ORIGINAL: Briman

Here's some information that I've gleaned from working at a deer rifle sight-in clinic over the last 5 or 6 years.
I've seen litterally hundreds of remington semiautos over the years- if I were to judge by what I see there, they would be the most prominant and numerous rifles used in my neck of the woods, except that the people who show up to these clinics aren't avid shooters, and for the most part are just pure deer hunters. Most of the people who have access to ranges tend to not come to these events.

Jamming- I haven't observed pesonally- my brother in law and father-in-law both use remington semis and I haven't heard a jamming problem from them- but once again the two of them probably shoot a combined total of 6 shots per year and if they are lucky, another shot at a deer. At the range, during the deer rifle sightin clinic- we only allow single loading for safety sake- once again no jamming. For the most part- the remingtons will have no problems with the first shot, but I can't say anything about what will happen after that.

Accuracy- They all seem capable of hitting what a person is aiming at and certainly would be efective at 100 yards. On the other hand, they sem to suffer pretty badly once 3 or 4 shots have been put through them. The way the barrel is mounted, it has alot of stresses on it when it heats up- kind of the opposite effect you would get from 'free-floating' a bolt action barrel. Every rifle seems to shoot differently- most will have a change in point of impact of around 4" some will have changes up to 1', a very very rare few will shoot 6 or 7 in a row with only an 1"-2" change in impact.

Sighting in- because of the barrel warping issue, give yourself alot of time for sighting in. It might be best to take a shot, move your crosshairs, wait 5 minutes, shoot again, repeat until you have it zeroed. If you try zeroing it while the barrel is warmed up, you'll be chasing your tail.


My informed opinion on them- they work, and if used for hunting, its likely you'll only take one maybe two shots at most with it, so its perfectly suitable for that, though I don't understand the point of a semiauto that has accuracy problems after being fired a few times in a matter of minutes. For the money, I personally would rather get a bolt action. If I were to buy a big bore semiauto for target shooting, I would skip it altogether and get a M1, M1A, or Browning BAR, which are all much better suited for firing more than a handful of shots per session.