Sgt. Semyon Nomokonov was an indigenous Siberian (Evenk) sniper who racked up 367 recorded kills (358 Germans, 9 Japanese) while fighting on the Eastern Front during WW2.
He earned the nickname Taiga Shaman.
He first learned to use a rifle at the age of 7, hunting sable, wapiti and elk. At the outbreak of the war, and now well into his 40s, he became a sniper with the 221st Infantry Div., fighting in Ukraine, Lithuania, East Prussia and Manchuria.
All of his kills were done with a 1891 Mosin and iron sights. He had an extremely sharp vision and was always skeptical about optics, often citing that he preferred to aim the way he learned as a kid.
He was wounded 8 separate times and marked his kills on his pipe until he ran out of room and had to get a log book.
At the end of the war, he returned to his small village in the mountains, never speaking about the war and living a very quite a simple life until his death in 1973. He left 9 children and 49 grandchildren.
Sidenote: Lots of similarities to Simo Hayha, they both used irons, both learned to shoot before reading, and both uses the same tactics.
#ww2 #sniper #zerofoxtrot #stayzero