Life Below Zero

[23 Blast]

Anyone else get a glimpse of this new show?

One of the folks featured in the show was using a Finn M39 Mosin-Nagant to take down caribou! She was using iron sights.

FWIW, she had to take several shots before finally hitting the caribou, but I felt like most of the shots were contrived for TV, in that she was taking shots from unsupported positions. I've never been hunting, but what little range shooting I've done with rifles has taught me that supported = good. Unsupported = bad. In the shot where she finally hit the caribou, she was using her snowmobile as a rest.

[Emdawg]

Oh! Interesting.

At first I though this was one of those TV show spam threads. Whoops!

[CEDaytonaRydr]

I've been seeing adds for it. Kinda wanna check it out....

[23 Blast]

I've been seeing adds for it. Kinda wanna check it out....

I've seen two episodes of it and found it fairly interesting. The people on the show are people who live out in the wilds of Alaska, away from towns or villages, and essentially have to be completely (or nearly so) self-sufficient. Most of them are pretty frank about how life out there can suck if you're accustomed to city living and the amenities afforded by such. I got the impression that most of them, particularly the ones who lived alone (several were loners, the others were married couples) were a bit, eh - off kilter.

I was pretty excited to see the M39, as I would imagine that a moderately priced Savage or Ruger with a scope would serve a hunter much better than an iron-sighted, military-stocked rifle, and probably be not a whole lot more expensive, either. I would think that getting x54 ammo out where they are would be even more difficult than say, 30-06 or .308.

[89 Vision]

Haven't heard of it till now......DVR set!

[VegasND]

I've seen a couple of episodes. It's interesting enough I'll watch more.

[Flyin Brian]

The couple with the M39 are regular posters on another forum I belong to. I've PMed with them many times over the years since Chip is interested in old Finnish rifles and is always looking for another 28-30 with an Antique receiver. The reason they like Mosins is they work great in the cold weather and the antique receiver means they don't have to transfer through an FFL, as the closest FFL is like 300 miles away!!

In regards to the hunting scenes, if you pay attention to the very first shot, Agnes is not wearing red nail polish... that's Caribou blood.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/life-below-zero/videos/safety-first/

The reason Chip says "They're right in front of us" is because the camera crew was focused on another group of caribou that were 300 yds farther than the ones they were creeping up on. He was trying to get them to look at the closer group that they were actually hunting

[23 Blast]

^Awesome! Thanks Flyin Brian.

What specifically about Mosins makes them work better in cold weather than say - any other modern rifle, or milsurp for that matter? Are they using commercially loaded hunting ammo, or corrosive milsurp ammo? Just curious. Yeah - I could see how having a rifle that doesn't need to go through the odious paperwork channels (particularly if your nearest FFL is hundreds of miles away!) would definitely be a big plus.

[Flyin Brian]

^Awesome! Thanks Flyin Brian.

What specifically about Mosins makes them work better in cold weather than say - any other modern rifle, or milsurp for that matter? Are they using commercially loaded hunting ammo, or corrosive milsurp ammo? Just curious. Yeah - I could see how having a rifle that doesn't need to go through the odious paperwork channels (particularly if your nearest FFL is hundreds of miles away!) would definitely be a big plus.

I don't think they work 'better' than a modern rifle, but since they are built in Finland, they definitely had cold weather in mind when designing them. The stocks are spliced in the middle which is supposed to minimize warpage. The actions are pretty famous for having generous clearances of the machined parts, so hopefully they still work good when frozen Interestingly enough, the one loner guy in the show carries an AR-15 with him and in one scene he takes a shot and his rifle malfunctions so he misses his prey. He works on it a bit and the next scene he tries again hoping it will fire the next time

I'd say the biggest reason they started using Mosins is the antique receiver and the availability of inexpensive ammo. Agnes has a PU sniper and since she is a native Inupiak Eskimo, it is legal for her to hunt Marine Mammals... so at some point in the series she will be hunting seal.

Chip has posted that Agnes has been shooting that M39 for over 10 years and she has been using Czech LPS ammo for most of that time but they recently got into reloading to fine tune the ammo and also prepare for the day when surplus will be unavailable.

The Hailstones are the real stars of the show, in my opinion

[23 Blast]

^Yes - I found that I liked watching the married couples in the show more than the loners. I also saw where that one loner guy who trapped a lynx dispatched it with what appeared to be a Ruger Mark II stainless.

Very, very cool seeing Mosins in action.