U.S. Rifle M1903a3 "03-A3" to 500yds: Practical Accuracy

this episode was brought to you by slate black industries for mlok grips and accessories visit slateblackindustries.com the 1903 a3 a very well respected target rifle in the us however i do think that this run is going to leave some to be a little bit disappointed on the contrast to that i'm actually fairly happy about one element in this run i had trouble seeing the front sight and i had trouble seeing the target both of those put together put this particular rifle in a distinctive disadvantage compared to some other rifles out there [Music] america's rifle two world wars baby ready yeah 150. impact i took it looks like i'm out the money today impact how's it left and right uh fine that was on the left half okay impact better yeah that was on the right half all right i'm on at 250. impact one more here at 250. impact and neutralized okay 300 yards yup how was the windage on those last two the right half of the plate okay i have been aiming to the right half of the plate how was the elevation on the one that i missed it looked like it might have been a touch high okay i was aiming on the top i was using a 200 yard sight and i aimed on the very the throat area of the plate okay so then after that i came down a little bit on the on the miss it looked like it also might have gone toward the left it was hard to see it's hard to see because it's so flat so straight so quick okay all right so for a 300 i'm going to try to maintain the windage but because i set it at the 300 yard sight it should be dead hold dead hold yeah impact right half okay i'll center the window trend i mean i see the wind in the grass it is moving right to left just this is cutting through it at this distance impact dead dead dead center okay all right we're on a 350. impact left edge just off the right edge okay i felt that i was pushing a little too far to the right there ready impact okay so that was on the left edge again right on top of your first impact okay all right i'm on at four a little bit of camouflage out there for you all right got it got it well those last year you said it hit on the right side or the left side the two impacts at 350 were on the left edge your miss was off the right edge okay so that's a little challenging it seems like windage i'm having to hold off to the right a little bit so i can't deadhold these things yeah now that is actually one of the things with the o3a3 sights that i dislike i prefer the garand sights because it's thicker with a thicker sight you have more of a horizontal plane to do a um a windage hold off so let's see how we do at 400. just off the left edge 9 o'clock perfect elevation bottom left corner this one is really difficult for me to see right now impact dead just off the right edge [Applause] impact neutralized i'm barely seeing that target now yeah well i know if you're struggling that much to see it for those who aren't aware henry has phenomenal eyesight uh i i can't it's i don't i know it probably isn't camouflaged on the um it's not that bad on the camera but it's pretty it you can see that it's it looks like a clump of grass and there's no reference points around it for me to look at right and the blade site is so fine that i have to actually find a good reference point to hit so anyways are you ready for a slightly easier to see target yeah i could see this one but it's 450 so i need to get the elevation correct all right here we go 450. okay yeah high by about maybe a third to a half target length on the left edge of the plate okay just on the bottom right corner impact just off the left edge just off the right edge just split that difference impact yeah i wish we could spray these things it's uh this one's a little bit hard to see even on the camera because of the shadowing where the sun is it's very difficult for me to make out right now even through the vortex finals no i can see it through the bino is no issue i'm talking about with iron sights do you want to try to take a different target um let's see if we could do this one all right because what i'm doing you see on top there's a shadow uh just to the top left of the plate yes yep i'm going to use that shadow as a windage uh reference point and i sort of see where the elevation is and i'll aim that way all right sounds good ready well you like put it in the shadow okay like perfectly into the shadow okay uh that was at eight o'clock off the left side of the plate okay how about this why don't we just go to the other ones yeah that i could actually see okay because that's that's not fair to the rifle so there's our gong and we're just gonna move over here to this diamond that's got a better uh angle against the sun it's going to let it be a little bit easier for henry to to take these shots uh since the standard 500 yard target based on the sun's position is just kind of occluded in shadow making it hard to see through the iron sights um i think that was an impact seriously i couldn't i thought i saw uh i thought i saw a splash on the plate okay let's do it again ready yeah go ahead yeah that's two two for two i'm like 99 sure that that first one was on the plate i mean i'm