That inexpensive, yet intriging, gun I kept passing up.

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Schwing

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I have been seeing those Heritage Rough Rider .22s for a couple of decades now. It seems like, every time I pass the gun counter, that funky single action revolver with the safety is calling me.

Then, every time, I see that $130-$150 price tag and recoil away. There is just no way that a $150 gun can be worth a dang... and it has a safety!

Well, I finally fell for the bait and man am I happy with this thing! It is fun to shoot, slows you down a lot vs. a semi-auto .22 and has a surprisingly good trigger. The accuracy is as good as any of my revolvers (with me behind them). From about 12-15 yards, quarter sized groups or even slightly tighter are possible.

I won't go into the negatives about the fit and finish. Frankly, it obviously isn't up to my normal standards but it sure is a whole lot of gun for the price tag.
 
I agree with you on the Heritage Rough Rider. It really is a great plinker, and Heritage makes different types for as much or as little as you want to spend. You can get steel framed .22's with adj. sights (I think) but I opted for the alloy frame with fixed sights on the two I have. (I bought a second one be cause the first one was such a good value.) The cost is so low, and the safety makes it a nice training handgun for kids.

I also bought one of their big bores in .357, but these are different guns with higher prices. Alt least some of the parts on the big bore are made by Pietta in Italy, and it's essentially a Colt SA clone. I'm happy with my .357, though I did have to send it back to the factory for some work. Runs great now.
 
Been very pleased so far with my HRR. Got the extra cylinder for .22 mag and it's a fun pistol to shoot.

I only wish I had gotten the longer barrel, I think 6.5" or thereabouts. I got the 4.75 and for just a plinking range toy I'm sure it would've been more accurate with the longer tube.
 
Watch Academy ads, they've recently had sales where you buy a Taurus Millennium G2 pistol and get a .22lr Heritage Rough Rider free.
 
I bought one of the Heritage Rough Rider revolvers several years ago. I wanted something inexpensive for snake shot. The one I had had a birdshead grip with faux pearl grips & a 4.75 inch barrel. It was fine. I sold it & a shotgun I rarely used because I wanted to pick up a .22 target pistol. We got in a bind shortly after & I never did pick up the other pistol I was wanting although I have bought other guns since then. Sometimes I regret selling it. I think the grip size & barrel length would have made it a good choice to use to teach my girls.
 
I did the same thing. I hemmed and hawed over it for probably a year, then eventually forgot about it. One day, I was in the local gun showroom and saw another guy looking at one. At the time, the "regular" 4.75-inch model, with both cylinders, was going for right about $200, slightly more than typically online, but with no transfer fees. When the other browser handed it back, I asked for it, remembering how I'd previously been wanting one. It left with me, and it wasn't long before I got it to the range. Mine turned out pretty good, and is hard to put down once in hand.

Last year, I got another one through a "Taurus Blem" sale, a 3.5-inch birdshead model, also with both cylinders. I think I might have found the nearly-invisible "blem" that brought the price to $150. I haven't shot this one very much yet. It feels a little bit grittier than the first, but the few rounds I put through it pretty much went where I wanted them to.

By the way, although the safety is goofy, it does allow you to dry-fire the gun when on, something you normally shouldn't do with a rimfire..
 
If you want to go one step up in price range, the Bounty Hunter EAA imports from Germany is a step up in build quality too. I have the 8-shot 'convertible' 22, and am impressed.
 
I picked up a Heritage Rough Rider for $130 about a year ago for plinking and love it. True, it isn't a showpiece, but it's fun and cheap to shoot. Pretty accurate, too. My wife shot it for the first time the last time we were at the range and I couldn't get her to leave until we had finished off the box of ammo. :)
 
That's one of those guns I keep thinking about as well. But then I see a Ruger single-six or the Bearcat and wonder if I'd be better off spending a little more. In the end, I can't make up my mind and don't buy either!
 
Bassjam writes:

That's one of those guns I keep thinking about as well. But then I see a Ruger single-six or the Bearcat and wonder if I'd be better off spending a little more. In the end, I can't make up my mind and don't buy either!
Click to expand...

If you're finding the Ruger for what you can easily afford, by all means, get it. You certainly can't go wrong. When I got my first HRR, you couldn't touch a used RSS for under $450 around here, and those were rare. For what I wanted, the HRR was more than sufficient and, to me at least, a little more "authentic" as a play-cowboy shooter, what with its three-click hammer and rudimentary sights. Later (after my first HRR and before my second), I did get a used RSS for $400, as low as they go here. It's a nice and slick-feeling gun but, admittedly, I haven't fired it yet, and I've had it over a year. I just keep forgetting I have it, and I have too many guns to get them all to the range in a year's time, anyway.
 
On one of the holiday weekends late last year the local Academy stores had the base model Heritage .22 revolver for $99.95.
Should've picked one up for the heck of it.
 
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