I use my mini ranch for my preditor calling rifle as well as varmints around the place (possums, skunks, racoons, rats, etc). I also carry it when just going for a walk through the woods. It's light, compact, and very easy to carry long distances. I've had many scopes on it but lately I've just used a william wgrs rear peep sight, which replaces the factory ranch flip up peep, and the ruger front sight for day hunting. (you can also replace the rear flip up ranch sight with an M1 carbine peep sight with a little filing to the m1 carbine sight's dovetail). For night hunts I've been using a millet sp1 3moa reddot in ruger medium rings.
I've gone the cheap approach to accurizing. You can send it off ASI or other places and sink alot of money into it for .5" groups, but I didn't have the cash or need that amount of sub moa accuracy. The mini has a few problems, the biggest being the loose reciever lockup and sloppy receiver stock fit. To fix the reciever stock fit most people use fiberglass bedding. I used .020" thick steel shims on the sides of recoil lugs. Now my reciever has to be pressed into the stock with a slight amount of force. I also shimmed between the trigger group/stock with .030" felpro gasket paper which really tightened up the reciever/stock/trigger group lockup. Doing this got rid off all of the flyers, shrinking my groups from 4"-6 patterns to 1"- 2". ASI is now selling a shimming kit for $20, but I haven't seen it or it's results, but I'm of course very happy with my shimming results, big improvement. I also loosened and retorqed and gapped the gas block halves and it became a consistant 1" shooter from a bench. My mini has also had a single stage trigger job done (sloppily), and then I polished the surfaces to drop the pull weight down to around 3.5lbs. The next thing on my todo list is a smaller gas port bushing to slow the cycle rate so it ejects the brass a few feet instead of 20 feet way.
The mini also seems to favor flat bottom bullets. Winchester white varmint box 45 grainers seem to shoot the best for mine (1-7" twist) but I've yet to try the heavy .224 bullets in it.
The thin barrel is like other ultralight contour barrels, it's good for 4 to 5 shots and then it's heated up the point it's very pressure sensitive. For coyotes and such, 5 shots is usually 3 or 4 more than I need (most of my shots are under 100 yards). So for a hunting rifle I like the thin barrel, much lighter to carry around.
If you look on perfectunion.com there's an accurizing section for the mini with lots of tips, tricks, things that worked, didn't work, etc.
All in all I really like the rifle. It shoulders very nice, is a short handy carbine, is accurate now, balanced perfect, fun to shoot, and totally reliable.
And it's funny how many more accurate rifles it'll outshoot offhand. My weatherby will consistantly punch .5" 5 shot groups, beating the mini bad every time to the range. When I shoot them both off hand, well, the heavier not as balanced weatherby gets beat bad every time by the mini. Different kinds of accuracy. If I'm going to be shooting from a rest I use the weatherby, for walking through the woods and calling stuff where there's a good chance I won't be shooting from a rest, I take the mini.
later,
scruffy
