Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Zastava M808 reviews?

Anyone find or seen reviews on these rigs?

Thanks

A few of these made it to Australia. A couple guys on local hunting forums posted very positive remarks.

Triple lug, 26 inch barrels, very nice wood for a Zastava and good accurate guns. The calibres mentioned were 6.5x55 and 300WM from memory.

Single stage set triggers, kind of a Cerakote type finish, and a lot of allegedly Sako-esque features.

They weren't lightweight, I think about 9-9.5 lbs scoped.

Javman I cut and pasted this from a member on an Aussie hunting forum. Sorry the pics have long been deleted, the post was from 2012...


This is an interesting rifle that blends a lot of different ideas. It has a Model 70 Style bolt shroud with 3 position safety, an A-Bolt style bolt release, a Steyr-style set single stage trigger, Tikka style polymer bottom metal and detachable magazine. Rather than being blued, the metal parts seem to be coated with a hard ceracote-style finish.

The bolt is a push-feed type with recessed bolt face, plunger ejector and very wide hook extractor. It is very smooth to operate. The bolt handle is quite long and very easy to grab which has been one of my complaints about Zastava bolt handles in the past. As with CZs, this rifle has a high bolt lift, and I think Medium mounts would be the lowest possible because it will be hard for the bolt handle to clear the ocular bell otherwise.

Superficially the M808 bolt reminds me of an older style 579 Sako style, except it has three lugs - two arranged in conventional fashion and a third engaging in a slot cut in the rear receiver bridge, just forward of the bolt handle, a-la Mauser 98. I once had a Voere Titan menor which had two rear bolt lugs and none up front - so there is some similarity there. The bolt has two large cut-outs on its underside to vent gases into the magazine well in the event of a case rupture. The bolt is a very neat fit with some fairly minimal tolerances once it is set in its race-ways.

The trigger is a push-forward single set trigger. Used normally it breaks cleanly at about 1.2kg on my rifle. In set mode, the trigger pull is light but not feather-light like some.

The stock is a striking piece of I guess Turkish walnut, and it is reasonably well executed. A Sako it ain't - but it is pretty well executed and obviously hand finished. The rifle is pillar bedded and the barrel is free-floated - I don't need to do a thing to it.

The barrel is a 26" tube, which is surprisingly light and well balanced. After a good clean the bore is as mirror-smooth as I have seen, with quite shallow rifling. I guess this is a button-rifled barrel, and it looks like it has been hand-lapped.

The magazine is a polymer two-piece number. The bottom plate of the mag does protrude below the lines of the stock, but this is a very simple and strong magazine. It fits five of my long .270 handloads with about 4mm to spare. Feeding from the mag is smooth and ejection is adequate without being flung far and wide.

Summing up, for such a physically long rifle, this is a very light and easy to carry package. It has nice wood, the long barrel will get the most out of a round like the .270. I think it will be a very strong and accurate rifle. Looking forward to some range work and some hunting with it.

And this from the same bloke, who incidentally is a distributor and retailer of firearms and accessories.

Hope it helps. - Bob



They have almost a target-style stock that looks heavy, but in fact has been hogged out in the inletting to make it very light. The design of the stock is something similar to a silhouette stock, or a Biathlon rifle stock. It hangs steady for the offhand shot, but it is equally at home on a benchrest or bipod.

The way the barrelled action is set up in the stock is conducive to accuracy. The action has a wide flat bottom for ease of bedding, and the barrel is fully floated. The Action is steel pillar bedded front and rear, with a high tensile steel cross-bolt taking the recoil via the recoil lug for consistency shot after shot.

regardless of weather effects on the wooden stock, the rifles vibration pattern is going to be consistent from shot to shot, as all bedding is steel on steel, not wood on steel.

The trigger is a specialised tactical trigger. It works as either a very crisp, inert single-stage trigger that from the factory breaks at about 1kg, or it can be pressed forward to give a set trigger which goes off with a light tap of the trigger finger.

Thanks for the info very interesting, considering getting one.