G3 - HK91 - PTR91 to 500yds: Practical Accuracy

This episode was brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For M-Lok grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com. Okay, listen to Cousin Harry. Make sure intern go out of back of truck when you get money. Intern will do intern thing. You get money, you get product, get out. We see you back at safe house. Don't go too close. I don't want to use coke today, okay? You are too close. Get back. Put your hands where I can see them. Tell you what to do. No scope. No problem. 200. Compacts there on the left half. Okay, I was holding to the left. I thought the wind was coming in. So I'll censor the hold? I would, yeah. Okay, 250. Impact. Neutralize. Those are two center punch. Nice. All right, 300. Impact. Neutralize. 350. Just off the left edge. Impact. 400. It's right in there. I couldn't tell. I think maybe, maybe right, maybe low. It was right in there though. Okay. Just low. Just underneath. Okay. Impact. Okay. I'm not sure where that one in between those two went. The last one was, I was holding level at 400. We didn't have a meter range to zero it. So for this one, I'm going to aim at the top edge of the plate. Impact. Just off the right. Three o'clock. Impact. It's done. Yep. There's one in there. Okay. On at five. My sights top off at 400 meters. So this one's going to be a little bit off a Narnia that I've got to hold. Okay. That was a bit too high. That was a 12 o'clock over the top of the plate. That was left. Impact. Nice. Just off the edge at eight o'clock. Just off the edge. Impact. Nice. Nice. Good run. Low twenties. Low twenties. Nice. That last one was a little bit challenging, but I would say, honestly, for a combat sighting system, highly effective. I mean, super rugged, easy to take care of, easy to select. We'll go over more of it in the debrief. We'll see you there. So the big three, the G3, the FAL, the M14. Yep. Right. At this point, the SR-25 had not been born yet. We're talking about deep cold war era. NATO standardized in the 7.62.5.1. Those were the three go-to cartridges or rifles. So I think in the past we've seen the M14 do exceptionally well. However, that was a national match M14. So that is not, I should have really emphasized it more that it's not a match, a rack M14. M14, yeah. Rack M14 does not perform the same. Right. The FAL performed as you would expect a battle rifle would do. The long one and the short one, obviously it had provisions to make it more compact, which the G3 also does. You've shot it with the collapsible stock, which you've had the pleasure of enjoying what's nicknamed the meat tenderizer. But I think a lot of people don't, when they look at the rear sight in the G3, they automatically think it's fairly crude. And it's interesting because I actually think that it's a very well-designed rear sight. Most of the rear sights, if you think of it, the M14, the FAL, it's a single type of aperture. Whereas this, the Germans actually acknowledged that there's a difference between sight acquisition and accuracy between your V-notch sights and your peep sights, right? So at 100, you're using a V-notch sight. Right, you're open, open rear, much easier to acquire. But it's not just any normal V-notch sight because you actually float the front sight ring in the middle of the wide V. Here, look at it. You see how it's a wide V? Mm-hmm, yep. Very easy to float the front sight ring on there. And that's actually, to me, that's quite thoughtfully designed. So you're thinking about if you're setting it at short range and you've got potentially close range targets, that's akin to floating your big AK sight on top of your rear notch, except it's much better because it also allows you to hit 100 targets. And then you have your peep sights that go two, three, and 400 meters. I actually think it's a very thoughtfully designed sight. I think, and this is my theory, I think that in the US, this sight doesn't get a lot of love because a lot of people take these only to the short, the 100-yard range. Yeah, the 100-yard range, right. And they automatically want to just shoot really tight groups with it, which, I mean, it's fairly tight grouping for a battle rifle. But the premise is for the average commercial consumer, they want a peep sight that's going to allow them to group tightly at 100 yards, right? And that's not how this sight is designed. But when you start to extend out and you're clicking up through those other iterations, did you alter the rear sight and did you go up as you were going out, or did you set it to a battle setting at 300 meters or 400 meters? No, no, I went up. I went up. So basically, it was a test of how well the rear sight corresponded to the distance. And it corresponded very well. The main problem I had, and I think viewers would probably see, is at 500. Because basically, my front sight post is covering the target that I'm firing at. That was my main issue. Is that because this sight maxes at 400 meters? 