What SKS would you recommend to look at?
Any SKS that shoots!!!
I'm not kidding. Read the stickies in the Red Rifles forum, but the gist is, clean the cosmoline out of it, including disassembling the bolt (piece of cake it's so easy), get some surplus ammo, shoot the hell out of it, and read the stickies again to show how to clean it right.
You can pick up one of the $75 Marstar SKS (built by the Chinese) if you buy a crate of ammo from Marstar, and from what I've read and been told, they're just as reliable as a Russian, Yugoslavian, or other Warsaw Pact (look it up) SKS rifles.
I've owned two Russian SKS rifles, and they've both been as reliable as a claw hammer. One of them even took a friend of mine's first whitetail doe deer (yes, she had a tag for it) a couple of years ago.
IMHO, you can't go wrong with a SKS. Simonov sure got this one right.....
As far as your initial question, my 2009 Norinco M305 had absolutely ZERO problems, and I took a mule deer with it in the 2010 season (had an aluminum scope mount and a Bushnell 3x9 40mm Trophy scope on it) before I sent it to 45ACPKING (used to be known as M14Doctor) to have it shortened, trigger work done, gas system shimming, and op-rod replaced.
This was before the short rifles were available in Canada, so I kind of jumped the gun a bit (bad pun, I know

). That said, my 2009 Norc was as reliable as that claw hammer again, and would shoot 2"@100yds with factory ammo, which is plenty accurate enough for hunting.