An honest answer to your question is "you can't tell"
At 200 yards, a 12" steel plate is ~6 MOA, so a decent shooting rifle should be capable of hitting it every time easily. However, there are too many unknowns to make that determination.
Ammo: Some people have reported good luck with Privi ammo, I have never found it to be particularly accurate in any of my guns. Here is a great example, using a scout scope on a German K98, 5 rounds of Privi, followed by 8 rounds of handloads I had left that I worked up for a different rifle.

Based on the Privi results, I would have said "Nope, not a good shooter", but very happy with the handload results.
The Privi stuff available here is also the woefully under-powered "8MM Mauser" SAAMI spec, 198 gr FMJ at only 2180 FPS, compared to the CIP spec "8x57" IS 198 gr FMJ is 2425 FPS, (essentially the 1934+ s.S. Patrone military load)
Sights: The sights are not very precise, either in alignment or zeroing.
The sights were designed for shooting man sized targets, or at the longer ranges troop formations, so the need to be precise was never a high priority. They are fine for this application, and reasonably fast to acquire & line up, but for shooting smaller targets they are not ideal, especially if your eyes are not perfect. The easiest way I have found is to use a largish black target, and use a 6:00 hold, so the entire aiming black is sitting on the tip of the front sight. I have a PDF file of the 100 yard reduced versions of the NRA Service Rifle targets I use that work pretty well, but I like the copy of the German acceptance target I linked above:

I shoot smaller groups with a 6:00 hold on that target than I do a ~6 MOA aiming black circle on the NRA targets. The copies I made are free to download, from the thread I linked above.
The windage adjustment is with a hammer, unless you have one of the special sight pusher tools, so it is rarely perfect, and this is exaggerated the farther you go. The elevation adjustments are also quite coarse, with ~3 MOA elevation change from the 100M to the 200M setting, and ~3.5 MOA between 200m and 300m (that is a best guess, based on the trajectory of s.S. Patrone). The steps get larger the higher up the ladder you go. German rear sights have a notch for half-steps (150, 250, etc), not sure if the Yugos do.
This is just a long and drawn out way of saying, your rifle will put all its shots in a circle (how big that circle is is to be determined), but it is unlikely the point of impact circle is perfectly aligned with the circle of the target. Even if your rifle is ~3 MOA, and putting every shot inside that 6 inch circle at 200 yards, if 1/3 of that area is off the edge of the target since your sights are not perfectly zeroed for that range, you could easily miss with 30% of your shots.
And the last piece of the puzzle is you. How were you shooting? Sight alignment and trigger control still matter, even if you are firing from sandbags on a bench.
At 200 yards, wind certainly exists, but it is of so little effect it is really not worth paying any attention to unless it is really whipping.
So really long story short, go to 100 yards and shoot at a paper target, even something you can print out, and you can get a much better idea of how good the rifle actually shoots. And if it is not as good as you would like, there are a few things you can do to try and improve things, how the action sits in the stock, contact between the stock or handguard and the barrel, contact between the magazine box and the action, and a couple more, all of which can degrade accuracy.
At 200 yards, a 12" steel plate is ~6 MOA, so a decent shooting rifle should be capable of hitting it every time easily. However, there are too many unknowns to make that determination.
Ammo: Some people have reported good luck with Privi ammo, I have never found it to be particularly accurate in any of my guns. Here is a great example, using a scout scope on a German K98, 5 rounds of Privi, followed by 8 rounds of handloads I had left that I worked up for a different rifle.

Based on the Privi results, I would have said "Nope, not a good shooter", but very happy with the handload results.
The Privi stuff available here is also the woefully under-powered "8MM Mauser" SAAMI spec, 198 gr FMJ at only 2180 FPS, compared to the CIP spec "8x57" IS 198 gr FMJ is 2425 FPS, (essentially the 1934+ s.S. Patrone military load)
Sights: The sights are not very precise, either in alignment or zeroing.
The sights were designed for shooting man sized targets, or at the longer ranges troop formations, so the need to be precise was never a high priority. They are fine for this application, and reasonably fast to acquire & line up, but for shooting smaller targets they are not ideal, especially if your eyes are not perfect. The easiest way I have found is to use a largish black target, and use a 6:00 hold, so the entire aiming black is sitting on the tip of the front sight. I have a PDF file of the 100 yard reduced versions of the NRA Service Rifle targets I use that work pretty well, but I like the copy of the German acceptance target I linked above:

I shoot smaller groups with a 6:00 hold on that target than I do a ~6 MOA aiming black circle on the NRA targets. The copies I made are free to download, from the thread I linked above.
The windage adjustment is with a hammer, unless you have one of the special sight pusher tools, so it is rarely perfect, and this is exaggerated the farther you go. The elevation adjustments are also quite coarse, with ~3 MOA elevation change from the 100M to the 200M setting, and ~3.5 MOA between 200m and 300m (that is a best guess, based on the trajectory of s.S. Patrone). The steps get larger the higher up the ladder you go. German rear sights have a notch for half-steps (150, 250, etc), not sure if the Yugos do.
This is just a long and drawn out way of saying, your rifle will put all its shots in a circle (how big that circle is is to be determined), but it is unlikely the point of impact circle is perfectly aligned with the circle of the target. Even if your rifle is ~3 MOA, and putting every shot inside that 6 inch circle at 200 yards, if 1/3 of that area is off the edge of the target since your sights are not perfectly zeroed for that range, you could easily miss with 30% of your shots.
And the last piece of the puzzle is you. How were you shooting? Sight alignment and trigger control still matter, even if you are firing from sandbags on a bench.
At 200 yards, wind certainly exists, but it is of so little effect it is really not worth paying any attention to unless it is really whipping.
So really long story short, go to 100 yards and shoot at a paper target, even something you can print out, and you can get a much better idea of how good the rifle actually shoots. And if it is not as good as you would like, there are a few things you can do to try and improve things, how the action sits in the stock, contact between the stock or handguard and the barrel, contact between the magazine box and the action, and a couple more, all of which can degrade accuracy.



Comment