I have several thousand rounds of 7.62x39mm ex-military ammo lying around at home. I used to have a SKK semi-auto rifle but that was taken away in the Australian Gov't "Gun Buyback" a few years ago.

I am considering buying a CZ bolt action in 7.62x39 so I can use this ammo.

I am interested to hearing what people have used a 7.62x39 for - what sort of game etc? Before buying the rifle

Thanks

[ 11-17-2002, 08:23: Message edited by: NitroX ]

I have no personal experience on game, but the 7.62x39 has had a mild popularity in my area as a deer cartridge. SKSs were sold very cheaply 10 or 15 years back. I have one and find it a fun plinker.

The consensus was that with soft point ammo, it was about as effective as a .30-30. The pointed bullet offsets the lower muzzle energy by about 100 yards. In a good scoped bolt gun, it should do fine on anything up to about 150 pounds out to about 150 yards.

leftoverdj

what I originally used my SKK for was feral goats and pigs. I used to use an angle grinder and take off a fair amount of the point to expose the core.

Can't say they performed really well but didn't have a lot of opportunities to use it on game before it was confiscated. Did shoot a lot of plastic coke bottles filled with water with it for fun.

I would probably use it for feral goats, pigs and perhaps roos as well with FMJ ammo having the tips taken off. 4000 to 5000 rounds of ammo represents a lot of potential shooting.

The other use for it is just plain practice. I believe the CZ is a mini-Mauser in design. Cheap snap shooting practice for my hunting rifles.

Nitro, they seem to work great out of my little bolt gun,with hand loads they seem to out preform the 30-30,on the Mill rounds I use a "Hanned" flat pointer

NitroX,

Grinding the points off would make me nervous. I grew up on stories of rifles being blown up when the core went downrange while the jacket stayed in the bore.

Were I in your position, I would shoot the military for practice and pull the bullets from a couple hundred rounds and replace with softpoints of the same weight for game.

Of course, this practice makes some other people nervous and I will probably hear from them.

Yes Leftoverdj, that is where the term "dum dum" round came from--the dum dums would cut the tips off their bullets in I beleive it was WWI and the core would shoot while the jacket coated the bore and eventually rose pressures to the point where the rifle would blow up. I don't beleive in modifying products to get them to preform better. In this case, 125 gr soft points are easy enough to come by without modifying existing ammo. Then again, I don't hunt with MatchKings cause Sierra says not to and I don't load over a manual's published maximum load. Guess that makes me old fashioned or something--taking people for their word.

As for the 7.62x39, it would make a hella fun plinker but I wouldn't shoot game much over the size or tenacity of deer past 100 yards with it.

I don't have a problem with grinding off the tips of ex-mil ammo at all. I have done it with a good number of rounds in 7.62x39, 7.52x51 NATO and .30-06. You only grind enough to show a reasonable amount of lead not enough so the lead comes in contact with the barrel. Not much different from a standard jacketed softpoint except the performance is not as good. The jacket shedding is not a concern for me at all.

The bigger .30s work fine on medium game such as pigs and goats. The x39mm my limited use showed erratic results. If I was using the x39 on deer - which I probably wouldn't - I would use a heavier 150 gr bullet such as a Nosler BT.

Dum dums were manufactured in India with an X cut into the tip of the bullet in order to aid expansion. From memory I think it was in the older .303 round with the 215 gr projectile, not the latter 174 gr FMJ. This was prior to WW1.

Thanks for the comments

Check out GPC, Gun Parts Corp, the sucessors to Numrichs, they have a barrel for small ring mausers that is chambered for the 7.62x39 round and makes up a CHEAP shooter.

Copper and brass being the wonderful conductor of heat that they are, I'd be nervous about grinding bullet tips and having heat build up sufficient to ignite the powder in the case.

I'd also wonder about what tip grinding does to the balance of the bullet.

The 7.62 X 39 Wolf ammo I have is hollow point. It tends to tumble when it hits a target. Shooting this ammo at about 25 yds at paper plates stapled to a plank that was propped against a dirt berm, the bullets were hitting the plank and knocking it down. Then the bullet would spin along the surface of the plank like a buzz saw, ripping paper plates to shreds and cutting a channel in the surface of the plank -- splitting and shattering the wood.

This caliber is used locally for deer hunting, but the state forbids the use of "military" solid core ammo on game animals. Even the hollow point ammo is not allowed for hunting.

This caliber is comparable to the 30-30 or 44 magnum in muzzle energy. Bullet weight is 122 gr. with a nominal velocity of circa 2450 fps.

NitroX, you're right about India being the source of the Dum-Dum. It was created by British soldiers from, I believe, the 577/450 Martini-Henry, not the .303, and was certainly long prior to WW I.

The Dum-Dum, with its reputation for fierce wounding, was one of the factors which influenced the Geneva Convention to require full-metal, non-expanding bullets for proper, civilized warfare.

Since the U.S. no longer subscribes to the Geneva Convention now that we hold POW's without trial or counsel indefinately, I would suppose that we might also choose to start shooting Corelocts or Ballistic Tips in our M-16's. Suits me fine, as I always assumed the purpose of shooting at someone was to do them physical damage.

StoneCreek,

Not to be all technical and boring, but it was actually the Hague Convention of 1899, not the Geneva convention the prohibited the use of expanding bullets.

For an interesting article about this stuff, got to www.african-hunter.com and look at the article in the classic cartridge section about the .303 British.

