NJheadhunter71

I have one in 243 w the heavy barrel and like stated above it doesn't shoot that great. It is IMHO a 100yr rifle. Mine shoots 3" groups @ 100. I am trying to figure out where the inaccuracy is comming from IE: rifling, barrel so I can try to correct it????

vabowhntr

I had one in 243 and after working on it a little to make sure the fit was just right (had to shim the pivot point with a little aluminum foil??) it shot my handloads that were just off the lands under an inch all day long. Did have to work on the trigger a little but got it under 3 lbs with zero creep. The throat was looong, so much that the 85 gr SBTHP was barely in the case enough to hold the bullet properly.

huntingkidPA

where are you hunting? in most wooded areas 150 is a long shot. you dont need a rifle that shoots sub 1" at 100 yards to hunt with. go for it

hometheaterman

I have never owned one of these luckily, but I have lots of experience with one, and I couldn't recommend it to anyway. A friend got one for his daughter in .243. Actually his was the NEF, but they are essentially the same. He traded another rifle for it, and the fact that he traded a $650 gun for it aside, the gun is a POS and that's the nicest way to put it. His daughter hates it and didn't want it in the first place, but for some reason he refused to listen to her and insisted he knew what was best for her.

When they first started shooting it, the action would randomly kick open after a shot and eject the spent shell right in your face. They gave it a thorough cleaning, and it did it some, so they messed with it some more, and finally got it to stop doing this, at least for right now. I don't really trust it as it's only been shot 35 times or so since they got this issue sorted out. I did a google search on this issue to see if I could come up with ideas for them, and it was one review after another saying that theirs did this, so obviously it's a very common and very serious issue. The best fix seemed to be to keep the bolt face completely dry, and to hope it didn't do it.

So that issue aside, the second issue this one had was that sometimes fired shells would stick in the chamber and you would have to take a cleaning rod and knock them out. This started happening every few shots and nothing they did seemed to fix it, so they sent it to a gunsmith. He claimed that he measured the chamber and that it was cut too shallow for SAAMI spec, so he ran his reamer through the chamber and cut it deeper and claimed it was fixed. He sent it back, and the first few rounds test fired of it worked fine, and then it started doing it again, just not as often. A Google search on this issue to see what to do about it reviled that this was also a very common problem, and people had done everything from polishing the chamber to spending it back to the factory for repair, and I've yet to see anyone that really had a solution to this. I found several guys that said their solution was to sell theirs, and others that said their solution was to carry a cleaning rod to the stand with them to knock stuck casing out should they need a second shot. A few guys also said on these older ones they cut a notch into the bolt face so they could get a screwdriver or knife behind the rim of the casing to get it out. Apparently the new ones have this spot as this is NEF/H&R's fix for this issue, since they obviously don't actually know how to fix it.

With those two issues along which are very common, I don't understand why anyone would buy one of these things. Especially for the $300 they normally sell for. You can get a much better much more accurate bolt action for that price, that will last you a life time instead of a single shot with a ton of problems and accuracy issues.

That said for the $150 you can get one for, it's a better price, but I still wouldn't give $150 for one either.

Onto the accuracy, there are tons of complaints about this online too, but this is one area where this one seems to be decent. 2" groups or so seem about normal with factory Winchester 100 grain Power Points. My buddy tells people it shoots one hole groups, but when he has shot it, it's not done that, and I've shot quite a bit of the rounds through it that have been through it, and 2" is about what it will do. I did try a handload that I shoot in my .243 that it loves, and I surprisingly got groups around 1" or just over. It's not accurate by any means, but this one isn't as bad as the ones some people got. I still don't see the advantage to this for the $300 they normally go for when you can buy a $400 Savage bolt action that will shoot sub moa groups, and not have all of the other issues.

The trigger is the next issue lots complain about. This one is heavy and not exactly smooth, but it's not horrible like some of them are. It's just not good by any means.

All in all, I just don't see a single positive thing to these rifles, but there are lots of downsides. It seems like everyone buys these things for their kids to start out on. To me, I'd rather my child start out on a decent rifle and something they will enjoy instead of something that will give them constant problems, and if they do manage to enjoy hunting, I will have to replace in a year or two anyway when they get tired of a single shot. My feeling is if I wouldn't use it, I wouldn't expect my kid to. It amazes me how often I see kids with cheap rifles like this, and $20 scopes, while the parents are using very nice rifles with very nice scopes.

