Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Why no love for Browing bolt rifles?

I thought it was a complement.

Please list all the delicate parts. I've just never had any trouble with them, but need to know what to watch out for.

Would hate for one to fall apart in my hands while on a hunt.

Do the bolt handles break off? Will some fire unexpectedly? Hold on...I think that is another brand...

That sounds like a delicate rifle to me.

Thanks!

Here's just a little-bitty buck I killed with a Browning.

Hell of a rifle.

Steve

I bet it broke in half soon after this pic was taken.

I can tell you one thing, I had a bitch of a time getting him out. Fifteen hundred feet above camp, my horse came down with a kidney problem and couldn't be rode or packed. So I had a racked-up horse to lead out and a deer to carry.

I was a man then, but it still was a tussle.

It was a long, long day and part of the night.

But worth it.

Fairly decent buck, actually. I didn't have much time to judge horns because he was literally running over me. I shot him under the chin and rolled out of the way and he continued a dead roll for another hundred feet or so.

He may be the prettiest three-point I've shot; and I LOVE three-points. Width is a clean 28-inches.

Steve

Steve is that a BBR?

I have no doggie in this fight, but will just say that several of my buds have hunted a ton load with their A-bolts and when I mention issues they just kind of chuckle and go back to showing me pics of their grand slams and such.

I no that they're accurate rigs and my friends have had no problems. But, obviously others have had issues.

Dober

I had a Browning one time and on a hunt I fel on the flimsy bbl and bent it almost to the shape of an "C"....but that was OK cause a little scope adjustment and now that crazy thing will shoot around corners.

Someone likes the A-Bolt series. They've been for sale since when, 1990? Twenty plus years of sales... That says a lot of people have bought them.

Well I recently got the 325WSM bug. Bought a Winchester Extreme Weather. It fed slick and looked and felt great. Took the first one back and exchanged it for another as the first one had a lot of copper fouling in the new barrel, I assume from proof firing. The next model also had a great deal of blue fouling to remove. It also shot not all that great (1.5-3MOA) and copper fouled like a bugger. Had a gunsmith scope the made in USA barrel and he said too rough,sell the damn thing.

I also bought a Browning. It didn't feel quite as nice in the hand. The synthetic stock feels a bit flimsy. It shoots 3" groups at 400 yards consistently. It is easy to develop loads for and shoots extremely well with bullets from 150-220 grains. I don't have to spend 1 hour cleaning it after every use.

I still have the Browning. It hasn't broken yet.

Savage has sold a lot of 110's, too. Doesn't mean either rifle is flawless, in form or function.

They did. But for half as much as Browning sold theirs for.

Big difference...Different buyers.

You dole out that much for a rifle you tend to have higher expectations than one you bought for half the price .

Apparently, The A-Bolt met the expectations of most of their buyers. If they didn't, the design would not be enjoying a 20+ yr. run at it's current price point.

It would have been discontinued and replaced with another design had it been infested with all the imaginary defects some like to post here...

Great Buck Steve and appreciate the pic. I never carried a horse and don't want to. LOL

Merry Christmas!

Yep, a BBR and I shot it a LOT. It was in .30-'06, of course, and the rifle is still killing big critters for the kid I gave it to.

Karen and I could have no children of our own, so I've been "passing it forward, in many, many ways, for lots of years." The kids are the future of our sport and of our world ... it doesn't just end with us.

By the way, when I was a writer for the gunfunnys, I went on several prairie dog hunts sponsored by Browning/Winchester Ammo. I remember one little "Medallion" grade .223 that was way beyond spooky-accurate.

Most manufacturers would shove a non-zeroed POS in your hand and expect a positive article. NOT BROWNING, their rifles came zeroed and perfect in every way.

Anyway, we were on the Hougen Ranck East Pasture and I was shooting the little Medallion .223. I'm not sure I've ever fired as accurate a rifle, custom or not. With 40-grain Winchester Supreme (black box) ammo, I killed some dogs that were literally impossible. I kept stretchng out and out and out and the rifle/ammo kept hanging with me.

I won't reveal what a half-dozen dogs I killed lasered, but it was a far piece and I'm not sure if I could have even hit the mound itself with my .25-'06.

Naw, Brownings are shooters and fabulous commercial rifles, in my opinion.