Joel Slate
Slate & Associates, LLC
www.slatesafaris.com

7mm Rem Mag Page www.slatesafaris.com/7mm.htm

I have a 1910 Mexican model 98 short action small ring 98 with a 7.62x39 barrel. It's a fun gun, will make over 2500fps with the 125's.

Dum Dum was actually a British ammo arsenal in India and as I recall, the name stuck to ammo back when they were making the soft lead .577 and .450 bullets with a hollow cavity hidden inside the nose (.577 Snider and 577-.450 MH). I've heard that CZ no longer makes a rifle chambered for 7.62x39 due to extreme variances in 7.62 ammo. I've seen one and think its a fine rifle and I'm looking for a used one.

JR -- Thanks, I stand corrected, although I assume that the Geneva Convention likewise adopted the prior Hague Convention standards on non-expanding bullets.

Rez,

There's a Ruger bolt in 7.62x39 listed in the classifieds. I tell you in the hopes that you will save me from temptation.

GSF,

Single shot or working magazine?

And if it has a working magazine, how did they manage the ejector?

Had thousands and thousands of those things shot at me in the past. Obviously didn't work well, so I think you should bury it it and get something that works.

Rugers in that chambering have .308 bores, others are .311 I believe. Sounds too specialized to me, and while it may be close to 30-30 performance, it ain't no 30-30. Cross reference your 170 gr. loads. OOps! Sorry, forgot the round isn't loaded with 170's. Foolish me.

I have two Mausers that have been converted to 7.62x39. One has a .308 barrel and one has a .311 barrel. Since ammo is made in both diameters, you must be careful to determine if the gun and ammo are the came caliber, for maximum accuracy (and safety). I don't think, with the following caveat, pressures will get too high to matter much though. I believe the Ruger is .308 and the CZ is .311. Winchester solves this problem by making their factory hunting SP's .310 with a soft copper jacket. Hornady makes bullets for reloading in .311.

Caveat:
Another problem you will have if you get the .308 barrel is that the hollow point Wolf ammo (.311 caliber) you see advertised often has steel jacketed bullets with light copper plating (all black box). Steel doesn't upset or conform to the bore as well as copper, so be careful when you use Wolf ammo and make sure to get the new copper jacketed rounds if shooting in a .308 barrel. I imagine you could damage a barrel with steel bullets .003 too big. Copper jacketed HP's are available in 123 grains and SP in 154 grains, I believe and probably wouldn't screw up a .308 barrel, (at least that's what the folks at Wolf said when I asked).

I shot some of the new Wolf copper HP's (they come in a yellow and black box) yesterday. They grouped quite poorly. I had two misfires from the 20 in the box. They only cost $3.89 a box though. I then shot some .308 handloads with 130 grain Single Shot Pistol bullets from Hornady that are .308 diameter. The grouped 1.25 inch and I was using only a 4 power scope. This was out of a .311 barrel. I then shot the same loads in the .308 barrel and got crummy accuracy (.308 BT's group about .90" in this barrel, so I have a good hunting load that I'll go back to). Go figure. So... I shot some Wolf copper HP's in the .308 barrel and two or three would group touching each other, then a flyer or a hang fire. I wish they'd get there QA straight.

As to shooting deer sized game. I've found that 125 grain Noslers at 2400 fps hold together well and are quite effective for our 140# deer. Most often you get complete penetration on lung shots and the BT's even will hold together if you get a little far forward and hit the shoulder. I've shot a truck load of deer with a .30 Herret and 125 grain BT's at about the same velocities, and never had one get away.

BTW, I've got a little CZ carbine on order.

After I wrote the above, I called Wolf again. They said the Bi-Metal (copper plated steel) was only for chrome lined barrels, and to be sure to only shoot copper jacketed bullets in a commercial barrel to insure not injuring the barrel. Even though their website advertises copper jacketed 154 grain SP's, they aren't available in the U.S. yet. They also confirmed that it is o.k. to shoot copper jacketed bullets in Rugers, etc., with .308 barrels.

When I asked them about my recent "failures", they suggested that my firing pin spring was not strong enough. They had zero complaints about the 7.62x39 ammo, and were surprised at my problem. It may be my guns fault. I know Ruger Mini-Thirties had problem shooting military ammo because of the "hard" primers once.

[ 11-21-2002, 19:38: Message edited by: judgeg ]

Judgeg: Those milspec primers are hard (or have a thicker cup or whatever) in order to help prevent doubling in the SKS, but a Mauser should have plenty of slap to set off any primer. I really thought the old Norinco ammunition was better than the Russian stuff. I picked up a modest supply of the Norinco with a lead soft point (in a steel jacket) and really like its terminal performance.

As far as shooting steel jackets in a non-chromed barrel, I don't see any problem. The steel of the jacket is MUCH softer that the steel of the bore. Thousands of steel jacket FMJ big game bullets have been fired through the unlined bores of big game rifles with no problem. Also, few U. S. military small arm barrels have ever been chrome lined and much military ammunition has been steel.

This would be a worthwhile area to explore, however. Why don't you run a test for us and report?

Send me one of those new CZ carbines in 7.62x39 along with about 10,000 rounds of ammo, arrange my court schedule where I don't have to show up and still get paid, and I'll have at it.

Better yet, judge, send me one of the new Charles Daly Mini Mark X's in 7.62 x 39 and I'll volunteer to do the testing (as long as I can stay out of your court).