Folks, I sat back and watched him get dialed in on that 20" gong, and then proceed to ring it with his remaining rounds, 8 fairly hasty times in a row.
Gotta say it was a bit of an eye opener. Highly doubt I could replicate that feat with my AK, though it doesn't sport a scope.
Also gotta say that after seeing such a display, those badmouthing the Mini's just lost a little ground in my book.
As others have pointed out, that's excellent shooting, but it doesn't take an accurate rifle to do that (the target is between 6 and 7 MOA wide). Rock River Arms guarantees 1 MOA from their ordinary AR's and 1/2 MOA from their varmint models, for example, meaning that from sandbags, a 16" RRA AR should be able to easily stay on a 4" plate at 300 yards, and the varmint model should be able to hit a baseball every time at that distance.
An AK is easily capable of the same feat, with an optic and halfway decent ammunition.
The best group my mini-14 Ranch Rifle has ever produced is 5.5" at 100 yards, or just under 6 MOA. That's good enough to hit a 20" target at 300 every time, but immensely frustrating if you're trying to sight in even a shotgun scope.
Here is a 100-yard target from a 5.5-MOA mini, from rest and bags, slowfire. I shot this group with iron sights and 55-gr ammunition, but I've tried scopes (2.5x and a 3-9x) and high-end ammunition (Winchester Premium 69-gr Match, Winchester 55-gr SP hunting loads, etc.) and done no better.
As far as why the inaccuracy? Personally, I think it has a lot to do with cantilevering a gas block driving a reverse-design, ultra-heavy gas piston off of a thin, unreinforced barrel, and then overpowering the crap out of the gas system. The barrel bending torque produced by that setup has to be astronomical, and given the whippy barrel, the resulting barrel harmonics are probably a big part of the accuracy bugaboo. The other part might be the action shifting in the stock, since it's not exactly a secure action-to-wood fit.
