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
