I have a 77 Hawkeye Standard chambered in .223. Out of the box the trigger was good and the pull weight was a smidge over four pounds as I recall. I gave the sear a light polishing and replaced the spring with the lighter of two ball point pen springs I tried. Now it is a great trigger the breaks at 2-3/4 pounds and still passes all of the usual safety checks.
Accuracy was fine but kind of inconsistent. I decided to epoxy bed the action and float the barrel. Since this work 55 grain Hornady soft points average 7/8" for five shot groups shot from prone with a bipod. Last weekend I tried a new load with Varget and 69 grain Sierra MatchKings and two different seating depths. The rounds loaded longer are a half MOA load.
Other than that the walnut on mine is nice, not gorgeous, but definitely pleasing. The action has smoothed out nicely just from normal use. While it is certainly a Mauser like action, mine at least, isn't really controlled round feed but since it feeds, fires, extracts and ejects with one hundred percent reliability I don't actually care. Overall it's a great rifle. In fact I like it enough that I'd like to find another just like it but in .243 or 6.5 Creedmoor for my daughter to start hunting with this year.
Last edited by Fraser; 01/25/24.
