In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
What’s the least accurate rifle you have ever owned?
Mr. Perfect
Member, Moderator Posts: 66,381 ******
We've got a good thread going on the most accurate rifle. What is your least accurate rifle? Have you tried making it better and if so what was the result? Anyone make their rifle shoot worse while trying to improve it?
And related, if it's so bad, why do you keep it?
Some will die in hot pursuit
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Comments
Winchester 94 in 30/30. Can't seem to hit the target at 25 yards with it, not sure why and have not bothered to shoot it enough to find out. I keep it because the other guns in that particular safe might miss it if I sold it.
I've seen some of the NEW 24 SAVAGE rifles over shotgun that are really wild shooters in several of the rim fire and centerfire calibers. Even the shotgun barrel would not print where aimed.
Some (most) would also have a 8-10 lb trigger pull.
Adds new meaning to the phrase "trying to make a silk purse out of a sour's ear"
I bought a Brand NEW in the box 24F 223/12ga. Still have the box. First one was returned to Savage due to erratic accuracy and the replacement was worse than the one returned. (also Savage arms customer service sucks big air, this was 10 years ago or so and I have not bought a Savage of any kind since due MAINLY to trying to communicate with their CS, would rather try contacting Microsoft help in Afghanistan) The rifle had to be shot about 5 times before the group settled. After it settled the shotgun could be shot and the rifle barrel group would shift about 4 inchs at 50 yards after the shock from the shotgun. I had to float the rifle barrel separate from the shotgun barrel to get this corrected and the floating rifle barrel also corrected the hot cold shift of the rifle pattern. Let the barrel get cold and the first shot from a cold barrel was usually at least 6 inch high at 100 yards before the barrel was floated. Seen in several forums where guys were mentioning their Savage 24 rifle pattern shifting after shooting the shotgun, them thinking it was scope or base. Came up with both a deer load High Velocity and a squirrel hunting load (22 mag vel and offset a full choke tube by indexing and slightly opening to the opposite side) to get the shotgun pattern centered.
The shotgun pattern was off by approx 12 inch left and 8 inches low at 30 yards.
Got a 3 lb trigger pull after I got the rifle and shotgun tuned. Made a nice all around woods gun. Took almost a year of tuning the gun. (have to shoot reloads in the rifle barrel)
Can now get consistent 1 inch groups at 100 yards with the HV load and 22 mag load is close to same.
Have a scope on the gun that can be easily re-adjusted fast for either the HV or the LV load. It's now a accurate all around hunting rifle/shotgun but took lots of patience during the tuning. I decided I was either going to fix the gun or use the barrels as a tire tool. Seen lots of forums where others were having the same Savage problems.
I think I discovered why Savage discontinued making those O/U's. (shameful)
Had a old used Remington 551 that was really wild shooter. (due to a buldge about 1 inch long center way in the barrel. Could not be readily be seen unless fingers were run slow along the barrel and when pushing a patch through the bore the patch would indicate the buldge as a freebore area. I suspect that a weak shell had been fired and the shooter just kept pulling the trigger on the auto until they latter ones finally came out the end of the barrel. If it had been a high velocity gun the barrel would have most likely exploded. I had previously squirrel hunted with the 551's and knew they were capable of good accuracy.
I replaced the barrel. Now shoots good groups. This was the older model Remington 551 with no scope grooves in the receiver. I drilled and tapped and installed a one piece weaver base for standard large rifle rings and a low power Leupold scope. This is the Remington Auto that shoots automatically shorts, longs and long rifles really good. (floating chamber)
I've seen quite a few guns that were really pretty to look at but not worth taking to the woods due to their operation or accuracy. I have these type guns in the same category as 'being married to a really pretty woman that has a headache all time, only good to look at"
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO HUNT WITH A UGLY GUN
Mini 14 Ranch. Hands down.
Anything Rossi and as Jim mentioned above. I would go further and say any Mini 14.
One more rifle I consider an honorable mention would be the SA M1A. I know people will disagree, 2" at 100 yards is the best for many who own & shoot one here. Spent extra for the target barrel and still a 2 MOA rifle.
I had a similar experience with one and had to replace the barrel.
