New Ruger 77 in .357 Mag with rotating magazine.

[R.W.Dale]

Blackhawk,
 
   I must say that I respectfully disagree with your thoughts that 3 to 4 inch MOA is acceptable accuracy for this rifle, for its intended purposes.
 
  For short range deer hunting, out to 100 yards, a 3 to 4 inch MOA has been recognized as an acceptable minimum amount of accuracy for more than 100 years.   Lots of the Winchester 94 carbines in .30-30, and similar carbines, fall into that category and will do fine for shooting deer.
 
  But this Ruger  is not being sold as a short-range deer carbine.  It is being sold as an "all-purpose"  rifle, and for an all-purpose rifle, that type of accuracy is just not good enough.
 
  As you know, if a rifle has a 3inch  MOA accuracy figure, that means that from sandbags at a bench, with no shooter error, and no adverse weather conditions, a 3 inch group is the best group that the rifle is capable of as a mechanical device.  When you translate this type of accuracy into shooting in the field, where the shooter is shooting from a kneeling, prone or other position with no sandbags, and the slightest adverse weather conditions prevail, this means that the shooter is only going to achieve a 5 to 6 inch  MOA.
 
   I agree that an all purpose rifle rifle cannot be expected to fill the role of a long range varmint rifle, or be expected to be a gopher killer.  But, it does have to have sufficient accuracy to take small game and small varmints with reliable certainty out to 100 yards.   
 
  A rifle with a practical MOA of only 5 to 6 inches in the field, or even 4 inches, is not good enough for consistently shooting rabbits, groundhogs, foxes, skunks and other assorted game at 100 yards.  You would miss as many as you would hit, and probably half of your hits would be wounds not kills.
 
   Yes, I know that in the good old days, people used their .30-30 and .44-40 carbines for everything, varmints included.  And the fact is, they missed and wounded lots of small and large game, and they just didn't care.  The other fact is that they used these carbines because they were the best carbines available at the time for a reasonable price.  Had lever action 2- inch MOA rifles been available in 1894 in a common caliber, then believe me, they would have been using those and not the Winchesters in .30-30 or .44-40 with 4 inch MOA.
 
    I guess the bottom line for my thoughts is, that an all around rifle has to have accuracy good enough for all around game, and 3 to 4 inch MOA is not good enough for small game and varmints at 100 yards.
 
    I would also love to know where this great myth arose, that in the olden days, everyone with a rifle was a dead shot, and and stalked really close, and never missed or wounded game.  During the days of the frontier, the  vast majority of people were really lousy shots.  They didn't run out and practice with their rifles at the range twice a month using benches and targets.  Their rifles were probably sighted in when they first got them (or maybe not), and then those rifles sat in the corners or up on pegs in their houses with the mops, brooms, fireplace pokers and other tools of the farm, to be yanked out and shot when they needed them..
 
   The majority of people who moved West during the last half of the 19th Century were born in Europe, not America, and had little or no prior experience with guns.   Their main firearm was the shotgun, and if they had a rifle, they probably only fired it 20 or 30 times times a year.
 
   If you visit the Custer battlefield, the wall charts show that more than HALF of the men in the 7th Cavalry were born in Europe (mostly Ireland), and had been in the army for less than a year, and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with their carbines.  They were pathetically terrible shots.
 
   If you go back earlier, and read the Journals of Lewis and Clark, they tell you, in a casual matter-of-fact way, that their small group of expert hunters  "lost" (i.e. wounded) as much game as they killed.  It was just regarded as normal.
 
 
 
Mannyrock
 

Having owned, reloaded for and shot a plethora of handgun chambered rifles for accuracy at 100yds including a custom barreled savage in .45win mag I'd like to say that it's EXTREMELY difficult from a reloading perspective to get these things to shoot much better than 3MOA as purely a function of the bullets they shoot and the cartridges they're chambered for.

ponder this  a 240g hornady xtp leaving the muzzle at 1750fps from my 77/44 with a BC of .205 will suffer an entire inch of wind drift at 100yds from a mere 3MPH variation in the crosswind. Up that to a 5mph variation and this increases to a whopping 1.5" @ 100 Now I don't know what it's like where you live but here 5mph is essentally a dead calm day. Head out on an only slightly breezy day and @10mph variation you use up 3MOA just in wind ALONE before you even get to the rifles mechanical accuracy limitations.

So in my experiance 3moa from a 44magnum at 100 is dandy accuracy that leaves NOTHING to be griped about

[mannyrock]

 
Dale,
 
   That is interesting and useful information regarding the .44 mag in carbines. And yet, the discussion here is the .357 mag in carbines.  The .357 mag is capable of much better accuracy than the .44 mag, maybe because of ballistics or recoil factors.
 
   A 3 inch MOA from a carbine in .357 mag is nothing to complain about, until you realize that other carbines in that caliber, including the Marlin 1894, get much better accuracy than that, and they aren't even bolt actions.
 
  Hopefully, some range reports will come in on the new Ruger, showing better accuracy with factory ammo than the two inital reviews that have been published on-line.
 
  Regards, Mannyrock

[Harry Snippe]

if the ruger don,t suit you and what you want,don,t buy it. i have the so called riflemans rifle(old model 70 win,s.) that will not group inside 2 inches at a hundred yards from a bench with a good scope. i have bench varmit rifles that will one hole five shots at a hundred yards,but i don,t hunt with them nor do i hunt field mice. eastbank.

