Let me just say, it’s pretty cool having the UPS man bring a rifle right to your door, after you ordered it off the modern Internets. Today’s delivery was a Mosin-Nagant M91/30, which is a rifle you would have been well familiar with if you were a Soviet soldier in the Great Patriot War. Of course, you wouldn’t have been familiar with it for long, because your life expectancy as a soldier in the Red Army was probably measured in hours. What makes the Mosin-Nagant a great rifle isn’t that it’s a particularly great rifle, it’s that you can go look in your sofa to come up with the money to pay for one. It’ll also happily fire ammunition that’s been buried in a farmer’s field in the Ukraine since the First World War, which he’d probably be happy to trade for a liter of vodka.
Shipped from Century Arms, in from the Great State of Vermont, nicely packed in the box:
Wrapped in the local paper, the Milton Independent.
I love what makes the front page there. A quiet day on Lake Arrowhead! I’m really glad they are getting that mold problem under control though. Must be from all the moldy Massholes moving in ;)
The whole deal showing right here. This rifle is arsenal refinished, so the furniture looks pretty good. A few dings and scrapes here and there, but nothing awful.
The receiver markings show this comes from the Izhevsk arsenal in Russia, manufactured in 1944. You can also see the hammer and sickle, certifying the rifle as 100% commie. It’s a shame though, the Russian Imperial markings were much nicer and more ornate than the Soviet era ones.
Like every other rifle I’ve ever gotten from Eastern Europe, it’s packed in a good bit of cosmoline, which will have to be cleaned off before it gets shot. I have an idea of how this must go:
“Igor, you know the Americans, I have heard they love cosmoline.”
“It is true, they can never have enough! Pass me some more will you, Sascha.”
So once the cosmoline comes off, I will have to give a try. I’ll post a range report when I get around to it. Time to enter this one into the bound book and put it away for now. Also on my list for C&R aquisition: Soviet Military Makarov, Nagant Revolver (the pistol that put the ‘Russian’ in Russian Roulette), an M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, a decent Mauser, and anything else interesting I run across. I’m still going to be mostly an EBR shooter, but I figured I’d round out my collection with some historical pieces. Might as well as long as I can get them delivered to my door. I think they need to make the C&R license apply to everything though. My checkbook, however, probably will disagree.