Rifle Accuracy Vs Rifle Adequacy, do you need a new rifle? The answer may surprise you.

First off, I would never tell someone that they shouldn’t buy a new rifle or shotgun. So if you’re looking for my support you have it. I feel that if you really want something for yourself you should get it. Life is short, so spend your money and die broke! But if you want my opinion maybe the rifle you have is adequate enough, sorry but it's true.

As a hunter and shooter, I strive for extreme accuracy and sometimes I go overboard but the truth be told “extreme accuracy” is overrated, a solid but accurate rifle is all you really need.

Please before you fall out of your chair, hear me out. Prior to the mid-1990s you had several grades of rifles that were just not up to the task and could hardly be called accurate.  However, they took a lot of Big Game with these rifles and back then, hunters never knew that they were hunting with a substandard rifle by “today’s standards”.

Many rifle manufactures were looked down upon by writers and unless you were hunting with a Weatherby, Winchester Model 70, or a Remington 700 you basically were hunting with a substandard rifle, according to the writers of yesteryear. Very few rifles prior to this time, would “off the rack” shoot a 1-inch group with factory ammo. There were some but not many and most were made with light barrels, light wood stocks and heavy triggers (in the 5-pound category). If you don’t believe me, get a scale and a trigger gauge out and open grandpa gun safe and check some of those old rifles you will be amazed.

Take for example my Ruger M77 Mark II SS that I bought in 1997 in .300 Winchester Magnum. I am a fan of Ruger, but they had a bad reputation during this time and when this rifle came out, it was one of the first offerings from any manufacture in both a Stainless and Synthetic rifle in a .300 Winchester Magnum. This rifle sold brand new for less than $500.00 and was a low-priced rifle in stainless synthetic and at this time it was the only stainless synthetic I could afford. Remington came out with one around the same time, but the price point started around $900.00 too much for my working man’s budget at the time.

For my purposes this rifle was bought with a specific mission in mind Pigs! I was doing a lot of winter pig hunting and assisting in guiding at the time and wanted a rifle that could take a beating and if someone fell with it or dropped it, I wouldn’t cry over it. And believe me when I say this, it got dropped a lot, one time it fell off a truck and another time a client went off and left it on the side of a mountain during a horrible rainstorm for three days until the rain let up enough that we could hike back in and get it.

Although it was a killer by all accounts, it wasn’t an accurate rifle. It could be adequate on a good day with a cheap Bushnell Sportview 3x9 scope, it could shoot a 1 ½ inch group. But usually, it would shoot a 2-inch group and often the first two shots were touching and the third well, it could be 2 or even 3 inches high and right. But the rifle was a killer. It smoked more pigs than I can count and when it hit, it performed every time no matter what bullet cartridge combination I had in my pocket at the time. That is one thing you can say about a .300 Winchester Magnum, it will kill what it hits, this is factually proven not hypothesized on a ballistics chart.

The point I am trying to make is what really counted with this rifle was the first two shots. They hit where you wanted them to, maybe not exactly, a half an inch left or half an inch right but in a chest cavity it was still a solid kill, and the third shot was very seldom needed. And that is how rifles were designed at during time. That is to kill on the first shot or maybe one more, they weren’t designed to be benchrest rifles. They were made to last a lifetime, and you could leave them to your kids. They were not designed with heavy barrels, light triggers, and light stocks like the rifles of today. They were designed with light barrels, wood stocks or wood laminate stocks or material composite stocks, and for safety reasons they had heavy triggers.

There were many benefits to these older style rifles with their Monte Carlo stocks light scopes and heavy for caliber bullets. Number one is they were built like a boat anchor and could take a fall or drop and they were built more to accomplish the task of killing and animal more than they were to look military like and trendy like today’s modern rifles.

There is something cool and pleasing about the feel of a wood stock in your hands and compared to hard cold composite stocks of today they are pleasant to touch. You could carry a wood stocked rifle for days and never even think about wearing gloves. As a matter of fact, you actually loved the feeling of that wood stock and would hold it like a baby in your hands and you tried to avoid scratching it on rocks and trees. With the newer rifles of today, if you look hard most people hunting with these new style rifles are wearing gloves. I personally believe this is because although some of these newer rifles are interesting and cool to look at, some have sharp plastic and metal edges and on a cold morning they are very uncomfortable to hold. A nice pair black leather gloves or tactical gloves complete the “Tacti-cool” ensemble.

Another thing to consider is moisture. Rain and wood stocks just don’t jive.  And although you should never leave a firearm near a campfire or woodstove sometimes, we make mistakes, and you end up with a warped or sticky stock and if you have composite stock you may end up with a completely ruined firearm. In the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t think I have bought a rifle or shotgun with a wood stock in the last 15 years because I am an adverse weather hunter and wood stocks just don’t make sense for the way that I hunt.

Funny story, when the nice composite compound bows first came out you couldn’t leave them out in the sun. If you left them in the backseat of your car while you were inside shopping the tension combined with the heat would cause them to collapse. You also could not leave them on a picnic table or hanging on a bow hanger at the range out in the full sun. They would just go flaccid.

Back to accuracy, going back 20 years ago it was considered unethical to shoot a big game animal at ranges beyond 500 yards, so these older rifles were not really designed to be long range rifles, but many of them could do it. So they thought nothing of shooting heavy for caliber bullets because truth be told we weren’t shooting past 500 yard, so it didn’t matter most of our shots were under 350 yards.

If a rifle is doing its job, and you are doing your job of holding it and shooting it correctly almost any rifle will shoot adequately for big game hunting in California.

