Parrothead Jeff

Not too long ago, I went out in the desert with my buddy James and my roommate’s nephew, Doyle. I brought out the AK and the .22, James brought his .22, and Doyle brought his old bolt action Sears .22 and a rifle I knew nothing about - his Mosin-Nagant M44. Doyle had .22 ammo (I think we all had a total of about 1500 rounds for the .22s), but didn’t have much in the way of money, so I went out and picked up some 7.62×54R for the M44. Well, long story short, I got to fire the M44 and I’m now a convert to the milsurp (military surplus) world !

After much research on the internet, I’d decided to get myself at least a couple of Mosins (91/30 & M44), probably a Swiss K31, and likely a German K98. I was also going to wait until I went down to Prescott, AZ to see Mom and Dad to get the Mosins as they live just up the road from J&G as they seem to have the best prices around. Well, that was the plan - until I walked into the Big 5 up the street from me . I swear I was just looking to see what Mosins they had in stock, but then a sale tag on one of the rifles caught my eye.

That sales tag was on a Steyr M95 and the price was only $79.95. Then I saw the flyer on the counter with the $10 off coupon. I was hooked - a nice example of a straight-pull, bolt action carbine for $69.95! That was a deal that was just too good to pass up

There really wasn’t much cosomline on the rifle and what little there was cleaned up nicely off the metal with some Break Free CLP and Gun Scrubber. I cleaned the bore out with some foaming bore cleaner, lots of patches, Hoppe’s Elite Bore Gel, more patches, more bore gel, bore brush, more gel, more patches etc until it was finally clean. I can tell you it’s got a great bore - nice and shiny with good, strong rifling :thumb: !

Finding ammo in 8×56R around here was a no-go, but it was pretty easy to get some online. Easy, but expensive! For perspective, .22 ammo is about $12.00 for 550 rounds and 7.62×39 (AK-47 ammo) is about $5.00 for 20 rounds. 8×56R for the M95 is usually around $25 for 20 rounds and then there’s shipping All told, I paid $40 for 20 rounds of Austrian surplus on the required mannlicher enbloc clips (gotta have the clips to load the magazine) and I might order some more clips, but I’ve found that Graf’s has brand new, non-corrosive ammo for my new rifle for $26.00 for 20 rounds and only charges $4.95 for shipping no matter how much I order

So what’s it like to shoot? It’s a freaking BLAST AND A HALF !!! The action takes a bit of force to unlock, but was no trouble. The recoil was on par with a 12ga shotgun so not bad, but quite enough to be fun! Then there’s the noise. This has to be the loudest rifle I’ve ever fired!!! I was out in the desert with big ear muffs on and I still heard the echo for at least a full second

It may not be common or cheap to shoot, but I have decided that my M95 is here to stay