I had fi rst used to test the Browning. I love articles that chart group
This is a typical 50-yard group for the Buck Mark, fi ve in 1.887", four in 1.248".
conditions, 4x or less is best. The biggest problem is that the scope has no paral- lax adjustment. It is preset somewhere over 50 yards. At 50 yards there is a slight amount of parallax, and as ranges get closer the problem gets worse. At 25 yards the focus is poor enough to blur the target badly and parallax is very noticeable. This makes hunting with the .22 Long Rifl e a little dicey, as its real domain with a handgun ends around 50 yards. Out West, where small targets abound, this would be less of a problem. Nevertheless, I’ve learned to live with the Weaver as the problem shrinks at its lowest magnifi cation. It is compact for its magnifi cation and the adjustments are precise. Besides, very few handgun scopes have parallax adjustment. The problem was that I couldn’t
justify two scoped .22 pistols. I really didn’t have much use for either of them, since if I knew that if shooting were likely I would take a rifl e. I had grown to like them, but which one to keep? A formal shootout was in order. By this time I also had a Caldwell pistol rest to replace the unwieldy stack of sandbags
This 50-yard group was typical for the Mark III, fi ve in 1.227", with the best four in 0.819". This group was shot with Wolf target ammo, but Winchester Power-Points shot just as well.
Page 162 July — September 2011
sizes with various loads that allow the reader to make obvious decisions about the shooter’s gear. Unhappily, I’m not tempted to move in that direction here. The guns shot about the same, with a slight edge going to the Ruger. Going back and forth from Wolf target ammu- nition to Winchester Power-Point hunt- ing ammo made no impression on the targets. Rather, the targets were more a measure of how well I was shooting on a given day, or even a given mo- ment. Groups often were strung in one direction or the other and were seldom round. Three consecutive 50-yard tar- gets with the Browning averaged 2.13" for fi ve shots and 1.43" for the tightest four shots. This might have been typi- cal of what the pistol could do, though on other days eye fatigue and poorer concentration might run groups to 3". Under the circumstances, I’m tempted to say that I never shot a target that was as good as the Browning could do. The Browning had a better trigger than the Ruger and the balance and appear- ance left nothing to be desired. Its only quirk was that stripping the piece for a full cleaning required that the scope be removed, and then resighted-in after- ward. After many years of ownership I never shot it enough to warrant a complete stripping. The Ruger trigger felt good until compared to the crisp letoff of the Browning. The Ruger had a metallic grind that didn’t bother me all that much. The magazine that came with the pistol was faultless, but another Ruger magazine that I bought later jammed the gun regularly, disrupting group shooting to the point that I threw out the targets. Whether the Ruger was more accurate than the Browning is debatable, but I certainly could shoot it better. Still, fi ve-shot, 50-yard groups of 1.05", 1.59", and 1.18" were followed by groups that steadily opened as fatigue set in. So while I felt like I was closing in on wringing out the Ruger for all it was worth, I never felt like I quite got there. There’s no debating that the pistol will shoot. I’ve seen many a .22 rifl e that couldn’t run with the Mark III. The fi rst time I shot the Ruger at
100 yards I got a nice, round 10-shot group of 2.641", though it dropped enough to fall off point-of-aim onto a target that had already been fouled by
The Ruger put 10 shots in 2.641" at 100 yards. The bullet holes outside the outline were fi red by a .17 HMR.
my .17 HMR. Darn! The Winchester Power-Point high-speed ammo chrono- graphed 1,047 fps from the 5.5" Ruger barrel.
Most duplex scope reticles change
the distance between the heavier posts and the cross hair center as the magnifi - cation is shifted, and with .22 rifl es I like to sight-in dead-on at 50 yards and then fi nd at what magnifi cation the bottom post will put the rifl e on point-of-aim at 100 yards. I only dabbled with this with the Mark III. When sighted dead-on at 50 yards, then dialed down to 6x, the bottom post put the group 1.375" high at 100 yards. Slightly less magnifi cation should drop the group to dead-on at that distance. Even with this less-than- precise method of aiming, the fi ve-shot group fell into 4.2", with four shots in 2.38". If I were sitting outside a ground squirrel colony with this pistol I believe I could surprise a lot of people, not to mention the little diggers. Had I opted for the Hunter model
instead of the Target, no doubt the 6.88" barrel of the Hunter model would have boosted the velocity a bit, and in a .22 rimfi re we need all the pep we can get. Still, I feel that I chose wisely for my needs and got an especially fi ne shoot- ing handgun for the money, which was right around $400. As a final note, the day after I
decided the Browning had to go, I re- moved the scope, reinstalled the iron sights, cleaned it up, and it went down the road as part of a trade on a Rem- ington 700 VTR in .223. The plastic case the pistol came in still had the $179.99 sticker on it, which I peeled off. The gun shop gave me $260 in trade for the Browning. It pays to take care of your guns.
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