Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Shot the Browning Hi Power

Long overdue.



I've been in and out of Browning Hi Powers going back to the late 1980s. My first was a Mk III, purchased down in Ft. Lauderdale.

I first discovered the Hi Power when I went shooting with a friend and his old college buddy, who brought along his old Belgian Browning Hi Power to shoot with us. I can't even recall what my friend and I brought to the range that day. I was too enamored with the Hi Power to pay much attention to that. I fell in love with that Hi Power. So classic and cool, and shot great. Within days, I went to the gun shop and bought one.

Not realizing you could still (in the late 1980s) buy one with the more classic features, I bought the one they had in stock, which was the Mk III, which had a dullish matte black finish, with black plastic grips and a more modern style safety, instead of polished blue steel with wood grips, and the old fashioned style safety like my friend's old buddy had at the range.

Years later, I got into some older Belgian Browning Hi Powers, but by the time I moved back to Florida around 2002, I had sold all of them. A few years before Browning discontinued it, however, I had decided I needed to remedy this missing spot in my collection, and bought a new one (just luck. I didn't know they were about to discontinue them). I only wanted one with the classic look, polished blued steel, and checkered wood grips, and that's what I got, or at least the closest to that they still offered (it had the modern safety and more modern style sights). But it satisfied my itch for a classic Hi Power. I shot it a bunch at first, but it's been in the safe pretty much the whole time since then till today.



I had forgotten how much I liked it, and how well it shot. There's something about it, despite not having the best trigger of its type, that allows for great precision. Something about the geometry, the way the backstrap fits the palm, the way the trigger seems to break straight back. Not sure what, but it's easy to put them where you want them.

Here's a pretty careful ten yard, off hand, group.



Without the flyer up top, that's a two inch group. The human silhouette target is half sized.

I put the target frame back to 15 yards, and took some faster off hand shots (I think that's two mags full).



I shot 150 rounds total (which went way too fast), and function was flawless, as expected.

I will definitely not allow so much time to pass before taking it to the range again.