Do you know how to use the rear sight on a M44? level 1 = a foot high at 200 yards?

[CNYCacher]

I am now the proud owner of my first centerfire rifle, a M44! First question is this:
Why am I shooting a foot high at 200 yards with the rear sight set for 1?

The guy I bought it from said that he believes they were zeroed to be 300 yards. Ballistics tables for the 7.62x54R shows a 10-inch drop between 200 and 300 yards, so his statement seems to be consistant with my experience.

Is the M44 zeroed for 300 yards with the rear sight set at 1? If so, what ranges are 2-10 supposed to be good for? Also, why would they pick such a long range for #1? Seems to me you would want the smaller numbers for more practical ranges. 300 yards seems like quite a long shot to me for this gun, why would you make that the LOWEST sight setting? My assumption would be that you set each increment for 100-meters or something, so 1-10 would be 100-1000 meters, but apparently that is not the case. It would be nice though.

Is there any way to adjust this? Can the front pin be shortened/lengthened?

 

[ocabj]

Each notch on the ladder sight should correspond to n * 100 meters. So if it's 1, it *should* be 100 meters. But you have to understand that the Russians pumped these rifles out as fast as possible. As far as generating a true zero for the rifles, who knows if they even bothered when the rifles left the factory and made it to the front line grunt.

You will most likely need to get a taller front sight post. This is a common problem and solution with milsurps with ladder rear sights.

 

[Dark Helmet]

Somewhere I read that military rifles were sighted that way so that you could aim at a man's belt buckle and put a round in his boiler room.

 

[GRIZ22]

Dark Helmet, you are probably referring to the 1903 Springfield with the ladder sight. With the sight down the "battle sight" is zeroed for 547 yards (500 meters, they had ideas of exports). Using the laddersight up, where you can set it for 100 yds up, is something I would not want to do in combat as it is rather fragile. To solve this problem soldiers would aim at the belt with the battle sight to put the round center mass.

 

[grimjaw]

CNYCacher, you can do a couple of things if you want to lower the POI. Some of it depends on what you've done so far.

- Heavy ball will sometimes shoot to a higher POI than light ball, although I haven't found this to be much different on the carbines. It's more pronounced on the full length rifles, IME.
- You can try to find a different front sight with a taller post. There are some front posts that can be modified to sit higher in the housing.
- You can solder on some material to your existing front post.
- You can file some metal off the top of the rear sight leaf and lower the groove.
- You can learn to shoot it the way it is and just live with it.

I live with it on a couple of my rifles, and I've replace front sight posts on two others. HTH.

jm

 

[MikeG]

If I'm not mistaken, there's also a '2' on the rear sight.

Shooting at 200 yards with the sight set to 100 meters instead of 200 just won't be as satisfactory.

 

[rugerdude]

I had the same problem with my M91/30, and a simple yet effective fix I came up with was to get some black electrical tape and cut it down so that the width of the piece is just a millimeter or two wider than the height of the front sight. You then (and this was kinda tricky, tweezers help) wrap the front sight with the electrical tape. You don't want to wrap it around more than one time because it will make your front sight wider.

This worked well for me, and I only recently took it off while I was tinkering with my gun and re-finishing the stock. Mosin barrels get pretty hot, so even though it looked fine, it came off all charred and melty. It had been on there for over a year though. I will soon be putting it back on. Another benefit is that if the sight ends up being too high, you have a LOT of rear adjustment to work with.

I suggest you try this fix, and if you don't like it, you can go another route without having wasted any money. If it does work, you've fixed the problem for free.

Hope this helps

 

[cracked butt]

Is the M44 zeroed for 300 yards with the rear sight set at 1? If so, what ranges are 2-10 supposed to be good for? Also, why would they pick such a long range for #1?

Most of the wartime mosins were made as fast as they could be made with little regard to sighting. If its a foot high at 100 yards, it was more than close enough for the type of fighting the carbines were meant for.

The arsenals actually got the sights pretty close before the war- they didn't have Fritz breathing down their neck and had a little more free time for extraneous things like QC.

 

[CNYCacher]

If I'm not mistaken, there's also a '2' on the rear sight.

Shooting at 200 yards with the sight set to 100 meters instead of 200 just won't be as satisfactory.

Maybe I was thinking backwards, but I assumed that if I set the rear sight on "2" it would have made it shoot even higher.

Thanks for all the replies folks.

Anyone know why there is a hole in the front sight hood directly over the front sight pin? Seems to me it might be that the pin can be driven down, or possibly up if the sight is removed.