In case anyone is considering purchasing one, here's some info about my new toy:
The trigger needs to be redone. Timney Gunsmith lightened up the pull and reduced the length of travel for me and that made my groups MUCH MUCH better. Until I had the trigger work, my groups were terrible. Now, they are very satisfactory - 1/2 in. to 3/4 of an in. or so at 100 yards. Plenty good enough for me.
My gun did not like the Remington 200's or the Remington 250's. It liked the Federal 225 gr. TBBC's a lot. That ammo got the groups to below an inch at 100 yards. But until the trigger work was done, I was inconsistent.
The ammo it liked the best was Speer Grand Slams, 250 gr. loaded up for my by the good folks at The Hunting Shack. Great folks to work with and good prices. The GS's put holes right next to the Federals, so no rezeroing was necessary. That was a lucky break and meant I could always get factory ammo in case I ran out of the GS's.
I put a 2.5 to 10 Bushnell Elite 4200 on it because my eyes are getting old. I was mainly trying to see if the gun was accurate enough to keep and with my eyesight, I couldn't tell with iron sights. I never could shoot iron sights worth a dang anyway, so I couldn't tell if the big groups I was getting before putting on the scope was me or the gun. Turns out it was me. The gun is very accurate.
I had to clean the gun every 8 shots or so in order to get really consistent groups. Don't know if that is a characteristic of the gun or the ammo, but after about 9 or 10 shots, I'd get a wild one. A buddy of mine who does a lot of bench rest shooting says that's a symptom of copper buildup in the barrel and I should clean it more often than I had been. Guess he might have been right. My father has never cleaned a gun he has owned and this doesn't seem to be an issue for him. However, he doesn't shoot anywhere near as much as I do: a box of shells lasts him for years.
There is a chamber brush that comes with the gun and I'd recommend using it. I cleaned the bore normally (from the front since it is a pump gun) and figured it was clean enough but an oiled patch in the chamber said different.
BTW, getting the trigger out to send it to Timney was easy - two pins and rotate it out. Very simple.
Overall, I'm quite happy with this gun. I've wanted one since I bought my first gun with an entire summer's wages from hiring out myself to local dairy farms and now, nearly 40 years later, I went back and scratched that itch. Gotta love the Whelen - it looks like it would put a big hurtin' on whatever I hit with it. My other two rifles are a .270 and a .30-06 so this is a step up.
For what it's worth...
