I think there should be a rare chance that it spawns in loaded. In most instances, a gun would be discarded because it was no longer useful to the owner and that is what we would usually find in this wasteland. But occasionally, a survivor could be careless and lose a loaded gun by being killed or injured and needing to move from the area quickly. Or the loaded gun may be in a house that hasn't already been looted by a survivor. This would add "realsim", in the sense that in a post-apocolyptic world is unlikely that fully equipped and loaded guns will just be laying around.

My two part battle in Kamyshovo (Part 1: Learning the Rules and Part 2: Not the fastest draw in Chernarus) We started out just messing around, but ended up battling with some guys. It was a lot of fun, but ultimately frustrating. Edited to embed videos (just figured out how!)

The time that I was fully geared and a pantless hacker flew in and rained arrows on me. When my legs were broken and I couldn't run, she followed up with a barrage of grenades.

I forgot to mention that doorways are the same size as a player, so you can use them to range find with your PSO scope. I have yet to find a battery in this update, so the range finder has been useless. If you are good at estimating your ranges, then the Winchester is a good option. Ammo is also plentiful for the Winchester. Although, if you know where to look, the 7.62 ammo isn't diffcult to find. I have found it in the barracks and in the small red and green houses with staircase on the side (on the stove or the floor).

The 7.62 x 54mm hits harder. The Mosin takes the same ammo, but isn't semi-auto and can only be equipped with the PU scope. That is why I switched from the Mosin to the SVD for the 0.57 update, since the long range scope is no longer an option.

Understandable. The Winchester with hunting scope zooms in further, but the downside is that it seems to take more shots to down a geared player than the SVD. The upside of the SVD - besides power - is that it has a range finder and is semi-auto, so I can fire 2 shots rapidly, if needed. The downside, beside the PSO scope, is that ammo is sparse and the maneuverablity seems a bit slower. With practice, the SVD is equitable to the Winchester.

Before I got an SVD I would have voted Winchester. Really, I could go either way. Edited to add that I actually got really lucky and found my SVD with a lucky log in on a public server. https://youtu.be/7x2pZTmfAIY