Went varmint shooting this past week and my friend brought his new CZ 452 American in .17 HMR; blued steel, beautiful walnut stock. We put a set of Warne rings on it, along with a Burris 3-9x with the ballistic plex reticle. Ammo was Hornaday factory .17 HMR Vmax 25 gr (box is in my truck, I think it was 25 grain anyway).
After a 25 yard session, we moved the target to 100, ranged with a range finder. Keep in mind this was a redneck sight in session, taking place in a field full of ground squirrels that would eventually be the targets. This was not a proper bench rest session so to speak; time didn't allow my friend to do that prior to coming on the trip. It took 3 sighters to move the POI to the X. The Burris, which was not a rimfire scope, had very precise adjustments throughout the sight in. I shot it for a group using a big coleman cooler on the tail gate of my truck. :shock: :shock: The look on our faces went from total disgust, thinking the gun totally threw the shots, to one of total disbelief when we used a spotting scope instead of binos to look at the target: this little gun shot 5 rounds into the size of a dime dead into the X!!! Thinking this was an accident, I said "here it's yours you do it". He shot it off a camp table using a coat for padding at the same target........same result!!!
Throughout the next 6 hours, we shot up 3 boxes of .17 HMR at ground squirrels from 25 yards out to a measured 150 yards, some shots with 5-6 mph breezes, some with calm air. I exploded one squirrel at 150 with this gun, using a "swag" for the wind drift. Virtually every squirrel showing ANY body part out to 100 yards was a kill. This gun/cartridge/scope combo is totally capable of headshots on something as small as a squirrel as far as you are capable of shooting, depending on the wind. I'd say out of all those rounds fired, we missed maybe 10 squirrels all day with this gun.......and those were out past 100 yards with the wind causing issues.
PROS: Fit & finish are beyond outstanding. This gun is balanced perfectly (for me at least), and handles nice. It has an OK safety, kind of like the Win Mod 70 wing safety. It's accuracy is nothing less than outstanding! The Warne rings: well, they are positive, but they "snap" over the scope tube and can scratch the tube if you aren't careful. The Burris' adjustments seem very positive, reticle is very nice, scope bright.
CONS: The gun doesn't want to feed the first round smoothly out of the magazine when loaded with 5 rounds. This may get better with time or maybe take some polishing. This isn't really a con, but CZ includes rings with their centerfire guns, they should include them with their rimfires. Finding rings was a PITA. Extra mags are spendy, FFL dealer cost is around $24 or so. .17 HMR ain't cheap either. The Burris scope, while overall pretty nice, had fuzziness around the edges which would personally make me take it back; however, it did work well.
My overall impression of the 452 is high. The gun is so accurate that shooting these squirrels out to 100 yards became easy: put the cross hairs on one and it explodes. As for the .17 HMR, it's a question of whether its addtl cost per box is worth it vs. the .22 mag. Both do the job quite well on ground squirrels, but I do have to say the .17 does explode them a bit more violently at equal ranges. The poor starling that landed in the same field at 30 yards vaporized into a cloud of black feathers when hit the the .17 vmax. I can't wait to see what this gun will do from a proper bench with no wind........
Note: This is now the 4th CZ rifle I have owned or shot (owned by others). NONE of the 4 have had anything other than outstanding fit and finish contrary to what one reads on the various gun boards. The feeding issue did appear, but it should be fixable.
