Modern combat with bolt action?

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Shevrock

My understanding, open to recalibration, is as follows:

ATI makes a synthetic monte carlo stock for the mosins. You can buy them for about $60-$70. The rifled action and all moving parts can be dropped in and installed with no hassle, but if your concerned about high accuracy down the line, you'll want sand paper and patience, to ensure a perfect fit. Thats a whole other set of advice. A lot of guys paint these stocks with aftermarket products designed for finishing gun parts, since the plastic finish scratches easily. They really are pretty sturdy, but if you get one, buy a fresh one, I've heard that the manufacture quality on these stocks has improved with time.

ATI also makes sight mounts and bolt modifications that I would strongly suggest staying away from. If you want to scope your mosin, look up Accumounts, and Rock Solid mounts. People seem to be much happier with those.

You might want to replace the rear sight leaf with a Mojo peep sight, also. No gunsmithing involved, and a lot of people shoot better with them.

There is an aftermarket Match Ball Trigger for the mosin which many people love, which will get rid of the miserable 100 year old trigger pull of Iron Ivan.

Accuracy is generally better with the longer 91/30s than the m44s, but it really is rifle to rifle. There are several ideas about rifle quality amongst mosin nerds, some of which are probably true. The year of manufacture will greatly affect the past of the rifle, and you'll probably want to pass up ones that fired thousands of rounds and slept for months in freezing mud. But again, nothing is hard and fast. I picked up a late war Tula that looks like it sat greased in a crate while the war raged. If the bore is excellent, the crown is crisp and clean, and you're using decent ammo, these rifles out-shoot many modern mass produced bolt rifles for sale in the hunting section for 5 times as much. The other thing people do to improve shooting is to "slug" the barrel, which involved tamping a lead weight from one end to the other with a wooden dowel. The resulting pice of lead will be deformed to match the rifling grooves of your specific rifle. You measure that diameter and then pick up the ammo that was loaded with bullets that most closely match. That information is all out there is you look on www.7.62x54r.net.

Everyone will tell you about the sticky bolt problem, and it will probably be there if you get one, but there is a wealth of information out there on working out that kink, if you're patient and so inclined.

I don't think there is much of a reason to keep the bayonet on a 91/30 or a m44. These guns do there best work at over a football field away, and they are going to categorically fail in close quarters against anyone with a firearm. Anyone without a firearm can be beaten to death with the buttstock, or dispatched more effectively with a machete.

Also pick up a headspace gauge if you get one, and use it to check the headspace before you start clipping off rounds.
 
KiltedClaymore:

A few months ago somebody on this or "thefiringline" etc claimed that he had seen a "YouTube" video in which a Mosin round knocked a German Soldat (soldier) off his feet, and continued on through a wall, killing the Soldat behind the wall.
As for self-defense, a guy stopped a charging grizzly bear with four very quick shots from his Lee Enfield Jungle Carbine.
A superb shot and nerves of steel. I doubt that my MN 44 could be cocked that fast.

If money were not a factor, I might have bought either a shorter-barreled Yugo Mauser or the LE Jungle Carbine. The MN rifle and ammo's prices allowed me to afford one. For another (only $150 with fees) , will need to do
a 'song and dance':eek:, or 'rugdance' :eek:in front of my wife :scrutiny::scrutiny::rolleyes: We just spent about $2700 on our older cat-bladder stones and liver biopsies. But no more of that (yep-can see you guys now :rolleyes:).

ShevRock:
If money were not such a factor, would you consider the LE J. Carbine and a recoil pad?
Really popular with British troops in Burma (WW2-now Myanmar).
 
Well, only hits count. The current fad seems to be capacity driven. As if firing a whole bunch of rounds in the general direction of ones adversary is somehow better than actually hitting it. If you had to face these types of folks, I'd say that your bolt action, firing well aimed shots, would be more effective than their spraying lead in your general direction and hoping to score a hit.

I see it at the range all the time. It seems that shooters have split into two factions lately. On one hand we have the old school shooters, to whom marksmanship is the priority. These guys shoot the centers out of their bullseyes with stunning frequency. On the other hand we have the folks with stuff sticking out of their rifles in all directions. They fire off pounds of lead and don't do much more than frighten their target. Most of the rounds that actually hit anything, hit the target stand mostly.
 
Well, only hits count. The current fad seems to be capacity driven. As if firing a whole bunch of rounds in the general direction of ones adversary is somehow better than actually hitting it. If you had to face these types of folks, I'd say that your bolt action, firing well aimed shots, would be more effective than their spraying lead in your general direction and hoping to score a hit.
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Hits do count. The assumption with the "accuracy" uber allis crowd is that each aimed shot hits. I believe this is false.

