Two new aquisitions

On Christmas Eve, I stopped in at one of my LGS's to wish the guys there a Merry Christmas. I saw two rifles behind the counter that were new to the store, one a bolt action the other a lever action. The lever action turned out to be a Marlin 336 SC chambered in 35 Remington and was in very good shape. Long story short, it went home with me. It has a four digit serial number with an "H" prefix meaning it was made in 1951. I would call it a 90% gun. I took it to the range a few days ago and fired it with Hornady Leverevolution ammo. Iron sight groups ran in the 2.25-2.50 range which is good enough to kill deer but I likely won't hunt it. I already own a Remlin 336 in 35 caliber so if I get a scratch on one, I'd rather it be that one.

Incidentally, the other rifle (bolt action) was a Smith & Wesson 1500 in 243 with a walnut stock. It was a nice rifle but didn't appeal nearly as much as the Marlin.

My wife and I joined some friends and attended a Whitetails Unlimited banquet on January 4th. We bought a couple of the ticket packages to enter the drawings for prizes. Doing this, I won a Remington 783 in 223. It has a camo stock with blued action in a 1-9 twist and a no name 3-9x scope.

Truthfully, I hadn't heard many good things about these rifles (regardless of caliber) and wouldn't have ordered one for myself but figured I would make it into a truck and tractor gun. I bought a box of Hornady Varmint ammo loaded with 55 gr V-Max bullets and took it to the range this past Monday. My expectation was that if I could get 1.25-1.50 groups I would be ok with it. I left the 3-9x scope on it just out of morbid curiosity to see how it performed even though it was canted slightly to the left. Color me pleasantly surprised, I shot two 3-shot groups that measured .792 and .875 :shock: .The scope doesn't track well so I'm going to replace it but it did much better than I anticipated. If it continues to shoot that well or better, I'm hoping to reduce the coyote population this winter if the opportunity presents itself.

Ron

Sounds as if you did quite well, Ron. Congratulations on these acquisitions.

That Rem M783 is a great example of why one "needs" to buy and try a lot of rifles!
Some out-of-the-box Remington's I've had were unusually accurate.

AND Ron, I'll bet that 783 will do even better fine testing/tuning the ammo.

I had a 783 in .308 that I gave to my nephew eventually. It was probably the most consistently accurate deer rifle I own. Not pretty, not quite as smooth as my M700 or push feed M70. But in .308 with a pillar bedded plastic stock, magnum contour barrel, and their version of an accutrigger, it was easy to develop MOA loads for it and often times .5 MOA loads. Once I finally got a trigger pull scale, it had the most consistent trigger too. Set at 3#, it broke at 3# every time. Even my Tikka and Timney triggers would vary by +/- .25#

I could easily see myself getting a .223 or 22-250 varmint 783. It's definitely worth putting a better scope on it. Good luck with it.

Bret

One more thing on the 783. Mine took about 50 rounds to break in the barrel. Prior to that, it was nothing special, but after about 50 rounds I was really surprised how accurate it was.

I currently have enough rifles to mess with, but if I was in the market for a budget rifle I'd probably choose the 783 over a Savage. They have all the good features of a Savage right down to the floating bolt head and barrel nut, with improvements on what I don't like about the Savage.

Appears to me by the model number and the narrow ejection port which helps to stiffen up the receiver, that they hearkened back to another good shooting budget rifle they produced, the 788.