T/C Encore/Contender seems to be one of those cases
where there is very little middle ground. Some love
them, and some have been disappointed with them.
I am in the "disappointed" group. I have a SS/Comp
Encore, in a pistol version, with a 15" .308 Win barrel.
The gun shot horrible, with everything I tried. I called
T/C, and asked what ammo they used to test these
barrels, and even went out and bought that factory ammo.
I HATE factory ammo, but being desperate, I bought some,
and that shot like crap(5 MOA), too. So the barrel went
back to T/C, and they recrowned the barrel, and sent
me a test target, with a slightly over 1 MOA group on
paper. I guess anything under 1.5 MOA was good by them.
I test fired some factory duplicate ammo I had, and
it shot about 1.5 MOA, so I figured I could do better
with tuning loads for the gun. I probably could, but
I have lost interest in the Encore, since my original
goal was to have a gun that I could get into new
chambering, for less money than a new bolt gun,
and to maybe replace a heavy recoiling Savage
Striker, also in .308 Win. The Savage is sub MOA,
but the recoil, with my current hot loads, requires
3 scope rings to hold the Burris scope tight. At any rate,
since then I have discovered how easy it is to swap
barrels, and bolt faces, in a Savage, it doesn't
make sense to have to fool around with getting
barrels, and pins, and frames, to love one another
to get to 1 MOA. Then add the cost of scopes, scope
rings, and mounts, to the fairly high price of Encore
barrels, and this project, for me is a looser.
So my T/C Encore sits in my gun room, waiting until
I decide what I want to get in a Savage "project" gun,
where I will use the Encore as a trade.
My brother loves his Encore, and he took an extremely
nice whitetail buck with it last year, so there is one
for the Encore fans group. He has a blued/wood
version, so he might end up with mine, for the trade-in
price, that the gunshop will offer me. I won't
miss this one, when it heads down the road.
Squeeze