dragonthor

Hi I am trying to find a new .223 rifle. One problem is that I have not done this before. I have a shotgun and a .22 but i want something a little larger than the .22 I am looking at both bolt action and auto loading. I want something that is built well, accurate, cost effective(i am aiming for about $600), and is good at long distance. I really want something with an assault stile handle(vertical behind trigger). I looked at a EABICOL and really liked the feel but they are built to break. The next semi-auto rifle price wise is double the cost and not very comfortable. I would love to get a long barrel, long range, fairly light, scope and bipod sniper style rifle. What would you recommend me getting. I am hoping to buy this very soon so oops i should have posted sooner. Thank you for the responses.

hotgunner21

sry you should have posted in the Guns section instead of the Gun Review section

USMC PMI

I can offer you an opinion based on years of marksmanship experience and training. Ask youself the following questions:
1) What will be the primary purpose of this rifle? (Target shooting, hunting, plinking, etc...)

2) What is the total budget for the rifle? (How much can you afford to spend. Don't forget you will most likely want an optical sight requiring bases and rings, this can add up to be more than the rofle itself)

This may seem simple but can answer many questions if viewed in the proper perspective. Use your answers to eliminate options rather then trying to select one option from a sea of others. If your primary purpose for this rifle is to practice long range target shooting you should eliminate ANY semi-automatic gas operated rifle. I'm sure folks will argue with me but it is an established fact that bolt action rifle are inherently more accurate than their semi-automatic / gas operated counterparts. This is especially true if you are on a limited budget. Sure I have seen semi-auto's based on the AR action shoot 1/4 MOA or less @ 100 meters, but the guy paid about $2000 for the rifle. For the $600 buget that you are working with, I would not recommed any semi-auto rifle, you simply will not be able to purchase a quality product at that price. My opinion, in this particular case, eliminate the semi-auto or save for a while longer.

You mention that you would like a sniper style rifle, take a look at what military and police/SWAT snipers are using. 99.9% bolt action rifles. There is an abundant selection of acceptiable quality bolt action rifle out there. You can then narrow the selection in this field further first by deciding what is most important to you, appearence or accuracy? If you stay within a price range you will notice this; a company will spend only so much money and effort building a production rifle. Their time is either spent on appearance or accuracy for the most part. I is in my nature (and traiing) to forget the "look" of a rifle and focus on how it feels when I shoulder it, how smooth is the action, how bad is the factory trigger, does the company make any accuracy promise? If you choose this route (which I recommend) it is easy and failry inexpensive to put a cool stock on a gun if you so desire, it is extremely difficult and possibly very expensive attempting to troubleshoot and correct a poor shooting file. The rifle is a tool that delivers a payload (projectile) to the exact spot you desire; keep this in mind when a shop owner trys to sell you the high polished low-end Howa for the same price as a high end (accuracy wise anyway) porrly finished Savage. If your guns looks nice, but your are not hitting your target, what good is it? If you want decoration buy a reproduction Sharps and hand it on the wall.

There are many bolt rifles that have great accuracy potential right out of the box. My personal suggestions, well again folks will give me what for but, Savage is generally a very accurate rifle out of the box, you pay the price with some of the worst metal finishing I have ever seen on a rifle, the blued rifle rust when exposed to the eliments very easliy. All that said I own a Savage, it does the job well.
Winchester makes overall well made rifles. The fit and finish is much nicer than the Savage and the accuracy does not seem to suffer, I would place Remington in the same category, I own several of both and they do well. Ruger, I have had trouble with Ruger centerfire rifles, owned two. The only two guns I have ever sold. Neither met the major requirement, accuracy. Fit and finsh were above average, the barrels were not. I tried every home gunsmith's trick to resolve the issues, glass bedding the receiver, ensuring the barrel was free floated, tried as many different loads/projectiles/power combinations as my arm would let me reload, no positive results. Even tried lapping the barrel, little to no improvement. Maybe it was bad luck but I can not recomment them. There are other rifles out there to consider but I have no experience with them.

I know this is a lot and feel free to ask me more specific questions I will be happy to share the knowledge. I can and will give you the straight no BS factual answers. The last thing to consider, .223 is a fine caliber but it does have its limitations. If you would like to try your hand at say Whitetail deer hunting you will want a little more bite than a .223. If you plan to only target shoot and maybe shoot the occasional ground hog, .223 is excellent. Again from what you said (a sniper type rifle) look at what the pro's use, mostly .308, which happens to make an excellent deer cartridge. Actually it is adequate to take all game on the face of North America with the exception of the large Bears. Both .223 and .308 ammunition is among the most reasoniable to purchase and both have an excellent variety, bet you money that your local Wal Mart has at least two different loads in either caliber. I will not talk calibers specifically, that is a never ending battle. Folks defend their favority caliber like it was their daughter on prom night! Among the most popular by gun and ammunition sales are 30-06, .270 Win, .308, .223, personally I would stick to one of these calibers, all those folks purchasing them can't be wrong, they are among the most tested and proven calibers on the market.