i'm pretty that was the same hold i did yeah so i'm fairly phenomenal i'm quite confident with it so the main struggle point with it were those really fine front sights when it came to a target that was somewhat camouflaged and i will say that this is actually something that ian and carl stress a lot on their their targets that they do at desert brutality is that they don't paint targets and in real life having a target that's trying to hide at that distance it's quite difficult to hit regardless we'll take it to the debrief the american ordnance corps develops rifles at camp perry they develop rifles from competition so pretty similar to what we're talking about um competitors you're a competitor socom likes to grab things from what the uspsa yeah sphere is using absolutely red dot sights on pistols is one of the glaring things that's grabbed from the usps here lpvos on on your ar systems yep so this is no different to it however let's dial back the 1903 uses a leaf site that is incredibly complicated and both of these systems are developed on the kd range on on target shooters and that's just how america has the ordinance core specifically how they had adopted target practices and and target rifles towards military use right i don't think that's the best practice all the time i mean i think there are certain merits to it uspsa is more on the practical side so i do think some adaptations should work but a kd range may not be the best right because what we what you're what you're noting is that you you found yourself in a situation where you had over designed or over engineered the sighting system for a rifle that needed to be at a much lower common denominator for use it's not just that manufacturing side it's much easier to manufacture the a3 sites than the old three sizes but then even the 03 a3 still has a very fine blade front sight that they used in target competitions that's all great when you're shooting at a usmc regulation you know target that's the size of a jeep but with a well-contrasted white background behind it allows you to get a really refined sight picture in that instance in a target competition environment right where you know the distance right that's not reality right the germans don't walk around with a giant white poster board behind them as a silhouetted figure yeah so the issue that i have with the o3a3 is that the front sight is is very fine it's very difficult to shoot at camouflage targets and we are not shooting at camouflage targets out here and even here i have issues because what i do and the m1 garand actually stepped away from the very fine front sights and i actually really like it because when you use a square notch you're able to use that flat top of the square notch to adjust for windage left and right when you've adjusted your elevation on your rear sight so effectively you're using points within your larger front sight and where it hits the target on the top bridge of that site to help hold for wind whereas when you have an extremely fine front sight you don't have the same you don't have the same ability to gauge the location of the target in relation to the front sight you know that is what i do with even target rifles out to one kilometer and beyond yeah i set my elevation and i like to use the mill scale to judge the windage and that's how you work i that's how i work with wind and i learned that from camp parachuters as well it's ironically camp parachuters that i learned it from walked away from the fine front sights that were developed for camp harry shooting right so so so in in just to to hammer that point home there were moments where you were shooting on the course where we ran into instances where you're like i'm having trouble gauging yeah where where i should be holding from a windage perspective and i'm losing the target it's very rare in my history shooting with henry to see henry have to come off the gun to try to find where the target is and then go back on the gun or to need need glass to be able to see where a target is to then get back on the site and find it in relation uh generally you have really good eyes and you he never really ever does that if you go back and watch him shoot other rifles on other runs that rarely happens whereas i might do that all the time because my eyes are crappy and i need to like find where a uh find where a target is in relation to the sights you rarely do that but you had to do that several times today on this run it's it's it's difficult for me to use fine bladed front sights which is why i prefer m1 garand front sights i mean it's just which is why i prefer the stock the stock m16 uh a1a2 sights yeah it's because it is that square notch and post yeah and it's easy for me to judge on the windage with a with that type of front sight however this is a mauser action where the us government actually got sued by paul mauser's company they settled with paul mauser and it was dwm who sued who sued and actually got money however it is a mauser action with sights on it that are not barley coin and i would say this is a far superior sight system than barleycorn right barleycorn is some backwards system that i i i don't know how it