300RN:
Well, the weather's been pretty lousy here in Minnesnowta, and we hadn't been able to get out to the range for a couple of weeks. I got a set of Millet "high" scope mounts for the CZ527, and mounted a Bushnell 1.5x-4.5x by 32mm scope.
I won't ever let anybody tell me that the 7.62x39mm round is inherently inaccurate now. After some rough-and-ugly boresighting, we got the scope dialed in at 100 yards, and started to print groups. My wife, a better rifle shot than I am, managed to put two consecutive 3-round, 1" groups onto the paper, with one of them having two of the holes punched almost on top of each other, and the third round just a smidgen away. Her other best group was just a trio of hole punched right around the target's center. Mostly she was punching 1-1/2" to 2" groups.
My best shooting was about 2" to 2-1/2" groups, I'm sorry to say. I didn't do any better with the set trigger than with the normal trigger, which is so smooth and crisp that it's a joy to shoot. We tried a wide variety of ammo, and didn't find any appreciable difference in either accuracy or point of impact. Wolf 123-gr hollowpoint, Wolf 123-gr FMJ, Chinese steel-cored-copper-washed, PMC 123-gr FMJ, Federal 123-gr soft-point, it didn't really matter what we fed it, the CZ just gobbled them up and spit them out without much variation.
We shot so much that we had to stop and let the barrel cool down for a while, and we switched to a Chinese SKS. With the lousy open sights on that rifle, I couldn't print better than an 8" group, fired from a standing position using the sling. I hadn't bothered to remove the bayonet (the ChiCom triangle type), so it was a little muzzle-heavy. My wife really likes shooting the SKS because the combination of weight and gas-action reduces the recoil to essentially nothing. She shot so much with the CZ, though, that she ended up with a bruised shoulder. We're going to buy a shoulder-strap-type recoil pad that she can use, since I don't want to add a pad to the CZ (it fits pretty well as-is, and when I hunt in the Minnesota fall, I'm usually wearing enough clothing while sitting in the stand to add some thickness there, and I don't want to push the scope too far away).
I'm just really pleased with this little carbine. It almost looks like a miniature rifle, it's so short and light. The Mauser-type action is smooth, and seems to be getting smoother with use. The only quibble I've got with the rifle is the magazine's protruding from the stock, and the magazine's release button being a little hard to manipulate while pulling the magazine from it.
Do you know if anybody makes a flush-fit (even if it's only a 3-round) magazine for these? It's about the only thing I'd change on it. All in all, it's going to be one of my favorite short-range (less than 150 yard) shooters.
Blackwing1