That is all I can offer for now, please feel free to ask me anything. I look foreward to contributing to this message board. I hope this will at least give you a place to start sorting through the confusion.

dragonthor

wow thanks for this in depth reply.
Ok i know that your opinion of ruger may be tarnished but i know they have been around since 1945 i believe. I have had them recommended with winchester, and a few others. This is one that i am looking at, do you think that though it is ruger, it is a good deal for about 550. And how bad was the accuracy of your rugers?
I found one riffle that i am seriously looking at.
It is a ruger mini 14 .223 with a 3-9-42 goldlabel scope. The dealer is selling it with an alternative wood stock along with the original. It also comes with a 10 round mag and a 5 round mag. Can you please give me you oppinion of this set up. Do you think that it is good for mainly target shooting. I would also put a Harris bipod on it. Alright thank you.

ColoradoElk

Hi Dragon:

The mini is not going to meet your needs, cost effectively.

You should be able to find a new mini for around $500. However, all the glass will do is let you see your misses. You will not get the accuracy you are looking for. Most minis are lucky to shoot 6 moa, out of the box. The reasons that seem most valid are a $2 barrel that gets hot too quickly and an action that does has not been machined to close tolerances.

Unless you want to buy a Springfield, I'd go with a .308 or .30-06 bolt, which you can find for about $500, sans glass.

Good Luck.
CE

dragonthor

ok thanks man

USMC PMI

Listen to CE, he is correct. You will not be happy with the mini, accuracy is horrible at best if we are talking about any type of target shooting or even medium range plinking.

The two Ruger bolt rifles I had experience with were both M77 mark II Standard's, wood stock, blued finish. Overall a nice looking rifle. The first was in 25.06, after all my best efforts the rifle's best group was over 3" at 100 yards, that was with handloads that it "liked" and fired from a bench vise using a remote trigger actuator, eliminating 99.9% shooters error. With factory ammo it averaged just under 4" with same conditions. The other MK II was in .270 Win, it was slightly better but still was over 2.5 MOA from the vise. Neither rifle would be ruled out as not accurate enough to hunt meduim sized game under 250 yards with but still a little sloppy for my taste. I contacted Ruger and gave them a detailed description, the customer support rep. told me that honestly if I was trying to get Ruger to replace the rifle or barrel for accuracy alone I would only be wasting the money I spent for shipping. They do not warrant that a rifle will shoot to one degree or another. The barrels are thin but that should not be an excuse until after three or four shots when the barrel heated up. I just tested a Winchester Mod. 70 Featherweight in 30-06 that had seen about 16 years of heavy hunting, it has a USED thin barrel and with factory ammo fired a nice 1.6 " group, with handloads and a long overdue bore scrubbing it produced about 1.2" 5 shot groups. Both rifles were brand new, had no sighns of damage, and I took a beating on them when I sold them, I couldn't lie about their accuracy and was sure to tell any perspective buyer. Rifle manufacturing has improved over the past 15 years a great deal, it has almost become an industry standard for factory centerfire bolt rifles to fire 1.5 MOA or better. I say this trough experience sighting new rifles from my vise for folks, most do very well. Some even warrant that their rifles will hold 1 MOA, Weatherby is one, even with their Vangard rifles that you can buy at WalMart for under $400. Never tested the Vangard but it is warranted, for what it is worth the Vangard is made by Howa in Japan for Weatherby.

For your price range you are not going to find an auto loader that does what you want. Good luck any route you take.

ted3929

If you want a reliable and inexpensive semi auto rifle for light hunting, go with a better caliber. The .223 is a casualty producing cartridge. It was meant to induce nasty wounds and has been outlawed for anything but varmint hunting in some states.

If you like the Ruger Mini 14, go with the 7.62x39 version. The cartridge has better ballistics and is dirt cheap on the market. Also legal to hunt with. Unfortunately, it will also splatter varmints all over the landscape.

If you really want to go cheap, get a great quality SKS for under $200. Of course, the do weigh 10 pounds and come with a bayonet attached, but you can use that as a skewer if you don't feel like bending over to pick up that woodchuck you just pasted. [8D]

biscuit jake

Tuned semi-auto sniper rifles are holy yikes expensive and don't have the accuracy of bolt rifles. I don't know what you mean by long range; the 223 and 222 remington are accurate but they start to fall out of the sky after 300 or so. But if that fills the bill, the bulk ammo out there is tempting. Savage, well, they are not charming but they have a rep for accuracy in bolt actions. I had a Remington ADL in 222 Remington, sporter (not heavy) barrel, and it fired 3/4" 100 yard groups all day, hot or cold, mix or match loads. Should have kept it. The 22 250 or 220 swift are longer range items, but more costly to shoot unless you handload. Remington makes decent heavy barrled 700s in many good calibers. Don't know if you can save your sheckles, or how dedicated you are to the 223, but the 308 winchester (civilian version of the 7.62 nato) is a naturally accurate cartridge. Phenomenal tight groups. Remington is coming out with one in 2005 with a desert tan stock. (Biscuit drools.) But hey, the Savage will work. Check out bulk ammo costs at Cabela's. They are online.

biscuit jake

Forgot one thing to consider. The 223 is a whole bunch less noisy than the bigger rounds. Scares less game in the valley.