I am very proud of my target shooting skills. I have worked on them for years. I will have a higher hit probability than someone who cannot hit a barn, but I do not want to get stuck with some bolt action or front loading musket if I were in combat.

Once you, the "lone ranger", let off a shot, and once modern troops with modern weapons find out where you are, you are about to become a death statistic.
 
Once you, the "lone ranger", let off a shot, and once modern troops with modern weapons find out where you are, you are about to become a death statistic.
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Once Jibaro headhunters with blowguns get you fixed, you're toast.

It isn't the weaponry, it's the tactical dilemma.
 
First, my disclaimer - I have never been an elite special ops soldier, I have never been a civilian "contractor", I have never beaten Chuck Norris in any conflict, and I do not play a doctor on TV. My opinions are not worth any more than anyone else's.

Pink - Hits are preferred but misses also count for something.
This why I would rule a bolt action out for anything other than sniping/guerilla warfare.
Suppose you are in combat (meaning that you're a uniformed soldier) when someone shoots at you and misses.
First of all, he just missed you but it still counted. You're no longer doing useful soldier stuff. Now you're on the ground hoping that your pounding heart doesn't elevate you far enough off the ground for him to get a second clear shot.
Still, you figure out more than less where he is (maybe) and start firing your rifle in his general direction. Even if you are alone, the bad guy can't just take his sweet time carefully lining up his sights on you to try a second shot. At the very least, he will be distracted by all the bullets you are sending past his head. Or maybe if you are "missing" close enough and fast enough, he won't be able to return fire at all. He might be too busy taking cover (AKA hiding) and trying to survive for just a few more minutes. If you're really lucky, you'll be "missing" very close to his position and he'll make the mistake of sticking his head up. Then you'll hit him and he'll never shoot at anyone again.
If you're not alone, your buddies can sneak around and take him out while you're "missing" him.

Most bolt actions can't really be used to provide a whole lot in the way of cover fire.
It doesn't mean that they can't be used effectively, but it does (in my very humble opinion) put them at a real disadvantage if you're trying to fight toe to toe with an opponent who is armed with a quicker firing weapon.

As has been noted, you'd have to alter your tactics to make the best use of them.

Also, put another way, why are belt fed machine guns effective?
I've shot them and a lot of the time, you do miss.
So if only hits count, a belt fed machine guns would be next to useless.
But they're actually very effective.


Shevrock - no offense man, but you'd probably get better responses to your questions if you posted different questions in new threads. It's just a better way to get direct answers by people who know something about your questions.
Just saw that you only have about 150 posts ...
Again, no offense.
 
put another way, why are belt fed machine guns effective?
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Goon, you're off a little bit. Part of the reason a MG is effective is what is called a "beaten zone". IOW, you want some dispersion between shots, to cover a greater area. Part of the reason the BAR wasn't the most effective arm around for a LMG, is that it's actually too accurate- not much beaten zone.

(The other reason is it's mag fed.)

J
 
even zombies have a higher probability of causing a proper SHTF situation in the US
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I, for one, will welcome our zombie overlords.


chevrock,

There is a THR Library button at the top right of this page, where you can find a lot of information like the following:
Minute of Angle ( MOA ) - Angular unit of measure used to describe the accuracy potential of rifles, ammunition, bullets or loads. One MOA equals 1/60th of a degree ( 21 600 minutes in a circle ) and subtends 1.047 inches at 100 yards, or, for practical purposes, 1" at 100 yards. In hunting terms, a rifle/load which, at 100 yards, can consistently place five consecutive shots in a cluster measuring 1" between the centres of the two outermost holes ( "minute of angle groups" ) is considered extremely accurate. For Benchrest competitions the figure is obviously much less.
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I believe Jeff Cooper said something to the effect:
"The advantage of the bolt action rifle is that you don't have to wait for the gas piston to cycle a new round into the chamber"
 
On the other hand we have the folks with stuff sticking out of their rifles in all directions. They fire off pounds of lead and don't do much more than frighten their target
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Hee hee.

"The advantage of the bolt action rifle is that you don't have to wait for the gas piston to cycle a new round into the chamber"
Click to expand...

Ditto for revolvers vs. semi pistols.
 
Once you, the "lone ranger", let off a shot, and once modern troops with modern weapons find out where you are, you are about to become a death statistic.
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That's going to happen regardless what type of gun the "lone wolf" has.

A lot depends on the scenario. From the OPs question, I was thinking more of a "SHTF" situation rather than a lone wolf vs. a trained military. It seems that a lot of folks believe that they need some tacticool gun with all sorts of useless doodads for self defense. My point is don't sell short the feller who can actually hit what he aims at, regardless what kind of gun he uses. If a bolt action is all you have, then a bolt action is what you use. Get good with it and you're already ahead of most of the "spray and pray" crowd.

