Range Report on "New To Me" Hungarian M44
Made it out to the range this morning to see how my refurbished Hungarian M44 shoots with it's new 02 stock versus how it shot with the Russian Bubba'd stock at the top of the page. In that stock, the rifle was pretty consistently a 4 moa rifle, at least at the short distances I shoot it at. The new stock feels great, with a traditional milsurp finish instead of all sanded and varnished. I mostly shot it standing up but my pictures from that angle were all out of focus, forgot to set the correct focus on the camera. This one was almost in focus at least.
I shot a combination of Czech Low Recoil Training Ammo and Bulgarian Surplus. I have quite a few hundred rounds of PPU Brass 7.62x54r but I mostly shoot my surplus ammo out of this rifle so that's what I brought.
I packed at 4:00 AM this morning. Being half asleep, I packed my paper target base but no backer with the wooden supports so no paper targets to measure groups. Fortunately I did remember my 8" AR500 gong. This was my group at 150 yards, it measured 4.25". Disregard the two smaller marks below, those are the Czech Training Ammo which really goes all over the place past 100 yards. The big marks are from the Bulgarian Silver Tip surplus. Wish I had some Heavy Ball to try, I keep hunting for some of it but it has dried up.
Overall, from this very unscientific test, the rifle shoots better with the Hungarian stock than it did with the Russian. It was effortless hitting the gong at 150 yards, wish I could get it out to 200 and 300 to see what it can do. I will have to take it out to Wes Thompsons sometime to try that.
So for the Hungarian stock, besides the obvious cosmetic and historical improvements, it gets a big
Unfortunately, a couple of shots later...
Time to buy a new AR500 gong. The new ones don't have these ears, they just have bolt holes through the body of the gong. This one lasted two and a half years and was shot a LOT with everything from 8mm Mauser, some 300 Win Mag, tons of 7.62x54r and lots of AR/AK rounds as well so I am not too bummed. It took a beating. This break wasn't even from a hit, I think both sides developed stress fractures from the tremendous shock of the impact of all of those rounds. All of the mounting bolts, nuts and washers stretch and warp like crazy.