Russian Immigrant

The newest member of my collection



Baikal MP-161K
From the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant.

Planning on seeing how it shoots tomorrow. Going to start the NRA smallbore qualification stuff, so no scope yet, but I eventually plan on getting something nice for her. Range report coming soon.

That's a pretty slick looking rifle! I like it.

Sorry...nice rifle...I missed the caliber....?

That is sick! Love it..

Nifty, like the CX4 had a rimfire baby!

Let us know how she shoots. I've read they are fairly accurate out of the box.

Nice. I picked up one of those a few months ago. The barrel and action were covered in some kind of Russian goop. Once cleaned, it shot very well. They supposedly make it in .22WMR but I could only find .22 LR.

Very nice.

I got mine from Constitutional Firearms. If it had gobs of cosmoline (orange goop) on it, they must have cleaned it off (thank whatever power you believe in) because I only found a little bit behind the bolt, which was easy to remove with a patch on a rod.

It did have an affidavit form with it mentioning it had been given a "preservation treatment", so I assume the good folks of Constitutional did me a solid and cleaned it.

It is .22 long rifle. Came with 2-9 round magazines. Documentation lists ammo capacity as 9+1. I think I may just stick with loading 8, because 9 compressed the magazine spring down to it's absolute limit. The mags don't appear to be able to be disassembled, and appear proprietary, so until I know how available they will be, I'm erring on the safe side. The mags have a thumb button on them like .22 pistol mags, so loading was a breeze.

Ran up to the range after work today, to give her a go and see how much tuning I needed to do.

This is the target I shot 18 rounds of Winchester 333 at (36 grain 1280fps HP plated)



50 yards sitting supported, I shot about once a second, not full on rapid fire, but nice spaced shots.

If I slowed it down a bit and took better care, I could have probably halved the group size, but I was just plinking.

So:

PROS-
Pretty gun, very sleek
Very comfortable - cheek weld was right there, I like the rubberized pads on the forearm and grip. The comb is also adjustable, and the receiver is railed, so getting scoped will probably be easy.
Very accurate out of the box - This was without a scope, using the factory irons which look like a big pistol sight.
No recoil - Not even a little flip. Firing gives you a bit of vibration, that's all. Every other .22 I've fired had at least a tiny kick.
Very easy to use. Mags load easy, go in easy, lock positively, good mag release right at the base of the magazine well, huge bolt handle that is easily reachable with a finger without taking your hand off the grip.

CONS-
Front sight post is huge and wide. This will take some getting used to (I intend to do some NRA Qual smallbore that mandates iron sights)
It's going to be a stone bitch to clean, if I ever need to take it down past the chamber and barrel. Docs say take it to a gunsmith if I need more cleaning than just the barrel and chamber.
The magazine problem I mentioned earlier, which will no longer be a "con" if magazines are easily procured


Overall, I'm really pleased with the rifle. Definitely a good buy that I will recommend to anyone who wants a good, relatively inexpensive .22


EDIT-- I ran 2 mags of the Winchester 333, and 50 rounds of CCI standard 40 grain lead 1070fps. The CCI gave a slightly looser group, still left, but on the lower quadrant of the diamond.
No misfeeds, no ftf, it ate them both and liked it.
Going to run other brands through as I find them.....if I find a dog, I'll post it.

Nice looking rifle. Looking at the exploded view online, the front sight looks like small sleeve with a bolt underneath that you may be able to remove and replace with something with a rail and put some nice peep sights front and on the back rail for smallbore.

That's pretty cool, I've never seen one of those before. It reminds me a bit of this one from Magnum Research.

what model shoes?

joppaj said:

That's pretty cool, I've never seen one of those before. It reminds me a bit of this one from Magnum Research.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I got to handle that at their booth at NRAAM. The barrel is not made of metal, which, while I know how strong carbon fiber is, still kind of sketched me out. Plus the whole thing only weighs like 3 pounds.

It's definitely on the "To buy" list, but I wanted something now, and the Baikal is turning out to be a good choice.