400 meters, yeah. So not quite enough to be able to... That's a good hold for 450, but then when you go to 5, then you're having to cover the target. Which, for our purpose, I mean, it still works. Yeah. I mean, you need an armorer's tool, but it's not that difficult to use an armorer's tool to set the sight. Oh, set the zeros, yeah. Then once you set it, it's incredibly rugged, is the big thing. Rugged is a good thing to really transition to the G3 as a system. No gas, it's free-floated in the front. Really, it's one of those... You look at pictures in Africa, right? Yeah. Yeah. You get these rusted up G3s that Somali pirates are running on and off boats with, and they still work. So from a design perspective, and what we're seeing, we're talking about a very rugged design, obviously sufficiently accurate with a sighting system that really actually works quite well, as we've seen. And when we come down to the cartridge, we're talking about a cartridge that we know is going to be capable of performing out to 500, obviously well beyond 500, but for the scope of what we're doing with this, well, well within the range of strong performance from 7.62 by 5.1. So, I mean, if you think of it, if this was designed for the Bundeswehr to protect themselves during the Cold War, you think of Germany, either the Alpines or open field engagements. Seems like this would be a strong, strong performer for that theater. So I think it's a very thoughtfully designed rifle. It's a very rugged rifle. It does not get the, it gets a, it gets a lesser reputation in the States, I think. I would say that when we think about it in the States, we, and again, this could purely be perception, but we put it below the FAL. And I think that in the States, we lift the M14 to something totally separate and outside of this sphere. PTR aside, Century, Century brought in a lot of sesames, cut them up, and butchered them together into amalgamations that resemble this. And a lot of people, this is my opinion on why it also gets such a bad part of the reputation. Yes, because a lot of people, that was the iteration that they were exposed to at $399 of its original MSRP. These C308s hit the market. They had poor accuracy. They had poor reliability. Century used to do, they used to buzz because the way you headspace these things, you use fuel gauges to, to, to measure the bolt gap. You measure that and how close the bolts and the carrier are in correlation to the gap in between them. And that's how you headspace. Now you're supposed to change the rollers out, which actually changes the geometry between the bolts and the trunnion. What Century decided to do was take grinders and grind out that bolt gap. So it doesn't change anything in correlation to the trunnion. And then they would mix and match all these different parts. And they would come out with a rifle that is out of spec, recoils way too much. I'm saying this because that was one of my first integrations into, you know, the military service rifles. And I just thought these things were horrid until I actually put more time into the HK variety and the PTR variety. And I realized they're actually quite nice. Right. I would say that shooting this, especially, obviously, you know, at some future date, you'll see us shooting it for speed, but this rifle is exceptionally controllable for battle rifle. And it's interesting, it's, it's controllable in a sense that you still get the recoil, of course, but it's almost like it's spread out. Yeah, you don't feel it all on the singular hard punch. I think a good way to put it is that you have a sharper, snappier recoil impulse with something like the FAL. And then you have a longer, slower push, right with this particular configuration. Despite domestic manufacturings from former JLD now PTR being widely available in the States. Yeah, you just don't see it. People don't use it nearly as often, especially when you consider that there are modernization kits, there are sorts of our methods of modernizing the G3. And I would say the PTR one thing that they do well is they actually have the top pick rail already welded on. I know that rubs some people wrong. But I think that that's actually to me, if you're getting a PTR, you're not getting an H&K. So it's not a collectible. It's something that you're going to shoot, right? I think getting that pick rail is a fantastic option. Now, we have the we have the slick top, we wanted to see how something essentially that Cold War classic would do. I think for its design purpose as an infantry rifle, it's absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, all in all, Cold War battle rifle classic. This thing is awesome. Yeah, and a solid run at that. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in, guys. We'll see you in the next one. Take care. Subscribe to our newsletter at slateblackindustries.com where you can get updates on nine hole review publications and access the practical accuracy scoreboard to help you argue with people on the internet on which rifle performs better on the practical accuracy course. We maintain this newsletter to be majority gun content with nine hole reviews updates per every email with less than 33% marketing content. Subscribe today on slateblackindustries.com