As for the belt feds, most of the casualties were from machineguns forcing the enemy to keep their heads down, while artillery came in and pounded them. That works fine in a military situation, with resupply, etc. In a more civilian atmosphere, spraying rounds in the general direction of your enemy only wastes ammo. How much can you carry?
 
One bolt action rifle will likely just serve to get the shooter killed after accomplishing little more than harassing fire, maybe a casualty or two.

Several bolt action rifles - if the proper tactics are used, can create a lot more damage. But again, the shooter will likely get pinned down or flushed out and killed handily.

Hundreds of bolt actions used strategically can be very effective.
 
Nothing necessarily wrong with using an old bolt gun for homeland defense even in the modern era. Lots of insurgents use them just fine, and the whole "get killed with retaliation" fire is not so easy to pull off.. You DO have to at least know where the shooter is. In an urban situation, sniping from 200-300M is certaily an acceptable form of partisanship if you are smart. IE: One shot, then egress. Sort of hard to return fire when you don't know which building down the road hid the shooter. I bet you would be hard pressed to even determine what side of the street it came from.

What I would be most concerned about is keeping your weapon hidden from the likely searches for such weapons. Anyone that invades the US would certainly have to make house to house searches for weapons part of their plan. One bolt gun that you KNOW how to use, and a few hundred rounds of ammo would survive such searches a lot easier than the basement stash that could arm a small country. Im not sure why, but in my backyard there is a 6' deep pipe lined vertical hole about 12" wide, with a big rock on top of it. I dont know what the hell it was built FOR, but I know what it WILL be used for in the SHTF situation. A decoy .22 beater and some ammo 'hidden' in the barn might just throw off any searches if it came to that, leaving my real long gun hidden elsewhere. It's just wide enough to sink a bunch of .50 sized ammo cans in and leave enough room to set a rifle or 3 on top of them.

(yes, I measured).

If you can hit a body shot with a 7.62x54 round at 250M, which is perfectly do-able with practice.... urban cover, concealment and common sense would make 'harassing fire' perfect. I don't know about you guys, but a 'harassing' shot to the leg makes a hamberger-ey stump that will tie that guy up and tie up all his buddies trying to help him just fine for a while. If you sit there and try to pick off all the guys trying to help him, ya, you are going to get caught and shot. If you take comfort in the mess, casualty and subsequent support that it will take to keep this guy going for the next two months, you have done your job. An invasion into america would be a test of logistics. If you wound a guy with 'harassing fire' it will tie him up, tie up all the people and supplies to treat him etc.. Enough of that and the invading war effort can certainly come to a crawl or stop trying to keep up with all those wounded.

That's to say nothing of the guys that are perfectly capable of hitting head shots at 300+ meters. Im not saying people shout go toe to toe with the dropping foreign airborn as they land, or face off with waves of tanks... but after that first wave, there's going to be patrols, supply lines, guys guarding gas stations, trucks raiding the local walmarts, billets and all of that support activity going on behind the lines that can be made impossible due to 'harassing fire'. Each front line guy takes at least ten behind the lines to support. The tip of the enemy's spear requires a long handle too.
 
"On one of the campaigns of the French and Indian War, Washington fought in the Battle of Monongahela. On July 9, 1755, at the end of two hours of battle, more than half of the British and American troops (714 of the 1,300) had been shot down. Only thirty of the French and Indians had been shot. Washington’s commanding officer, General Edward Braddock, was killed. There were 86 British and American officers involved in that battle, and at the end, George Washington was the only officer who had not been shot off his horse".

David Barton, America’s Godly Heritage, p. 2

Now, I would hardly dare preach at you, but I will say that in the end the weapon is immaterial to the struggle.

We shall all have our appointment in due time.
 
JShirley said:
Goon, you're off a little bit. Part of the reason a MG is effective is what is called a "beaten zone". IOW, you want some dispersion between shots, to cover a greater area. Part of the reason the BAR wasn't the most effective arm around for a LMG, is that it's actually too accurate- not much beaten zone.
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IIRC, the beaten zone is the area between the top of the head and the bottom of the feet (first catch and first graze?), the area in which one of your rounds should probably hit something.
The funny thing about it is that the only reason that you have a zone is because many of your shots miss.
On the BAR, I didn't know that. But it makes sense. Apparently it didn't miss enough.

