For this month’s 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, I decided to try using my Yugoslav M76, in 8x57mm. The M76 is one of the triad of eastern marksmen’s rifles – the PSL, the SVD, and the M76. Like the PSL, the M76 is mechanically just a scaled-up AK – but made to a much higher standard of fit and finish than the PSL. It is also chambered for the 8mm Mauser cartridge, as that was a standard cartridge in the Yugoslav army.
The M76 is obviously better suited for long range slow fire, and this month’s match was all up close and personal – so it gave me a good opportunity to try out the M76 under non-optimal conditions. The M76 did pretty well for me, with no malfunctions of any kind. At long range, I have been able to make hits on 12″ plates out to 400 yards with it, which is pretty well at the limit of my own shooting ability, so I can’t complain there. In this match, I found the scope to be a handicap, because the targets were all within 50 yards – after the first stage I shot almost everything using the iron sights, which are visible through the scope mount.
Lovely looking gun.
The M76 is the only legal AK variant in Croatia.
You can’t own any semi-automatic firearm that has a full-auto counterpart.
Heh…ironically, some of the early M76 imports were confiscated by ATF here in the US because they had safety sears, which ATF decided made them machine guns.
If only the Blue Pistol had been a bit heavier 🙁 you probably would have had that target.
Did anyone else try that tactic after you?
Nobody else in my squad threw it – not sure about the other squads.
“That’s a Ballester Molina, I will have you know, nothing but the best for Argentina.”
You sir, are awesome.
As an Argentinian, and a Ballester Molina user, that remark made my day. The one I have belonged to my granddad, love it, but sometimes shooting in enclosed spaces the shell casings would ricochet all around and sometimes straight to the face.
Greetings from Argentina.
My pleasure – I’m a big fan of my Ballester. 🙂
Another great 2 gun shoot. How about using the M76 with iron sights or a ‘red dot’?
I did actually use the irons for much of this match, as the scope mount allows them to remain visible. On close-range targets, they are faster.
You own this correct? I’d love to see your entire collection. And your favourites.
I love these 2 gun videos, are you still planning on using your Ross and a Webley in one of these matches?
Also have to agree with the other posters that your M76 is a very handsome rifle indeed. Living in the UK, your site is the closest I will ever come to seeing one in real life let alone seeing one being shot.
Ross and Webley would be a fun one, but I need a new Ross first. I blew up my first one (intentionally), and the nice unmolested military one I got later turned out to have some damage to the receiver rails that would often jam the bolt open, so I sold it (with disclosure of the problem). Sooner or later I will come across another one, and when I do it will be a contender for a 2-gun match.
Ah, I see you’ve mastered the Chief Wiggum pistol toss.
I used to really want an M76. Now i really REALLY want an M76.
So the Yugos have an 7.92mm barrel on an AK action. One small step to 7.92 kurz on an AK action. Just sayin…
Ouch – along the lines of one of the united state’s [best] forgotten [and kept forgotten] weapons:
a .30-06 Garand with the chamber plugged and reamed for 7.62x51mm.
I suspect that already Bubbaficated AKs will probably provide a cheap source of bolts that can have the counterbores and extractors opened out a bit, and the AK bore is already close to 8mm, although reaming the chamber to x33mm kurz will damage the chrome.
I’ve seen somewhere (on this site, I believe) that some Pakistani gun makers are already producing AKs in 7.92×33 Kurz. I don’t think it would be a difficult conversion.
The Pakistani guys were converting the usual vanilla flavour AK in 7.62x39mm to 7.92x33mm, where the larger diameter body of the kurz chamber provided a stub shoulder for that shorter case to headspace on. x39 would still work in those chambers too.
The one Ian was using in the match is in 7.92x57mm. The chamber is already the diameter of the Kurz round and the headspace surface is a long way forward of the shoulder on a kurz case.
I’m not saying that it couldn’t be done on that gun, but like the Kerry man who was asked for directions to get to Dublin “now I wouldn’t be starting from here”.
I am aware of that. I have owned a Zastava M 76 in 7.92×57 since Mitchell Arms imported them before the ban. I’ve used it for deer hunting and used to get weird looks and comments from fellow hunters about using a “machine gun” to hunt with. (This was in the ’80s’) It was fun putting them in their place. In my previous post, I was talking about the AKM as an easy conversion to x33, although ammo costs would be prohibitive here in the US. “Sleeving” or even re-barreling a x57 to x33 would be an exercise in futility at best, especially with a fine (and somewhat hard to find) rifle such as this. I am sure that it could be done, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. Now if someone wants to Bubba-up a WASR 10, I say go for it (as long as I am not the one pulling the trigger)!
This is good argument against notion that AK gun is inherently less accurate. It is plenty as you have shown. And yes, it gets little bulky in this form – usual payback
Yes, but I think the (Finnish) RK 62/95, Galil and FN FNC already pretty much proved that AK is inherently not less accurate in any remotely practical sense. Accuracy of the RK 95 with optics is pretty much limited only by the ballistics of the 7.62×39 cartridge (and shooter of course, but assuming a benchrest and a good shooter). The Swedish Ak 5B (FNC) DMR with SUSAT is accurate enough for engaging targets up to 600m in the hands of a good shooter, which means that it’s also pretty much limited by the ballistics of the cartridge.
8mm cartridge was used in “Yugoslav Peoples Army”, as their main rifle after ww2 was Crvena Zastava produced “m48”, a copy of german k98, before they switched to a copy of SKS, called PAP,
and they also used a copy of mg42 called m53 that used 8mm ammo.(as you see this factory was very good at making copies,sometimes with some slight improvements, and when they tried to come up with their domestic design, like m70 32acp pistol, it failed miserably)
Yugoslav defense/war doctrine, of total (multi)national insurgency promoted (based on a ww2 partisan experience and scarcity of weapons) that obsolete weapons, like m48 were not to be destroyed or dumped, but were stored, along with lot of ww2 dated k98s,thompsons,ppsh41 and other stuff they get after ww2 as reparations or help.All this was to be used with second grade rear units called “Territorial defense” that would compose of local people fighting for their village, factory or so, opposed to more professional and mobile YPA.
One curiosum was that kids in the secondary schools had a practical range training with m48 rifles(!).
Why give them a .22 when you can go to full power cartridge right away…