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A 3 inch group at 100 yards is pretty good.tim tomlinson said
Not terribly bad for any lever-gun. I guarantee that any buyer of a new gun who complained to the factory that 3 MOA was the best it would shoot, & he wanted something done about it, would be told that was considered acceptable accuracy.
It was handloaders who changed that manufacturing policy. And very probably the late Warren Page, whose benchrest records spoke for themselves.
My own experience with late Model lever actions like the Winchester 88 and Browning BLR has been much better than 3MOA.
While 2 to 3 inch 100 yard groups have been the norm for me with various pre and post war 94 and 64 Winchesters in .30 WCF, the first 5 shot group I made with an Eighties vintage 30/06 Browning 1895 at 100 yards was a measured 1.3 inches, in front of a witness. I packed it up and took it and the target home. I don’t shoot that good with iron sights…
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Zebulon said
My own experience with late Model lever actions like the Winchester 88 and Browning BLR has been much better than 3MOA.
I agree–barrel-making has improved, & those are superior lever designs.
I recall my Dad’s post-63 M100.308 (when it didn’t jam) was capable of a very high degree of accuracy.
There is and always will be, I suppose, a controversy whether or not certain cartridge designs are inherently capable of more accuracy than others. The .308 WCF seems to be very amenable to loading for accuracy. Then there’s the .22 Pindell-Palmisano benchrest design that took all the marbles for a while.
I don’t have sufficient experience to have an opinion of much value. However, I do think a lot of “inherent accuracy” depends on the skill of the shooter and the care and expertise lavished on the individual rifle. Anybody who has observed what an expert can do with a tuned National Match grade M14/M1A will be hard to convince bolt action rifles take all the cake, for example.
I used to think only front-locking action designs were capable of excellent accuracy. That was before I acquired an Anschutz hornet and shot a friend’s Colt Sauer .30/06. Not all spendy rifles provide that level of accuracy but it sure was an eye-opener for me.
To avoid being burned at the stake for heresy, I’ll not describe in too much detail my experience, later in life, with a standard style 1966 Winchester Model 70 .243. It was so ugly you wanted to wear gloves handling it. But it was a bell ringer with any reasonable factory ammunition. I attribute most of that to a really free floated, fairly heavy contour barrel, and a stiffer action frame. And the trigger was still the tunable M70 trigger. If memory serves, Winchester had only recently adopted the hammer forging process for Model 70 barrels. The lesson: handsome is as handsome does. A son now owns it with a serious Bausch & Lomb varmint scope installed.
The adventure continues, with more ibuprofen.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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