Had an M1 Grand that through rounds down range like you would expect some one to throw a baseball at a 100 yards. Barrel looked more like a blunderbuss after years of cleaning from the muzzle end. I knew it was bad when I bought it and had intentions of replacing the barrel. After Springfield Armory had put a new barrel on it 25 years ago it is as accurate now as the day it left the original Springfield Armory in 1944.
It's a tie between a Norinco SKS, and, believe it or not, a Browning A-Bolt Gold Medallion in .30-06. The SKS was sort of to be expected. 6" at 100 yards, most of the time. A cheap, fun noisemaker. It was like my old Jeep; it rarely had time to cool down.
The Browning? 6"-9" at the same distance, no matter what you did for loads. If Grandpa couldn't get it to group, nobody could. That went away, replaced by an older Remington BDL in 7 mag. That one was almost effortless to get sub-MOA.
I bought on of the cheap Rossi 22 semi autos to leave in my shop for the ever going squirrel war.The sights were off by 3 feet at 50 yards and no more adjustments.I scoped it and with the scope maxed out it was 2 feet high at 50 yards.
With what I have left M1 carbine. It's not real bad but compared to the rest it is the least accurate that I currently have and a lot of that might be old eyes and no optics
Mini 14
I had a Carcano that I finally gave away. Don
Ruger American Rimfire 22. more fliers than Delta Airlines.
clean, dirty, scope, no scope, the thing just didn’t shoot straight.
Solution: bought a Tikka T1x and sold the Ruger.
🇺🇲 "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson 🇺🇲
Always wanted a mini 14 .Finally got one thru an inheritance . Need to find someone who wants to own one worse than me . Nothing short of awful as far as groups.
I alway considered a mini 14 as a prison guard gun.If it shot minute of inmate,that was good enough.
My brother in law worked corrections. The tower guards had Mini 14's but went to AR's a few years ago.
My least accurate happens to the first rifle I ever shot....a Sears 42 DL in .22.
It was my Mom's. Up until she first let me shoot it, I had only used BB guns. That was it for me! She could never hide the thing good enough from me after that. I have never looked back in my firearms obsession.
I think it could probably be a nice shooter, but it has (no kidding) at least a 15 lb trigger pull. Ridiculous! Never have tried to figure out how/if it can be adjusted, though.
30 years ago , a local gun shop owner gave each deputy and officer on the sheriffs dept and the city police departments in the county a new mini-14. It was theirs to keep, even if they left the department ..He was a true patriot.
Enfield #5 mk. 1 Jungle Carbine. Never found a handload it liked but it wouldn't have mattered if I had; the zero changed almost every time I took it to the range. And it kicked like an angry mule.
Any Winchester lever action. Any lever action for that matter, brand doesn't seem to make any difference.
Just my opinion, worth exactly what you paid for it!!😁
I've got a safe full of lever guns Browning, Marlin, Winchester and Savage, they all shoot true. I do find that my Marlins seem to be more accurate than the Winchesters but the Savage 99 and the Browning BLR (both .308) are both tack drivers.
1894 Marlin 25/20. Knew it had a dark bore when I bought it, but after cleaning it was worse than I could have imagined. At 50 yards I was having a lucky day if 4 out of 5 dots were somewhere on a standard 100yd rifle target. Lost it in the 1989 break in and have not been sorry that it wasn't one of the few recovered. Bob
My take on Carcanos is they can be very accurate if you use the correct bullets. They are bored for .268 bullets and the twist favors long bullets of 160 gr. Most ammo other than milsurp uses .265 gr bullets. PPU is .265
Ive got a Winchester Model 88 and its one of my better shooters!
Uh-Oh I forgot one.
I seen a new in the box H&R 7mm-08 that would shoot 6 inch groups at 30 yards and even worse if the barrel was cleaned. (bore fouling would reduce the groups size some. Just try adjusting a scope for average when a rifle is shooting minimum of 6 inch groups at 50 yards firing one shot at a time.
Seen a H&R 223 that was almost as bad as the 7mm-08 but I could not see or feel in rifling in the barrel. It would lose a shot at 50 yards quite often on a 18x24 sheet of white paper.
