You kill plenty of deer with your old rifle, so is there any real benefit to upgrading the trigger and bedding the action?
Bill Pool, a gunsmith and owner of Arkansas Gun Traders in Benton, is an accomplished target shooter in multiple disciplines. Target shooters are obsessive about getting the smallest groups possible, but Pool said that the average deer hunter might benefit the most from a trigger and bedding job.
Many hunters are capable shooters, but most are not precision shooters, Pool said.
"He picks up his gun right before the season starts, and maybe he'll fire off a few rounds to make sure it's still on target."
A rifle can lose accuracy for a variety of reasons. Eliminating variables like stock, action and barrel interface and an excessively heavy trigger pull can ensure that a rifle shoots true year after year.
Improving the trigger might be the most important thing a casual rifleman can do to improve accuracy in an otherwise stock rifle, Pool said.
The average factory rifle trigger requires about 6-8 pounds to release the firing pin. That's almost as heavy as the rifle itself, Pool said. There is an inherent lag in the amount of time it takes to pull a heavy trigger to its release point.
"If you're not a really experienced shooter, most people will pull off the target for that length of time or they give up and they yank on it," Pool said. "You're going to get a shotgun pattern with it."
Hunters shooting at deer from 50-100 yards can prosper with imperfections that competition shooters won't tolerate. There's no urgent reason for a guy that hunts a couple of weekends a year to replace a trigger, but doing so will still make him a better shooter, Pool said.
"A lot of guys come in and tell me, 'I'm just not a very good shot'," Pool said. "I've taken some of them out to benchrest matches where it's real easy to tell if it's the shooter or the gun. Let them shoot a benchrest gun that's real accurate, and they find out they're a pretty good shot."
Other things can affect a rifle's accuracy. Wood stocks can expand and contract. A mild jolt in a deer stand at the end of the season might have altered the orientation of the action in a stock.
"A bedding job makes it more consistent," Pool said. "It isolates the barrel from a wood stock and mitigates the effects of temperature changes and humidity."
In an unbedded wood stock, the recoil lug rests inside a cutout. Repetitive impact from recoil can compress the wood, which allows room for the action to move within the stock. In extreme cases, the lug can eventually knock a chunk out of the stock.
Depending on the grain and hardness of the wood, recoil can cause screws to split a stock, Pool said. Bedding eliminates contact between wood and metal and provides a more stable platform that will retain its integrity indefinitely. No matter how many times you remove a barreled action from a properly bedded stock, it will shoot in the same place every time you reinstall it.
Using the same ammo and proper cleaning also are very important to accuracy, Pool said. Factory rifle barrels are often particular about which bullets they shoot well. Simply switching ammo brands can have a dramatic effect on a rifle's accuracy.
"That's the first thing I ask," Pool said. "Are you shooting the same ammo?"
Ammo manufacturers sometimes change powders in factory loadings, which also can affect accuracy.
"They don't tell you that," Pool said. "The box just says you've got a 150-grain CoreLokt that shoots 2,700 feet per second, and then one day it doesn't shoot the same."
Improper cleaning is a major problem in older rifles, Pool said.
"I not only ask if they cleaned their gun, but how did they clean their gun?" Pool said. "A lot of times they'll say they put a little oil in it and ran a patch through it."
It takes more than that to remove copper fouling.
"Copper?" Pool asked, feigning the puzzlement that often follows that question.
"An ordinary brush and patch doesn't get copper out," Poole said. "You've got to have a good copper solvent, especially with factory stuff. A factory barrel catches lots of copper. Eventually copper builds up so bad that it detracts from their accuracy. After you're through hunting, clean that gun up so doesn't have any copper in it."
Before you put your rifle away for the year, run a lightly oiled patch down the bore to discourage rust.
Sports on 10/05/2017