My experience with the SVD goes back a couple decades. First one I handled was one we captured during the first Gulf War while I was in the Marines. Never did any formal shooting with it other than plinking at rocks until the Lt. had a fit about gunshots going off...without him being offered to crank off a few rounds as well. LOL The unfortunate end for that rifle was to have the bolt stripped of it, laid on a sandbag and ran over with the Humvee until it was completely destroyed and the remaining parts thrown out the turret ever few miles on our road back to Saudi.
After getting out in 1992, I ran across a Chinese NDM-86 at a gun show a few years later. It was in .308 but for $1600, I went ahead and got it and still have it yet. I ran Federal GMM ammo through it and was very surprised by the accuracy. While I was expecting accuracy on par with a scoped AK, I was pleasantly surprised by the 1 MOA groups it could easily do and .75 or so with a little more effort on my part!
I wanted to start a reloading program for it to see what kind of accuracy handloads could wring out of it but that program was put on hold when I married into the Care Force and sent down here to the land or rust and rot (aka NW Florida). Down here in swamp country, a long range shot is maybe 200m and with such dismal shooting ranges, I never got around to perusing the handload angle to see what else she could do.
However, one good thing about being down here is that being a CATM instructor with a pretty good knowledge of foreign weapons, I was asked by my old NCOIC that now works for the Special Operations School to help out as a member of the shooting team. Among all the foreign weapons we deal with, an original Soviet SVD was one of them. Now my current NCOIC here used to be in that same position at the School and swore that the SVD couldn't hit anything. Being up for a challenge I took her out and ran it through it's paces trying to zero it in. Now I don't know what kind of ammunition we have but most likely it's some sort of surplus ball ammo that we also fire through the PKM so precision isn't it's likely strong point. I had to move the target back in to 25m in order to get it on paper but once I got it zeroed, I took it out to 200 meters and managed to get groups just a hair over 2 inches so that is still pretty good performance for an old battlefield pickup rifle! Sadly, we had to send it back to Fort Bragg for inspection and since it got back, I haven't had a chance to see how badly they dicked up my dope setting on that rifle to see if it still shoots as well as it did earlier. I still want to get back to that before I leave next month though.
Leaving that range is going to be a job I miss (USAFR instructor that has been doing this job too long so they aren't renewing orders for seasoned instructors and are going to rely on kids fresh out of CATM school I guess) but on the bright side, I'm heading back home to ND where I can get back to my original plan of restarting the handloading program for my old NDM-86 and see how that all works out.
All-in-all though, I wouldn't dismiss the SVD as being far more accurate than one would suspect. It's lightweight, the stock is pretty short (if you got arms like some sort of Carney or T-rex, you'd feel right at home I suppose) and the optics aren't nearly as good as more modern scopes but for shooting as the Soviets originally intended, I think it's an excellent rifle.
