Yesterday was a very busy day. I went to the range, ran errands, trimmed the hedge (affectionately known as The Beast), took Little McGee's car to the shop and obviously posted a few times to THR. Nonetheless, I want to get a post up on first impressions while it's still fresh on my mind.
First of all, and as always, my
caveats: I've got a long history of plinking, but beyond that I've never been much of a rifle shooter. I like rifles just fine, but about 95% of my rifle shooting has been out on a farm at an improvised target. Plinking is simple. It's always been pretty short range for me and either you hit the target or not. Yes, you can tell the difference between a graze and a solid hit, but there's no measuring hits center-to-center. IOW, at my skill level, I'm not convinced that I'd be able to demonstrate the difference between a $1K target setup and a $10K target setup. Still, I must admit that I've always admired the folks that could put rounds on target at 500+ yards. That's all PFM* for me. It's only been in the past few years that I've started exploring some actual target shooting, and that's largely been because I don't have a place to plink.
So, with all of that out of the way, let's talk about Ruger American Rimfires. I have two of them, but they're very different beasts. The first one I bought was the Standard. I got a suppressor, and had the bright idea of building a suppressed bolt .22 with a nice (by my standards) scope. So, with a budget of about $500, I set about building The Squirrel Sniper. Not that I'm ever going to actually snipe any squirrels with it. I just like the name.
Then, as mentioned in the OP, my TQF and I went to the range, and I got rifle envy. I'd blown hot and cold on whether to keep my Glock for a long time, but once I sold it, I knew what I wanted -- one of those bull barrel target models. So I went out and bought that, too.
For anyone who's curious, I took the list of features for the Standard Ruger American Rimfire, (SKU 8301**) and the Target model that I bought (SKU 8367), and laid them out side-by-side in the attached document. I had to rearrange some things, but I wanted to be able to compare features without having to endlessly scroll up and down the document.
These two rifles are obviously related, but they're
not the same rifle. The Standard is a light, quick-handling .22 and there's a lot to be said for it. Mine has the 22" barrel, which I had threaded. I will say this: Add 5" of Dead Air Mask, and it feels about 8 feet long. It's a LOT of barrel. And it's plenty accurate, even in my hands, for plinking or casual target shooting. It's not a Target model though. For plinking, IMHO, it is an excellent choice. I don't hunt anything with a .22, but my gut feeling is that it would also be an excellent choice for small game. I think it's a pretty well-built rifle and I think I'll likely keep mine, even though I have the target model.
The Target model tips the scales at 0.7 lbs heavier than the Standard, according to Ruger's website, and it's got a nice, solid feel. It had a nice heft to it. There's a whole lot of stuff in common between the two rifles, but there are also some differences. Obviously, the bull barrel is one. Mind you, there are synthetic-stocked, bull barrel RARs available, and they are cheaper than the laminate-stocked Target model. I just didn't buy one. If one wanted to shave a few $$$ off a target gun and still get that barrel, it could be done.
The other stock-related difference between the synthetics and the laminates is that the laminate is modular. The Standard came with two stock modules, regular and high-rise. In order to swap them out, one just unscrews the rear sling stud and swaps the module out. It's actually a pretty slick design. For obvious reasons, you can't do that with the laminate stock.
One minor, but noticeable difference is the bolt knob. The bolt knobs are both perfectly adequate, but the Standard comes with a small, teardrop-shaped knob while the Target is a larger, more squarish knob that gives a little more purchase. (It looks like all of the bull barrel models come with the larger knob.)
Accuracy: This is the $64K question, now isn't it? I didn't notice any real 'deficiency' in the accuracy department on my Standard, but there's really no question. The Target model made me look good. I'm over 50, and so are my eyes. As a lawyer, I do a LOT of reading, and I choose my contact lenses accordingly. The result is that at 50 yards, even at 9x magnification, the orange dot in the middle of a Shoot-N-C target looks something like this to me:
I'm amazed by the fact that I was even able to get more than 1 hit out of about 10 in the bull at 50 yards. The fact that I did it more than once on Sunday is astounding! It's possible, but I think highly unlikely that I could have done so with my other RAR, or my 10/22.
I shooting off of one of these
rubber Sight-Bloc shooting rests, and I'm not sure it was the best thing for the job. Sure, it's cheap for the range to buy, and free for me to borrow from them, but I think I'm going to invest in a bipod or maybe a rest to see if I can do any better.
I haven't really shot them side-by-side, but I also can't say that I've noticed any other difference in the controls or triggers. It also looks like you have to take the trigger group out of the stock to adjust the Marksman, and I don't know how much headache is involved after that.
*= Pretty Freakin' Magical
**= I bought mine with a Copper Mica stock, which I guess would have a different SKU, but I have no clue what it is.