I just can't recommend this thing, but if you do buy it check out Gray Beard forums. If you read around on there you will see pretty much all of these issues and more listed, but yet some people out there still seem to like them and claim with tweaking you can have these issues not show up as frequently. To me I'd rather just have a quality gun.

sconnyhunter

HTM, when you go looking for negatives. You usually find them.
Considering that there are literally tens of thousands of these rifles in the hands of shooters, I think a few problems are to be expected.
The simplest fix to the jamming shells in these rifles is to clean the chamber, and stop using old shells.

hometheaterman

It's not that I was looking for negatives. I don't like the gun to start with, and I wouldn't have bought it just because I think it's expensive for a single shot, however, I wasn't expecting or looking for reliability issues with them. When they started having one after another I got online and found that a ton of other people are also having these same issues.

They weren't using old shells, and the chamber was clean. I can't tell you about the huge amount of people online I saw posting about this same issue, but I can tell you about this particular one. These rifles are just pieces of junk, and it's as simple as that. When you go to the Graybeard forum, even the guys that love them are constantly talking about how to tweak them, or modify them just to make them work reliably and shoot halfway decently.

IMO at the $300 the cost new, there just are so many better options. You could get a Savage for $400 and not have any of the negatives these things have, and is a great rifle all the way around. Or you could get the Stevens 200's for the same price as these or less, and while you wouldn't have the accu trigger, you'd get a much more accurate gun without a ton of design flaws. I just don't see what could be an advantage to these guns over one of those. Price certainly isn't an advantage, accuracy certainly isn't an advantage, durability certainly isn't an advantage, and being able to have decently quick follow up shots certainly isn't an advantage. I just don't really see a single pro to these rifles, and from looking in this thread alone you can tell accuracy is a big issue.

I've used a lot of products out there that were exceptional, and even some I went into not liking, and they were so good they totally made me do a completely flip, and make me a believer in them, however these rifles are certainly not one of them.

sconnyhunter

HTM, you seem to have "used" thousands of products. Yet have never posted a positive experience about one yet. Either that or a "friend" had one or their buddy had one.

IMO, you are looking for negatives, and when you look for something, it can usually be found.

Sheridan

"The H&R rifles are Plain-Jane and not much more than that." Mojotex

Nuff said...... +1

hometheaterman

I have posted positive reviews about a ton of products, you just have apparently never read them.

I have nothing but great things to say about the Savage Model 10's/110's, I have nothing but great things to say about Speer Deep Curl Bullets, or Federal Fusion ammo, or Burris scopes, or many Ruger products and their amazing customer service, older Remington products, or pretty much any Volquartsen product I've used, and quite a few other products. I've tested more products that I've had good experiences with than ones I've had bad, it's just that it seems like some people only read the things that I comment on that I've had bad experiences with. The other thing that happens and I agree that this is partially my fault is that I often see threads asking about a product that I've had bad experiences with. A lot more than I see ones on here asking about the products I've had good experiences with. However, when I do see them wanting opinions of products I've used and likes, I do post about them. Maybe I should post my more product reviews on here when people aren't asking about them.

The other thing I have to say about this, is many of the reviews I have done on products have gotten posted on other sites, and not here, and that's my fault too.

The biggest 2 things people on here seem to disagree with me on is that the lower end Leupold scopes are sub par scopes for a price that is quite a bit higher than they should be. What I find odd is that people on here run low end Leupolds, and they are supposedly so great, and I don't know what I'm talking about, yet if you go to optics forums, or forums where many of the people are much more experienced evaluating scopes than many of the ones on here, I never see them say anything good about the low end Leupolds, and often I see them saying bad things about them.

The other is that the BAR I had, was never as accurate as I wanted. It was accurate enough for deer, but not near what I thought it should shoot. I still thought it was a good rifle, just not as accurate as I thought it should be. I had people on here insist I was wrong and that they shot 1" groups. Funny thing was when I started searching other forums, and talking to other people locally, I found more people complaining of bad accuracy including gun shops telling me they'd seen this issue, and the fact that I actually called Browning and was told that these groups were about all I should expect from this rifle, than I did of people saying they got groups like people on here claimed they got. However, I did run into people getting those groups, it just wasn't very often. So I think with those it's pretty much luck of the draw as to which you get. I don't think they are at all bad rifles, and I think that's where people on here have misunderstood what I'm saying about them. I just don't think they are perfect rifles either.

With these guns, that I don't like, what I find odd is that there is one after another after another case of these issues being documented online. A google search will turn up enough reports of these issues to keep you reading for a long time, yet a few people still seem to insist they are good rifles. Even in this own thread, you will see others saying they never could get theirs to shoot well.

Colorado Luckydog

You have to kidding. You can clean the chamber of a turd all you want and it's still a turd.