To say if your not liking the way a rifle groups then don't by it is a cop out . If your spending the money to later find out the rifle will not group .
 
 Your winchester 70 should be able to put out 1 to 1 1/2 " groups or there is a problem with it  or the shooter . If My winchester shot 2" groups @ 100 yards it would either be gone or fixed .
 
Now if this new ruger printed 3or 4" groups at it's best , I sure would not spend the money on it .And I sure thank the guys on the forum for letting me know beforehand .One might be then better off with a lever .I would expect more from a bolt action rifle @ that price .
My 60 yr . old lever in 30/30 goes 1 1/2 " groups easy .
Only accurate guns are of interst .

[SHOOTALL]

Jeff Quinn of Gunblast.com will have one for testing tomorrow. Keep a watch for the full report on his website.  I'm curious to see if it's barrel is threaded into the receiver, if it has a two-part bolt and if there's anyway that it can be converted to 357 Maximum.

Thanks, Dinny

I'd like to hear what you find out about possible 357 Maximum mods.

Galleryofguns.com has it listed in their database this evening, but no quantity in stock.

Look forward to a Gunblast.com review as well.

length of magazine will determine if it will fit. But a single shot or a 357 max in chamber single loaded with a mag full of 357 mags might just be a rechamber job.

[petemi]

My pistol caliber Handis, .357 Max, .445SM. .45 Colt and .500 S&W all shoot MOA for half the retail price.  Yeah, almost forgot.  The .32-20's a pistol caliber too, but it's custom and considerably more expensive.  To my way of thinking, a modern rifle should be capable of MOA or it isn't worth buying.  If you're happy with that kind af accuracy, save your bucks and get a SKS or a Mosin.  Perhaps a slingshot would do.

Pete

[Camba]

I finally found the time to do some range time with my new model 77/357.  The accuracy with the first load I tried at 50 yards was not too bad at all.  I managed to place 5 out of 5 in to a 1" group or slightly less with a 13.0 grains of Blue Dot and a 158 grain, SPEER GDHP bullet.  With the accuracy out of the way, let's disect the rest of the rifle package:
I did have some dissappointments with the rifle:
1.  One of the scope ring mounts was missing the two piece screw that is used to tighten the scope ring to the rifle base.
2.  Loading the rifle chamber is tricky.  If you do it fast it works most of the time.  I did notice that the round gets jammed in the lip of the rotary magazine.
3.  I did not make a meticulous clean before start shooting so I could be partially blamed with about 7 FTE rounds.  But then again, that should have happened in all rounds but it did not.  I had the same experience with the 77/44 mag rifle in the past and I thought it was the ejector piece not grabbing enough rim of the cartridge.  Any opinions of what could had been is welcomed.
The accuracy was very consistant but I did find a couple of weird flyers ( I suspect my shooting neighbor mistaken his with mine target in the shooting range).  I will definitely re-visit the same load after I get the scope ring parts replace (I had to use the 77/44 rings and a $30 Walmart 4x scope for the test.  I will try a Leupold next time).
The rifle has a 30-30 like kick with the load mentioned above.  I forgot to mention the trigger pull:  It is terrible.  I figure it was at least 8 if not 10 lb.
The rifle feels kind of rough compared with my 77/22 LR rifle.  My 77/22 LR is silk smoth and I have never experienced a FTE situation.
Any sugestion of what should I do?  Who do I need to contact to get the missing part from Ruger?  Should I send the rifle back for check to see why the rounds hit the rotary magazine? Thanks for the advice.
 
Camba

[coyotejoe]

I personally want the best accuracy I can get, whether or not it is absolutely necessary. To say that "the accuracy is adequate for the intended purpose" presumes that "the intended purpose" is short rang deer hunting. I wouldn't consider a bolt action .357 mag for that "intended purpose". The .357 carbine is probably adequate for deer hunting but there are better cartridges for that "intended purpose" as well as more accurate rifles.
 I view a .357 carbine as a general purpose small game, varmint and pinking rifle with inexpensive ammo, which can also serve for deer, though not the best deer rifle. I'd want the accuracy to bean edible small game in the head out to 100 yards and with the marginal ballistics of the .357 I think accurate shot placement on deer would be even more critical than with a more powerful load.
I agree that a brand new bolt action rifle should be at least able to do 2 MOA, then I'd work with loads to do better. Only accurate rifles are interesting.

[Camba]

I contacted Ruger and they are sending me (free of charge) the missing scope ring parts.  Today I went to the rifle range again to test more loads and I've found another good load (18.0 grs of H110, CCI-550 primers, and 158gr GDHP bullets) and got 1.75" at 100 yards.  The 13.0 gr blue dot load did about 2" at 100 yds.
One mistake I made was to bring my TC G2 contender (12" bbl with a 2x7 pistol scope and managed to print a ragged hole at 50 yards.  There was no way the Ruger rifle could duplicate that.
I am having lots of fun though.  It was several months before I started doing reloads.
 
Camba

[SHOOTALL]

just never saw a need for bolt action pistol calber guns. Make mine a lever.

Same here... I have no interest at all in these rifles, and never will.

If you like bolt guns and live where only stright wall revolver cart. are allowed for hunting it would be just the ticket.