I joined here a while ago when I first discovered these rifles, but got discouraged at their apparent pickiness after from searching through this site and reading the stickies. But, I want to make sure I am not just focusing on a minority of problems if most are perfectly happy with their rifles.
I am drawn to single-shots for largely romantic reasons (
), but also for the practicality of being able to easily break it down for backpacking and longer camping trips, or in any case where I wouldn't want a full long gun strapped to my back. I really like the Survivor rifles for the bull barrels and scope mounts, and from what I gather they tend to be more accurate than the standard ones and less prone to stringing with heat. I would probably get the .308 version, but the .223 isn’t out of the question. My plan for the back end would be to add a collapsible stock, mostly so my 5' GF could shoot it, and a Limbsaver recoil pad (for both of us
). Up front, I'd like to have the barrel cut and re-crowned to ~16" for handiness, and add a bipod. Assembled, the OAL would be about 27" with the recoil pad (closer to 26” for .223 since I wouldn’t need the pad), and then it could be
broken down to fit into a backpack (1).
This would NOT be a benchrest rifle. Other than acquiring / verifying the scope's zero, most likely I'd only ever plink solid reactive targets (gongs, wood, cans, etc) mostly from 50-200 yards,
off hand and from the bipod (2). Sometimes, just for the sport of it, I’m sure I might like to
see how quickly I can hit a few targets (3). For optics, I'd be using a smaller, lower-powered scope, probably a fixed 4X, but I'd have to experiment. As an outdoors gun, I don't want it to not function or be off 5MOA if a speck of
dust gets into the action before closing, or if I accidentally
bump it around a bit getting into a tree (4). Also, because I am not super-concerned about great groups, I will probably only be using
cheap steel-cased ammo (5).
Ok, so the questions (see above for context):
1) The take-down aspect is one of my favorite characteristics of a rifle like this. A friend has one and he said he has experimented with taking his down to carry in his backpack for hunting trips, and when reassembling didn’t see any noticeable change in zero (though I don’t know how intentionally he tested this). However, I’ve read on here that even the tension of the take-down screw can significantly affect both accuracy and precision. How much would it affect accuracy if I try to do this?
2) I have read these guns don’t shoot well unless you rest the front of the action on a sandbag. As mentioned, that is not the kind of shooting I’d like to do. I can accept a 1-2MOA vertical variance between using the bipod and not, but I don’t want much more than that. I am willing to carefully set up the bipod to aid in accuracy (mounting type, location, etc), as long as it doesn’t affect my ability to take the rifle down.
3) I know a lot of rounds will heat up any barrel, but I’ve read reports that make it seem like these barrels are for some reason way more sensitive to barrel heat than most. I won’t be trying to Cowboy Action Shoot with this gun or anything, but if my grandpa bets me a dollar I can’t knock down 10 cans in a minute, I wouldn’t want the barrel to bend my shots all over the place in the process.
4) If I am out for a week at a time on a trip (or enduring some hypothetical survival situation), there is a good chance the gun won’t remain meticulously clean. Obviously, I’d do my best to keep it out of the mud and wipe off / bore-snake it as necessary, but I don’t want to have to worry about it not latching or cases sticking or whatever, even if it appeared clean.
5) I could try a few different brands of the cheap stuff to see which ran the best, but steel-cased ammo would be about the only thing I could actually shoot. Otherwise, I’d be too bummed about the cost to enjoy the range time.
I am happily willing and expecting to do some work to help it function well, like polishing the bore and chamber. However, after these things, I want the gun to be able to take care of itself. I don’t want the gun to be off 3MOA simply because I didn’t hold it just so, I don’t want to have to wait 5 minutes between shots so the barrel doesn’t get too warm, and I don’t want the gun to shoot like crap if I put anything through it but its favorite $1/shot ammo (which I’d never discover
).
Really, I just would like a fun gun that will do maybe 3MOA from its bipod with cheap ammo, and be reliable enough to count on.
Am I asking too much of the Handi?
Thanks, and sorry for the long post. I just wanted to ask everything at once.
