - the blurred parts in the two pics are where my name was.)
So I'm pretty excited to see what this rifle will be able to do with optics and greater familiarity; maybe I'll have to try prone next time I'm out.
To sum-up: I have a beautiful Yugo M59/66 SKS; it's a great gun, it's lots of fun, it was my first rifle and I love it. I've shot lots of other SKS's, Norinco's, other Yugo's both 59/66 and 59 and even a beautiful Russian one and liked each and every one for what they were; cheap to buy, fun to shoot, easy to 'bubba' and reliable enough to consistently put rounds down-range with the occaisional good-times slam-fire that we all love.
The CZ is much, much more. It's worth the extra money. It looks cool. It shoots well. It's very, very fun and it's much more accurate then any SKS I've ever shot; and by quite a wide margin at that.
My advice; buy one. What's not to love?
