Browning BAR accuracy

Song Dog Assasin

Song Dog Assasin

New member
I recently inhereted a Browning BAR in 30-06 that belonged to my brother. As far as I know he never fired it.

It has an older (late 80's era) Nikon 2-7 scope on it, with Leupold bases. I thought I would get it ready for deer season, so I picked up a box of 150gr. Hornady Superformance, cleaned it up real good, leveled the scope which was terribly canted, and headed to the range. The performance was less than stellar. After burning through the entire box of shells, I had to settle for a pattern that would hit anywhere inside of a 3.5" circle. Is this normal for the BAR? I'm guessing that maybe it prefers heavier bullets?

This gun reminds me very much of my old .243 Browning model 81 BLR, which is the only other Browning rifle I ever owned. They are both beautiful guns that are impressive to behold, but don't actually shoot worth a darn. I never could get that BLR to shoot good, and I tried at least 10 different loads, I finally traded it off. I'm hoping that this isn't going to be a repeat.

What's your experience with the BAR? Good, bad, or indefferent. Any advice? Obviously I'm going to try some other loads before I give up on it.
 
I had one in 300 win mag and I personally didn't like the gun and ended up trading it for a brand new Savage .243. It has been several years and I never shot it much but I don't remember it being anything impressive as far as groups go. You are right though, it was a very nice gun to look at but I never looked back after I sold it.
 
I have had several of them, .30-06, .308, 7mm Mag, .300 win Mag, a friend had a .338 Win mag.

None of them shot very accurately. Certainly good enough for hunting, but not precise by any stretch of the imagination. 2" would be considered good, at 100 yards...or lucky.

I have heard that there are things you can do to them to make them much more accurate, and there have been some articles written regarding just this, where they were designing them for sniper type work.

I was not impressed with mine. They are very beautiful, shoulder very well, and reduce the felt recoil on magnum or large cartridges...but not accurate.
Also, I had trouble getting the reloaded cartridges to feed propertly. Reloads must be matched to gas pressures to cycle appropriately, and sometimes small base dies are required to get them to feed right.

I felt they were gorgeous...but not worth the effort.
Missed a really nice buck once because one of them did not feed all the way and the bolt was open a tad, making it so it would not chamber and fire.

If they could figure out the feeding and cycling, and improve the accuracy, I would probably use one.

Otherwise...too much trouble.

re
 
I have a 1967 BAR in 30-06 and it loves the 150 hornady sst over 4064... sub minute for sure. My brother had a 270 that gave him fits though.
 
I am sure there are some dud BAR rifles around here and there. However you couldn’t prove that with my experiences. I have two BAR's and have shot and loaded for another 3 or 4 BAR's over the years. Never seen one that shot over 1 ½” and most will cut under a 1" with loads it likes, sometimes a lot under an inch. My Lightweight Stalker .243 is one of the most consistently accurate rifles I own. I’ve never personally experienced a malfunction with one of my BAR’s. Maybe that is because I keep them clean and well maintained. The well known writer Craig Boddington relates a story about a hunter he is acquainted with that has extensive world wide experience and only has one big game rifle – a Browning BAR in .30-06. With that rifle this guy has hunted all over North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and collected all manner of exotic game trophies. The interesting thing is this fellow swears he has never cleaned his rifle even one time!
 
I have a 7mm mag BAR that I also inherited. It was made in 1973 and the best group I have ever shot is about 2" using the 40 year old ammo I also inherited. I plan to reload some rounds to see if I can improve the accuracy. I also have some 175 grain bullets I plan to try next week to see if longer bullets might improve the accuracy.
 
I have 6 BAR's and all will shoot around the 1" mark but I must confess that for some to do this I had to shoot several different brands of ammo in different weights. In my older BAR 30-06 I shoot the Federal Game-Shok 125gr and it really likes them. I would try some of the cheaper, flat-based bullets like Remington Core-Lokts, Winchester Power-Points, or Federal Game-Shoks.

I have a 243 BLR and it didn't seem to like any 95-100 grain bullets but I bought some Hornady 58gr supeformance and it groups them very well, just at or under 1" at 100yds.
 
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