Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Budget accuracy upper

Cert, the ones you mention are not really "budget" minded. Hopefully this does not get into a pizzing match here. I am reminded by something my buddy, who is an old retired Airborne Ranger, told me a while back. He was talking about barrels and he said most makers barrels these days are actually pretty good. They don't want to have a bad name, or reputation, so they try to put out a good product because they know if they don't, everyone and their brother will hear about it on the internet. My buddy is right for the most part.

What we have seen here recently is some guys mentioning Bear Creek Armory a lot. Some guys are having great luck with them. Even some guys like rost. And rost has shot way more AR's than most of us here. I appreciate reading his experiences here. However, you also see a lot of bad publicity on this brand. So what do we do?

I know I'm the odd man out a lot of times because I have minimal experience with AR's. I only joined this forum because of the black rifle challenge here. I like and appreciate accuracy, even in the AR platform. In my experience, they shoot damn good. I've been extremely lucky I guess?? Since I'm the "odd man out", I'll suggest looking at the Windham Weaponry varmint exterminator upper. It uses a fluted stainless 20" barrel and I have 3 barrels from them that all shoot lights out. 3 for 3 and they are all good. However, the last one is a bit more finicky. I've submitted all of those rifles in the black rifle challenge here and they are sub moa shooters in that event. With that being said, they may also not be "budget" minded at $800.00 for the complete upper (including the BCG with bolt matched to the barrel extension). These have CLE (Compass Lake Engineering) chambers and are generally my go to if I have to shoot one in a competition.


Here's what one of my favorites does on command:



Here is a pic of 2 of the rifles. Basically set up the same way. The rifle on the top is my Noveske iron sight rifle. The 2 below it have VEX barrels:


The other one is a BCM with the Windham Weaponry VEX barrel on it:


The funny thing is I've been playing with the el-cheapo old Bushmaster 1 in 9" twist HBAR rifle the most (where ar's are concerned) over the last 6 months. My Airborne Ranger buddy sold me a complete upper for $250 and I've been pretty dang happy with that one. Cant beat the accuracy you get from some used uppers, if they are quality:




Sometimes you get damn lucky on that kind of stuff. For example: The Noveske shown above was a complete 20" heavy stainless varmint upper that I got for $500.00, used. Maybe sometimes the better option is to buy a good quality used upper, if you are on a budget??? That Noveske is one of my poorer shooting AR's. Only shooting around 1 moa at best, but generally not much worse than that...: Even with the irons, I scored 1.085 MOA in the black rifle challenge here:

Target shot at one of my clubs AR shoots^^^^ With a scope, that is ho hum, but with irons, I can't complain.. That has just been my experience. Not much on multiple brands. I have had one WOA upper and it shot great, but was in a cartridge that is not well supported by WOA. The twist was too slow too, something those sob's should know better. However, if I were to do it all over again, I'd buy a WOA barrel and put it in a good upper receiver and see if it outshot my WW. Chances are good that it would keep up. Maybe???