In 2002 ...The Chief of Staff called me to his office and asked me to attend the biannual Russian/American General officer conference ... I speak ... not one word of Russian, We had a grand ten days disagreeing about almost every geo-political issue.
it seemed different to me at the time, that it was a kind of honeymoon. In 2002, I was going to go to Kosovo, and for the English exam I was translating a monograph on the Taliban written by a Pakistani (I asked for such a book in the library, so that the language was simpler). And on the basis of this and various other information, I was against the Afghan operation and any of our participation in it. Although no one asked my opinion, of course.
I remember that year more because I then started using a rifle with optics. It's hard to believe now, but before that, our amateur hunters used almost exclusively shotguns, rifles were an exceptional rarity. Well, I "filled the bumps", that is, I made a few mistakes.
I don't know why, but hunting failures are better remembered than success. The captured boar was eaten and forgotten, and the unsuccessful shot you remember how it was yesterday. I then bought a 9.3x64 carbine,a rare design, there are only 105 pieces produced in total. I put an old Leupold 3-9x50, still Glossy, on a high bracket, went to the shooting range, everything seems to be fine. And here is the first time with this rifle on a roundup hunt for a wild boar. This hunt is called "chasing devils" - young boars run like crazy and are very inventive, there are few chances to shoot at those standing or walking slowly.
And in the first round - the voices of the beaters are getting closer, and suddenly a black boar jumps out of the forest, and, half in the snow, rushes through the clearing to my right. I catch it in the scope and realize that it is not easy even at a multiplicity of 3. Even at the moment of the shot, I realize that I missed. And I can't get the boar back into the scope, and when I took aim, I was afraid I'd shoot along the line. That's the worst thing about hunting. The boar is gone. When hunting from blind on the second day, at dusk, such a sight was also of little use – I saw the silhouettes of wild boars in the snow, but I could not see the aiming mark well. Fortunately, my partner had a night sight, and we implemented the license.
Next weekend I already took the Mauser 98K. Not the same as Peter Larssen has – I left a military-style butt. For two or three years I hunted with him, but then a rule was introduced – it is mandatory to discharge the magazine when moving. The rule is generally correct, but very inconvenient, cartridges when discharged fall anywhere, and in the deep snow, and they are expensive. In addition, it is difficult to put optics on a military-style Mauser, and I shot with an iron sight. Not that it's uncomfortable but unusual. AKM and the Mosin rear sight looks different. In the end, for boar hunting, I bought a semi-automatic Vepr (Boar)-308, a distant descendant of the Kalashnikov light machine gun, and put a Nikon Monarch 1-4x32 with a backlight on it. It turned out to be the best combination. He (or she?) had 10-pieces magazines, but soon a new rule appeared: on group hunts, no more than 5-p magazines, so I had to buy two. The purpose of this restriction is security. Indeed, it happens that when shooting at a herd of wild boars, they get carried away, you lead the barrel – and shoot along the line. In 1980, on one of my first hunts, I even bandaged a wounded hunter. There was just such a situation, shots fired at a herd of wild boars along the line. The bullet ricocheted off the frozen ground. The situation also had comical features – the wounded hunter himself also shot along the line, just he had less firepower. And, as they say in the ads, "not a single animal was injured" - both missed. More precisely, they missed the boars.
Now, remembering, I realize that it is boar hunts that are the most intense in terms of impressions. At least I don't have anything to compare it to, and I haven't been to Africa.
And I never went to Kosovo. I was prematurely awarded the next military rank, and I no longer fit the criteria. Actually, such an assignment is a kind of award, like the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously, but I did not perform any feats. Many years later, I found out what was wrong: my boss did not want to let me go, and he had good friends in the personnel department, and they solved the issue in this way. It's a pity, I would have hunted there, I guess.
In general, RedLeg, if you go to Kamchatka via Moscow, we could cross paths, and have something to drink and eat.
And I will write about vodka in the corresponding section of our forum.
The Mosin and the Nagant are two different rifles, not one. This is a strange mistake that is rooted in the 20s of the last century. Perhaps the reason for the error is that the Russian Military Ministry bought both rifles according to the results of the competition, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Only the Mosin rifle was produced, and the Nagant rifles remained only in one or two museums, only 300 pieces were made. This is clearly visible in the pictures. By the way, the butt of both rifles comes from the American Berdan rifle, it was in service with the Russian army for 20 years before the Mosin rifle.
