The Soviets didn’t care about Simo HäyHä one bit, what ultimately hit Simo was merely a mortar shell fired by some local troops. They came under sniper fire from a general direction, and returned fire with mortars, that is not a particularly spectacular operation and a fairly reasonable response for platoon or infantry company during an advance.

Simo’s story is one of those things that people just insist on repeating though it is in fact entirely an unverifiable claim. What is the only source of verification that Simo actually killed this people? Simo himself. Let’s say for a moment, that Simo was entirely honest, and he believed this himself. How does Simo know that these people he shot actually died, or were even hit. Did he get up from his hidden position, and go check their corpses? Probably not. Famously, Simo didn’t use a scope, but iron sights. There is a reason why snipers have spotters, and if you go to a gun range and you try to shoot something with a bullet more than 50m away, you’re not gonna be able to just see with your naked eye if you hit it. I find it entirely plausible, that every time Simo pulled his trigger, he simply counted that as a kill. Why not? No one can say otherwise, and he legitimately would not be able to tell either.

Here is another reason why Simo’s story is extremely unlikely. Simo fought for less than 100 days, in the winter. This is the time of the year with the least amount of daytime. Some days in December at Helsinki’s latitude are only 6 hours of daylight. It is in short the worst time of the year for a sniper, to sit around as they have the least amount of time to actually do their sniping in a day. Night vision was not invented yet.

I have another suspicion, which is that if Simo was such a genius, why didn’t his genius make it into a a codified field manual? His tactics that are described are pretty rudimentary, such as using white camoflage in snow, and covering up his muscle in snow to make it hidden. Other tactics which are claimed he used includes filling his mouth with snow, my problem with this one is that snow will cause mouth tissue necrosis after about 60 seconds of holding it at max even once. Additionally, within seconds it will cause irritation and disrupt breathing regularly. And supposedly this was his common tactic for disguising his position. Such a genius sniper apparently didn’t think regular breathing was important for sniping, I wonder how many modern snipers feel this way.

I could go on, like the fact that Ivan Sidorenko claimed about the same number of sniper kills, but fought in a more target rich environment, and fought not for 100 days, but for 4 years, using the newest sniping technology available, and is considered one of the best snipers in history, trained loads of snipers in the field, and had years of military training even before 1941. But Simo wasn’t just better than Ivan Sidorenko, he was 1400% better, if you go by number of kills per day, and of course even more so if we go by kills per hour as that Ivan fought in a place where they actually had daylight.

I am making a long wind up, apologies. There are as far as I can see, zero reports from the Soviet side that acknowledge Simo even existed. The Soviet forces at the Battle of Kollaa were Simo was active, took 8,000 casualties, not dead, but casualties in total. Let’s say around around 3,000 of those were actual deaths, that would mean that Simo’s kill count of 500, or 700 by some people who also credit him with over 200 SMG kills, however ridiculous that is represent around 16.7% - 23.3% of total Soviet losses in this area.

1 Sniper, 16.7% of losses. He must have been living rent free Soviet mind, yet no casualty report mentions snipers as being a serious problem at all. Strange.

Бои в Финляндии. Воспоминания участников 1941 - details a passage from a Soviet sniper team, engaging a Finnish sniper at 300m range, effective engagement range with a scope, but fairly ineffective for someone using only iron sights.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Russians-finally-pinpoint-Simo-H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4-and-nearly-end-his-life-during-the-Winter-War-in-which-H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4-wiped-out-500-Russian-soldiers-as-a-Finnish-sniper/answer/Carl-Hamilton-12?ch=15&oid=1477743887276300&share=e4cc0b68&srid=hGHtbp&target_type=answer