The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

What bullets do you use? I would prefer them to be able to use for hunting which takes out the HP bullets. We have mule deer and elk where I live. I was looking at the Privi Partisan bullets until I saw a field test on Youtube over the weekend and both the 180 gr and 150 gr PP soft point boat tail bullets did not hold up worth a darn on a wet newspaper test. Given that data, what bullets are you using for hunting? I would prefer something that is not round nosed but I probably will try those as well. I would ideally like to stay around the 170-185 grain range in size but would consider a little lighter if there is a really good, solid, accurate bullet that gives great results in the Mosin.

I doubt that I would ever consider hunting with the iron sight Mosin Nagant, as I would prefer a scoped modern bolt action center fire rifle of lighter weight. However, if that was all I had, I would probably hand load Hornady's #3130 .312 diameter 174Gr Round Nose in a PPU case with Fed 210 primer and 42 grains of IMR 4895. This would be a perfect deer load and would have adequate ballistics for ranges of 200 yards or less.

I haven't gone yet myself, but I have heard good things about the Winchester 180gr.

I've yet to hunt with my M44 but like the .312 Hornady Interloc 174gr. JSP-RN.

Loaded to around 2300-2500 fps. Should give excellent results on medium game out to 200-250 yards & from everything I've read they do perform very well.

I still have 5 of the bear hunting rounds Ron7.62 (from the old forum) gave me, I put theose in the gun, and have a couple stripper clips full of my handloads using 150 gr. Hornday SP. Ron'7.62 used 168 gr. Hornady HP Match IIRC.

180 gr Sierra pro hunter ....
.311 and 42.5 gr 4064 in ppu cases in my m39. In m27 same bullet with 40 gr of 4064.


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I have had great success with 150 and 180gr game kings. Ballistic tips punched through. Way to much blood trailing.

The Russians say that these are, "The cartridges for shooting big game animals"

Took this young buck with my m39 and the load listed above shortly after posting the load data. He ran 75 yds but a blind man could follow the blood trail.



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I have a couple boxes of those also, millman.

I used Barnaul 203 grain soft point this season on a whitetail. Baseball sized exit wound. May have been too much???


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Dead is dead, I suppose.

millman wrote:Dead is dead, I suppose.

But if you want edible MEAT, you must consider "overkill"

I have killed deer with 200 grain .308 sierras from an M39. Used 150 grain PPU and 203 grain brown bear. Could not really tell a difference in performance.


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millman wrote:Dead is dead, I suppose.

It was indeed DEAD. Made it maybe 10 yards before collapsing if that far. I might dial it down a little next year. But at the same time I couldn't tell that I lost otherwise good meat from it either.


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