First deer with my AK-47

Typically I hunt with a 30-06 but this year I decided to shake things up a bit so I brought my AK along instead.

It worked well.

With its folding stock, 3 point sling, and short 16" barrel I found it to be much more comfortable to carry around all day than my 26" barreled deer rifle.

The iron sights where nice as they can't fog up like my scope is prone to do.

Since it is an AK I also wasn't as worried about banging it on something as I was climbing stands or getting on and off the ATV.

The shorter range of the AK and it's moderate accuracy provided somewhat of a welcome challenge. Deer are plentiful in our area and I've often felt over the past years that I was going deer shooting rather than hunting.

Using the AK made me feel like the deer where getting more of a sporting chance while forcing me to pick and choose my shots more carefully.

In the end I bagged a small buck that will be nice eating for me and the wife. The Wolf brand 124 grn pointed soft points proved effective enough and actually did less damage to the deer than my 30-06 does. The shot was a ~50yrd clean, heart and lungs, through-and-through shot and the deer expired quickly.

All in all I would use the gun for deer again.

Only hit with one shot? What happened to the other 29 rounds in your full auto spray from your banana clip?

Click to expand...

I was short on bananas so I only used a five round banandolier.

There isn't one. However I have a 5 round mag for my AK that I used this weekend.

It is quibbling. And I take offense at a moderator attempting to take my thread off topic over something so trivial. I would recommend opening another thread on the topic "is the AK an AK" but since we went there anyway and this thread is probably going to be hopelessly derailed from here on I'll toss in my $.02.

*Puts on his quibbling hat and monocle*

My AK is a Romanian SAR-1. It still has some of the full auto fire controls still in it. The only thing that separates it from a "real AK" is that they skipped a step in the machining process to make it semi auto only. In short, it's lacking the two holes for the rest of the full auto mechanism and the parts needed to make it full auto. That's it.

The AR-15 is a different animal. It's built from the ground up as a semi auto only rifle. The fire control parts are barely similar to its full auto cousin the M-16. The sears, lower receiver, safety selector, and bolt carrier would all need to be machined and/or changed out to make it full auto. Even still the two rifles share an %80 parts commonality.

If my SAR-1 and my AR-15 were laying side by side their military issue full auto counter parts the layman wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Only those of us who are more knowledgeable and know the inner workings can tell the difference and even then it's fuzzy. Patrick Sweeney, writer for "Gun digest" wrote an entire book on the AK and never indicates that there is a difference except for the mechanical one. He spends the entire book referring to the Semi-auto only AK as "The aK-47".

I suppose I could start calling imy AK a SAR-1 but really that's only the name used by importers in an effort to lose the evil association of the AK-47 name. If I call it that then shouldn't all the other Semi-auto only AKs be called the same thing? In reality nearly everyone calls a Semi-auto AK, an AK.

It's true. I dropped the ball there. I didn't get any pics.

We manage for them to get them that way.

We plant habitat, pack trails for them to get around on with our snowmobiles, and occasionally feed them when winters are really harsh and the snow is deep.

In the end the payoff is a well managed heard that provides a lot of meat for our family every season.

It's a good arrangement.

Yeah. But I only hit'em with the one so the meat is still good.

It's a good feeling Seabee.

The idea came to me a couple seasons back when I surveyed a field with a heard of deer and then looked at my rifle and realized I could literally have my pick out of the heard. All of a sudden it all didn't seem very sporting to me anymore.

I like to think the prey and predator should have a pretty equal chance at succeeding.