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In case anyone is interested, here's an SKS hunting story:



Just in case anyone wondered if the SKS rifles were suitable for hunting white tail deer - here is my experience using them for that:

God blessed me with my 3rd and 4th deer in 1997 when I was carrying Chinese made SKS using semi jacketed lead point ammo made in Germany and China respectively. Those bullets cost 9 cents each. On the opening day of NY’s southern zone regular deer season I had a tag for one antlered deer and one antlerless deer. I left my home before dawn and decided to hunt just a few hundred yards behind the house as the sun rose. I was hoping to catch deer passing along a deer trail that linked feeding and bedding areas. I stood between two maple trees leaning against the down hill tree and hoping that the other would block me from the sight of any deer uphill on the trail. The sun rose behind me turning the dark to grey and tingeing the sky with pink. I heard fat grey squirrels come down from their nests to search the fallen leaves for acorns and watched them play. One worked his way toward me, climbed a tree about 5 yards away and ran along a branch a few yards over head and into the tree I was leaning against. I saw a partridge hen fly down and feed through my field of vision. Both moved off to my left. My plan was to watch this trail during sunrise, then slowly work my way uphill and southward in an attempt to drive deer to my hunting companions if I didn’t see any. As the morning wore on I continued to hear the squirrels and partridge off to my left but paid little attention as I had seen the small animals already. But when I decided to move I worked my way in that direction walking quietly and cautiously along over the stone wall and from rock to rock to minimize the noise of my foot steps. I had travelled about 50 yards when I heard footsteps ahead of me. Well I thought – it’s waaaay too noisy to be deer but I’ll take a look to see what it is.

Peering down hill I saw not one, but TWO deer. The fork horned buck was following tight behind a doe. He must have heard, smelled, or sensed me because he looked back over his shoulder just as I settled the SKS’s hooded front site post into the V notch of the rear sight on his shoulders. They were +/- 70 yards away from me and about 20 feet down slope. The buck swung his head forward and launched himself into a bound that should have carried him safely out of sight safely behind thick brush – except that his lady friend was squarely in front of his chest mere inches away. He rebounded off her butt and twisted sideways bringing his front shoulder out of alignment with her hind quarters. That was the opening I had been waiting for. She was no longer in the bullet’s path. I sent the 123 grain projectile high into his left side, just over his heart. The bullet angled down and through the offside leg at the elbow.

Stunned by the noise and impact of the buck from behind, the doe wasn’t sure what was going on. I let her go. Somehow it just seemed greedy to drop them both. The buck fell about 5 yards away and was still breathing when I walked up to him for the coup de grace.

On the last day of the same season. I hunted up to the top of the hill and on to the adjacent property. I had attempted stalks on deer bedding at the top of the hill several times since opening morning without success. Each time they went down the hill on the far side as I approached and into thick pines where I could not see them. This time I followed them after I jumped them and tracked them into a stand of pines too thick for me to crawl through. I gambled that they were still in the thick growth and circled the grove to wait for them to emerge. I took a position inside a group of tall straight hardwood trees. It was a park like setting without undergrowth so from behind a large tree 50 yards away I had an unobstructed view of the pine thicket.

I waited patiently. I waited impatiently. I counted all 317 trees within sight. And then I waited longer.

Finally three does emerged from the pines and fed into view browsing on low growth just 50 yards away through the hardwoods. It was the last day of the season and I had a doe tag to fill. Which one should I take? I resolved to take the first one that offered an unobstructed shot. They fed bunched up for several yards until at about 75 yards one of them stepped away from the others offering the opportunity to squeeze a shot between two trees and through her heart. At the sound of the shot she leapt into the air and hit the ground dead. She folded on the spot with the single shot entering through the near side (knocking out an inch sized chunk of rib), then passed through the heart and exited between the ribs of the far side. She collapsed so suddenly that the other does looked at her curiously but did not flee until I began to walk toward them and shooed them away.

When I dressed the doe I found that the bullet had passed cleanly through her heat and the chunk of rib had slashed through the center of the heart horizontally cutting through all four chambers. When I opened her chest cavity warm blood literally poured out. Before I had finished field dressing her a rustle in the leaves and movement caught my eye as a snow white ermine flowed over the brown leaves like liquid silk drawn to the scent of blood. The little carnivore came within 5 yards before it spotted me, reversed direction and disappeared like white furred lightening. That was a very special moment. I felt like I had been visited by a woodland nymph. The memory is even more special because those stately park-like hardwoods were logged off the next spring. I probably had the last hunt of anyone in those old trees.

The Chinese made SKS certainly proved itself as a capable deer rifle with that double harvest. While the range was short (in both cases about 75 yards) I had two clean one shot kills with the bullets passing completely through both deer. I did give a second shot to the buck but it was only to speed his passing, he would have expired with a hole through both lungs rather quickly even without it. The jacketed soft point ammunition worked admirable and I have to believe that most soft point 7.62x39 would perform equally as well at ranges up to 100 yards or slightly beyond. Just how far you are willing to take a shot depends on your experience but I would say that if you practiced the shot and could reliably hit your target, that the SKS is fully capable of cleanly taking white tail deer out to 150 yards.

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