survived so long okay so so in terms of in terms of this versus the mouse or from a signing perspective you would choose this hands down yes what about from a caliber perspective obviously this shoots the venerable 30 odd six rounds i i think the 3006 is far superior to the eight mil mauser in fact if you look at what the norwegians did after world war ii when they had stockpiles of 98k from the surrender german soldiers they changed the site into post and rear notch let's say unarch and square post front sights and then they change the caliber to us thirty-odd six so they turned 98ks into something that's like yeah you know right okay so i think i like the rifle i wish the front sight wasn't so fine i wish it was thicker um i understand that's not something that you would do for target shooting for paper shooting but it's something that i like to use in the field yeah it's a personal preference thing and how you've trained and how you utilize your iron sights you'd prefer that so the caliber makes sense 30 odd 6 especially m2 balls shooting the you know the 150 grain yeah nothing stupid like the 180 grain nothing ridiculous like the eight mil shooting the 197 source yeah this is it just makes it makes a lot of sense if you're using the mouse reaction to do something like this however see that dust cover in the front on the front sight i took that off when i was shooting um it's a small piece yes it pops off it is to protect the front sight uh during transport am i dumb yeah just pull it off yeah it just pulls off you see the fine the fine front side another downside to it if you knock that against something accidentally oh yeah that looks like it could bend easy yeah so would you just shoot it with the hood or no the hood's too small here try look through it the hood's very it's very difficult to find your front sight and your target behind it when you use the little dust cover hood definitely does obscure a significant portion of so i mean that's that picture that's another big issue and so to me if i were to relook at the 1903 a3 which in world war ii bolt actions were alway already at the point i mean of you know bye-bye yeah i feel like the next iteration they would have changed the front sights something more in line with the m1 garand yeah but they it never got to that point yeah because these became obsolete right um and then uh turned into cmp rifles which as a cmp rifle shooting at targets yeah it's brilliant right excellent some and and in part why we've had probably so many requests to uh to run this because it has such a reputation in that field so one thing i do want to talk about though unlike other mousers you see something on the left side that is not on a mauser this yes that is a magazine cut off certain generals in the ordnance core had designated that they wanted the magazine cut cutoff to be put on for the 1903's it's interesting because this was during the adaptation of magazine bolt action rifles and it was a carryover from the civil war era where officers would control formations of soldiers into volley firing into um you know distance targets and the fear was that if you did not uh if you allowed the men to load from a magazine with such great firing rates that they would exhaust their ammunition and you would just become overwhelmed oh wow by the enemy so this was if you think of it an adaptation from civil war uh tactics in theory so to to show you how elements on this rifle have really it's it's just it's spanned decades and centuries and it's actually hard to fathom that someone who fought in the civil war had influence on the ordinance board to generate something like this yeah that is pretty cool yeah who do we have to thank for this one oh a huge thanks to brandon at the gun room uh not only does he do a lot of our ffl transfers for us and he does a lot of that up in north houston uh in the woodlands area but uh he has a pretty wicked collection of new and old stuff he says uh from classical to tactical and so huge thanks to brandon for learning us the gorgeous example of the 1903 a3 and i'm sure a lot of guys out there a lot of viewers also thank him for that as well we're very good guys thanks for tuning in see you in the next one [Music] do you enjoy arguing with other viewers on the internet on which rifle performs better on practical accuracy well we have a solution for you go to our patreon page and scroll down you'll find the practical accuracy scoreboard where we have ranked and compiled all the data of all the firearms we have tested on the practical accuracy course furthermore it's already 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Channel: 9-Hole Reviews

Views: 47,009

Rating: 4.9913979 out of 5

Keywords: M1, Garand, Army, Marines, AAC, Army Air Corps, WW2, WWII, Operation Overlord, Normandy, Torch, Germany, Springfield, John Garand, iwo jima, band of brothers, saving private ryan, bulge, pearl harbor, gran torino, medal of honor, call of duty, pubg, battlefield 1943, m2 ball, USGI, USMC, roof korean, 03a3, M1903A3, M1903A4, M1903, mauser, Kar98k, Forgotten Weapons, InRange, Ian McCollum

Id: J6GcCyLnT60

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020