Steve

I should have been more precise in my critique. I was thinking particularly of their top shelf A-Bolt and when I said "hunt from a truck" I intended to say that if your day starts and ends in a truck then they're going to perform better than if you take them in to the wilds where rain, snow, sleet and sub freezing temps are the norm for days, even weeks, at a time.

As for the parts that give trouble, it's as if woobieitis completely blinds some guys. John Browning must be rolling over in his grave when looking at his namesake's most popular bolt action rifle. I've not counted the number of pieces that make up the bolt of an A-Bolt, but they are many and I've seen them freeze tight with moisture--not too mention the almost impossible nature of keeping the rifle moderately clean in the field. I had a trigger mechanism freeze and with my "gargantuan strength" I literally crushed the "gold plated trigger" trying to get it to fire. Rugged is simply not a modifier that comes to mind when considering an A-Bolt.

The Safari is a different beast altogether and I've no experience with the X-Bolt. I think engineers would have to intentionally design a bolt action rifle with more component parts than they did with the A-Bolt...

Sounds like you got a bad one.

One.

I've owned and hunted with close to 2 dozen and never had any trouble. If I had, I would have quit using them like you did. So I don't blame you for getting away from them.

I've hunted out of boats on the Mississippi river for years, it rains here a lot in winter as well. I have camped in wet temps in the high teens on many occasions and used the rifles for days when the temps never got above freezing and never experienced any issues.

I haven't had the rifles in arctic conditions, so I cannot speak to that.

I know Sitka has posted that several trigger mechanisms have frozen up in his presence.

What I find curious is that other designs use an enclosed trigger housing very similar to Browning's, so they must also be susceptible to a wet freeze condition.

Maintenance is an important part of owning any firearm. If you neglect any firearm you are asking for trouble regardless of brand.

And that trouble will usually come when you need it most.

I know a ton of people that have and had Abolt rifles. I have owned 2 and a good friend in Bama has owned/owns 1/2 dozen. Bolt is a PITA if you want to field strip it but the funny thing is that in 15 years I have never had one go bad on me nor have my friends and acquaintances. I don't think I will provide an example of Remington and Winchester Rifles I have been associated with because that will make this thing go to 100 pages. In short I have seen zero problems with Abolts,. Not everyones cup of tea but they work.

The one and only trigger I've had FAIL was a straight-factory 1950s Winchester Model-70. Yup, the highly-touted piece of schit failed me miserably. Broke in two, actually, from a factory fault in the metal.

I was way far north in the Yukon Territory, on the NWT border and I had the friggin' Model-70 trigger take a dump on me. Yes, I was fixin to kill a 40+-inch ram when it broke in two parts.

I always carry a kit, but it was back in camp with a spare trigger group, a spare bolt and a spare scope in detatch mounts. So we walked down two-thousand feet to base camp, I replaced the trigger, checked the zero and was good to go.

Three days later, I killed the ram in my avatar, which is many inches longer than forty.

In many ways, I'm happy the Model 70 trigger failed.

No, I never hunted with a Winchester M-70 again. I've never had a Remington 700 fail and I've owned and tested a couple hundred of them. Gimme a Remington 700 any day.

Steve

WRONG. Please provide a citation for your anecdotal claim as well.

Steve;
I trust this finds you and your wife doing acceptably well on this Christmas Eve.

Thanks for sharing the photo of the dandy buck and yours vintage BBR.

I bought a BBR in '81 and carried it for years here in BC. It didn't have the fore end tip that yours did and the stock was flatish on the fore end. I ended up rounding the bottom off on mine and doing some wrap around checkering one winter when I thought I needed a challenge!

Mine too would shoot just fine thanks and the lone dig I had against it was that it was a pretty heavy rifle.

I ended up selling mine to the son of a good friend after I'd lent it to him for a season and the young man just couldn't see living without it. It's still killing stuff as well Steve - we helped him cut and wrap the whitetail buck that died in front of it this past fall actually.

It was kind of cute that when we were cutting up the buck, his father was teasing him for using a rifle that had killed enough bucks on that part of the mountain that it was almost trained to do so by itself.

A very blessed and Merry Christmas to you and your wife this Christmas Steve and all the best to you both in 2012.

Dwayne

Having owned both, I'd take the 110, regardless of the "price point". Fortunately, I don't have to take either.