It had been shot quite a bit and came from a Pawn shop.
I have some smooth bore shotguns that will shoot slugs into a tighter groups than these two rifles.
I've seen some accurate H&R's but I see enough not so good that I would not buy any.
(I install scopes and site in rifles for guys, glass bed bolt actions and reload for accuracy)
Getting pricy trying to find reload components now days.
I like that Delta Airlines crack.
Well I never commented on the other thread since I'll admit I not a great shooter, but if I did I would have said all my firearms are great if the right person is using them, that said, I can hit the minute of a bad guy with all of them and have had friends with less shaky hands and better eyes shoot all mine with much better accuracy than me, but I can get the job done when needed. I don't hunt but have taken care of a lot of bandits on the farm and to me that is all I ever needed. I actually enjoy the build and putting together more than the shooting, but that's just me.
Honestly, Mr P, I have never owned one I could not get a deer with at a reasonable range. Not tack drivers maybe, but I am not a one hole/20 rounds competator.
I have had a couple of hand guns I couldn't shoot myself with.
Was a JC Higgins .22 that was so inaccurate that i sawed the barrel off. Don't remember the model. I used rat shot to shoot the huge grasshoppers sunning themselves on the red clay dirt roads in Central, Virginia. I suppose that was a little evil but it made me think I was a Expert Rifleman (which I was in the army). I suppose that was cheating as a near miss was deadly to the grasshoppers.---------Ray
We had 30 .06 rifles with iron sights, 12ga pumps. Someone convinced higher up we needed the mini 14. All towers got a mini 14. Thankfully, they left the .06 where they were also. Heard later after I left they pulled the 14's out. Do not know what if anything replaced them.
My least accurate rifles????........GONE baby GONE!!!😎
Thoughts to live by.......
"Only accurate rifles are interesting" .....The Colonel......Townsend Whelen
"Life's too short to hunt with an ugly gun".........unknown.....
I guess I was lucky with the Mini 14's I have owned. All shot under 3" at 100 yards....Better than minute of Coyote as I shot one at about 125 yards in the past..
The least accurate rifles I owned were an AK and an SKS. I never thought too much about that as they were never intended to be target rifles....
So, if you own even one rifle you have one that is the least accurate currently, but if they are "gone" as you say, you can still comment on "the least accurate rifle you have ever owned".
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I had a Anniversary edition Remington 700 CDL in 17 Fireball. Couldn't get any grouping at 100 yards. Dropped down to 50 yards, and it was still shooting 4 to 6 inch groups. Put it back in the box, and sold it with two full boxes of ammo, for what I originally paid for it. I also have an old Savage 101 single shot revolver. Can't hit a target at 10 yards with that piece of junk. I still have it , only because it was the first gun my father ever gave me and has sentimental value.
I had a Ruger No. 1-v in .25-06 that was one of the worst shooting rifles I ever owned with factory loads. However, with the proper hand loads, it was one of the most accurate rifles I have owned.
My foggy memory can barely recall a Ruger 77RL in 250-3000. 🤯
Hardly a precise measurement........but I swear it couldn't keep a 5 shot group inside Elmer Keith's hat at 50 yards.......🤠🥺
I will guess two Italian Carcano rifles i had one in 6.5 and one in 7.35 if I recall
I am still amazed at Lee Harvy for his marksman ship with one 😲
Ditch.......
A few years ago the wife and I visited The School Book Depository "museum".
Although access to L Harvey's actual shooting perch is not allowed.......I was able to access the window on the floor directly above his position.
I estimated the fired distances to be from 30 to 45 yards......the street below is marked. I would guess the exact distances would be on the internet somewhere.
Just standing at the window.........it sure doesn't seem very far at all.
Winchester model 92 32-20. About as accurate as pitching rocks.
I had a 1916 Spanish Mauser in 7X57 that shot a measured 48" MOA
The British said hold my ale and a Enfield MK1 shot a measure 72" MOA
These were both determined with 25 yard targets as it was impossible to make a big enough target at 100yards
So those numbers might actually be worse than the 48/72 MOA
"Fools learn from their own mistakes. I learn from the mistakes of others"
Otto von Bismarck