You do not need a rifle that shoots Sub-Minute of Angle (SMOA) to shoot deer, pigs, or bear. Sorry, but you just don’t. You need a rifle that shoots exactly where you want it to hit on the first and second shot. If you need a rifle that shoots SMOA for 5 shots 6 shots or even 10 shots to hunt deer, I have to question your reasoning. Now don’t get me wrong, the better the rifle, the better off you are but is it needed? Not really. Is it wanted? Absolutely, the more accurate the better.

For my readers that are new to Minute of Angle here is an explanation. Minute of Angle or MOA is 1.05 inches at 100 yards. This increases with distance. One MOA at 200 yards is 2.10 inches and 300 yards it's 3.15 inches, and at 400 yards it's 4.20 inches.

MOA at long range is determined by multiplying the distance times your MOA, sure there are other factors when you’re reaching out there but let’s deal with this one. If your rifle hits one minute or one inch to the right at 100 yards, at 200 yards you will be hitting 2 inches to the right. At 300 yards if you are hitting 3 inches to the right. And at 400 yards it will be 4 inches to the right. Where you get into trouble is generally at ranges past 350. For ranges less than 1000 yards you don’t really need to worry about that small factor of .05 inches at 100 yards that we were talking about earlier, but at 1000 yards and further you do. As crazy as it sounds that rifle that is shooting 1 inch to the right at 100 yards is only shooting 10.5 inches to the right at 1000 yards or 5 inches right at 500 yards.

Honestly you have way more factors and things going against you at 1000 yards than what is a predictable one-inch MOA correction, you have wind, spin drift, cosine angle, rain, hail, or snow, there’s just a bazillion things that could add up to a miss. But if you keep your ranges close or within ethical standards of, say 350 yards then you really don’t need that $4000.00 rifle and a $1,300.00 scope. I think with today's modern ammunition and almost any rifle of the rack using a proper caliber between .223 on up using open sights and still kill the deer. Or step up to a $200.00 scope and do the job a little better. And the good news is your wife will be happier, and you can afford to go hunting more often because you won’t be Gun Poor (out of money because you spent too much on a new rifle and scope).

Excuses!

Now with all that said if you still want a new rifle there are plenty of good reasons to get one. Some may call these excuses but in reality, if you say it to yourself enough times it sounds more like a reason than an excuse, and without much effort you can easily convince yourself to go buy one of those expensive rifles, I know it worked for me.

The number one reason is Copper Bullets. I am not a fan of copper bullets I really think the bullet manufacturers could do better. And before I get hate mail, “yes” I have tried almost all of them and I think the manufactures could do better. But the reason you may need a new rifle is Accuracy. Some of the older rifles just don’t do well with copper bullets. So, there’s a good excuse to give your wife for buying that new expensive rifle, tell her that you would hate to cripple an animal and therefore you need a newer rifle that shoots the copper bullets more accurately and effectively.

Second, and just as important, you and your wife would look good posing for photos with that trophy buck holding a nice pretty new rifle.

But the truth be told, if you’re hunting private ground with little to no competition you can hunt with just about any legal rifle and not worry about it. On the other hand, when your hunting public ground you need all the help you can get and unfortunately if you see a buck at 500 yards and can't engage it because you are hunting with a rifle that just can't make the shot or you doubt that you can hit it with that particular rifle and your skills, well the guy that does have that better and more accurate rifle and the skills is going to shoot that deer, and so in this situation you may have to pass on the shot.

No regrets

Something to remember when purchasing a new rifle and a scope. Pick a rifle that you like and that fits your body structure. Pick a rifle that is accurate and within your budget, most modern rifles of today are MOA rifles right out of the box, even the cheap ones. And when selecting a caliber, pick a caliber that will not only kill the animal you are hunting but the biggest predator in the area because someday it may come down to that!

In California we don’t worry about grizzly bears, tigers or charging cape buffalo. But we do have to worry about black bears, mountain lions and the ever present “Tweaker”. If I was solely hunting bears, I would have a larger caliber rifle with plenty of knockdown. The reason I have for this is simple, you want a bear to drop in its tracks, you never want to follow a wounded bear into a brush thicket or leave a wounded bear for some poor fisherman to stumble upon unarmed.

For deer, elk, pigs, and all other Gig Game in California pick the cartridge you like, that you can shoot well. If it’s anything larger than a .243 Winchester, you will be fine. Yes, a .243 Winchester will work for elk hunting, but I would never recommend it. You just have to know your limitations.  All of these cartridges work great on big game including elk, you just have to pick your shots and keep the range reasonable for that rifle cartridge combination. For Tweakers, I will keep my comments to myself so that google doesn’t shut my site down again.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you really don’t need to have the most expensive rifle you can afford. Most of today’s modern rifles are MOA rifles. The shoot Minute of Angle right off the rack with factory ammo, and if they don’t it usually only takes a couple of adjustments with the stock, trigger or recoil pad to bring them into Sub-Moa.

The best example I can give you is my Savage Edge in .223 Remington. It is topped with a $200.00 dollar vortex scope and is the most accurate rifle I have. It was given to me by a friend for some work I did for him. To say he abused it would be an understatement, it’s been dropped, accidentally run over by a tractor, submerged in the Sacramento River and the stock cracked and subsequently shorted somewhere along the way and it’s been repaired with expanding foam. It was his ranch gun for shooting anything and everything that needed to be killed. This rifle shoots half inch groups all day with any ammo you put in it. It’s accurate with a clean cold barrel and it seems to be even more accurate with a hot dirty barrel. I have no way to explain why it’s still accurate, but it is. This rifle and scope combo would probably come in under $700.00 and I would hunt just about anything with it but I would use caution, it’s not a grizzly bear gun, or cape buffalo but it would be a great survival gun where every shot counts and head shots are needed to conserve meat, It’s a Savage, what else can I say!