Plink said:
As for the belt feds, most of the casualties were from machineguns forcing the enemy to keep their heads down, while artillery came in and pounded them. That works fine in a military situation, with resupply, etc. In a more civilian atmosphere, spraying rounds in the general direction of your enemy only wastes ammo. How much can you carry?
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most of what you say is true. Modern combat is often fought with a belt fed keeping someone's head down while someone else sneaks in and kills him, or calls in artillery or an air strike and kills him. The fact remains that misses still do count. If they didn't, those guys getting missed could just stand up, walk right over, and shoot you. But they don't. Instead, they stay right where they are behind rocks and in holes and wait for something to come over and kill them.
Hits are better but misses count.
AFAIK, the Swiss are the only ones who use a large militia of "civilian" soldiers but even they must have the ability to keep their civilians in ammunition and beans.
For the rest of us civilians, we're not all that likely to wind up as participants in "modern combat" (which ironically, really isn't that modern either). We're not even that likely to wind up in the middle of guerilla warfare (which is actually very old but still pretty effective).
The "How much ammo can you carry?" argument doesn't make a huge difference for most of us because a self defense shooting will probably be over before you have to reload anyway (to me, self defense does not equal combat).

If the OP would like to see how bolt actions work out in guerilla warfare, he'd be well advised to google "Winter War". ;)
As Nook pointed out, urban environments with lots of stuff to hide behind would probably add to the effectiveness of guerilla tactics.
 
For the rest of us civilians, we're not all that likely to wind up as participants in "modern combat". We're not even that likely to wind up in the middle of guerilla warfare.
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You are right. Most people are not going to risk themselves, but there are enough ex-military, rednecks and othewise that will. I'm not talking about squadding up everyone on the street. In fact I would recommend not squadding up with your neighbors. You never know who is going to get caught and talk. I'm just saying for whoever is willing, a bolt action mosin, grandpappy's remmy deer gun, will be fine for some good old homeland defense.

What I worry about is the systematic neutering of our populace with gun control laws, restrictions and negative connotations toward those that take up shooting. One of these days, someone's going to get cocky and pull a landing off on our country. Maybe not in ten years, or even 50, but eventually.. I just hope there's enough piss, vinegar, skill and marksmanship in the general populace left for us to fight back.
 
For the rest of us civilians, we're not all that likely to wind up as participants in "modern combat". We're not even that likely to wind up in the middle of guerilla warfare.
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You are right. Most people are not going to risk themselves, but there are enough ex-military, rednecks and othewise that will.
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I think you missed his point. I think he was saying that most of us will never have the opportunity to "risk it," in some sort of militia action, even if we were willing to.
 
The great benefit of the bolt-action rifle is its simplicity, non-threatening nature, and almost universal encouragement of skill.
That and the fact that, if an American militia needed to be raised, we'd have millions of men and women on our sides.
100,000 US soldiers with M4s/M16s vs. 1-5 million men and women with bolt-guns hiding in the Adirondacks?
I'm betting any commander will be quaking in his boots if he were tasked with that mission.
It would be a death-trap.
 
IIRC, the beaten zone is the area between the top of the head and the bottom of the feet (first catch and first graze?), the area in which one of your rounds should probably hit something.
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The beaten zone is the area where the shots actually hit. Normally the beaten zone is eliptical.

The DANGER zone is that area where the bullets are not higher than a man's head -- where a man standing short of the beaten zone would be hit.

Grazing fire is fire that is not higher than a man's head from the muzzle to the beaten zone -- in other words, all danger zone.

Plunging fire is fire that is higher than a man's head at some point in the trajectory.

The classic use of a machine gun is to fire at a shallow angle to your own front -- preferrably along the enemy side of your defensive wire (which would be laid out in a series of interlocking Xs.) Attacking enemy soldiers would pile up at the edge of the wire and be swept away by continuous grazing fire.
 
Modern combat is often fought with a belt fed keeping someone's head down while someone else sneaks in and kills him, or calls in artillery or an air strike and kills him. The fact remains that misses still do count.
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The real issue seems to be volume of fire, and tactics can be adapted to give any weapon a massive volume of fire. Machine guns are good, machine guns are great. But if I want to keep heads down while another element manuvers, I can replace a machine gun with a squad of riflemen, even with bolt actions. It's labor inefficient, but doable. Give me ten guys with SMLEs, and they'll waste an awful lot of lead, quickly:
The Mad Minute
And those are aimed shots, in competition, with the gun half loaded to start. IIRC, a Sgt. got around 30 something aimed shots out of one at one point. There are stories about German officers retreating from British positions because the SMLE's rate of fire made them think the Brits had more automatic weapons than they actually did.

Know the strengths and weaknesses of the weapon you have, and adjust tactics accordingly.
 
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