I recently acquired this rifle brand new and over the last few weeks have a bit of shooting at the range. Overall I am quite happy with the rifle, it is a keeper.
It is a Browning BLR Lightweight Stainless Laminate and is chambered in 308Win. It has the pistol grip stock which I prefer, probably because all of my other rifles are bolt actions so this style of stock is more familiar. It is fitted with a decent recoil pad and the barrel is free floating forward of the front screw. The magazine is blue rather than stainless which was a surprise (did they ever make stainless magazines?). It holds 4 rounds.
I�ve fitted a Leupold VX-III 2.5-8x36 with duplex reticle in Talley alloy rings. I had to remove the rear sight to fit the scope. The front sight is visible when the scope is on low power but not really an issue, I�ll probably remove it (front sight) at some stage.
I did a fairly minimal �run in�; it is quite easy to get clean. I�ve been using Hoppes #9 to get rid of the powder fouling then Wipeout to remove copper.
I tried some Remington factory loads which returned 5-shot groups around 2 - 2.5� at 100m. I then started on my handloads with the Nosler 125gn BT (for feral goats). 47grains of AR2206H is returning 5-shot groups averaging 1.2MOA at 100m. More powder increased the size of the groups significantly so I�m happy with the 47gn load. Next step is to develop a 150gn load.
Recently I shot it in an informal lever action match and did OK. Was able to put some reasonable groups down from field positions but need to practice my rapid fire. The rifle is still pretty tight � the lever is a bit �sticky� to cycle but I expect this to loosen up with more shooting. The trigger is pretty ordinary � heavy, creepy and very long. A trip to the gunsmith will hopefully improve it a bit.
To sum up: the positives are the rifle fits me very well, shoots accurately, is light & is fun. The barrel doesn�t foul excessively and I�m happy with my choice of scope to match the rifle. The negatives are the trigger (which I expected to be poor), the blue magazine and the fact that Winchester Australia still hasn�t supplied the spare magazine several months after ordering it.
Cheers
Ian
