I took mine out today to see if I could get my cheap scope somewhat sighted in and it was all over the place. Dunno if it was my bad tendency to flinch, the wind, the gun, or the scope but it was pretty bad. It's Chinese if that makes any difference.

SKS scope mounts tend to be utter crap, especially the receiver cover ones.  I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the scope mount is the primary culprit.

Ah, definitely have one of those...

The Chinese are really accurate.  Willing to bet it you use the standard FBI target,good quality ammo, and a spotting scope, you'd be amazed at the accuracy.  Unfortunately, I don't have any targets to post at 100 meters.  Here at 50 meters, 20 rounds on the left 50 rounds on the right with open sights.  This is a 1956 (6 digit) /26\ numbers matching except for the receiver cover which is a Sino-Soviet.

http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff505/lmbass14/IMG_0001_zps83f45e88.jpg

My iron sights on my "ghost" chinese work great.
My first two 3 shot groups at 100 yds. shooting from a bench.


Shot a doe at 145 paces with iron sights this past season also.

Williams or tech aperture sight. Optics don't belong on an SKS.

Why not?  You're obviously not middle aged and going blind.  I agree peep sights are a hundred yard solution (for me).   They were scoped all over the place during the Yugoslav war in the 90s and the Chinese sold many "sport" versions into the US wi optics.  I have a Chinese military production SKS with the famous "West Coast" side rail or otherwise known as "the rail to nowhere" because it used some unknown Chinese mount that never made it to the US.  I'm gonna yank it and put some other side rail + mount in its place.  I already found an original  2.5x type 89 scope for it.