Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Accuracy of Ruger M77 with Zytel stock

Looking at .30-06. What is your experience?

All mine are shooters

I had one. It was good enough for a hunting rifle. 1-1.25 inches was its typical best.

In 30-06, mine was average. It was a 1-1.5" shooter with great regularity and my handloads for it. I've had a bunch of these and the were either average or excellent. Both the 243s were average, but the 308 and 270 were both very good (MOA or better).

Good luck with it. Bomb proof rifles for sure.
Rob

One in .308 has been my general big game rifle for years. It shoots 1.5 moa 5 shot groups with just about anything. That's about as well as I can do with a post reticle 3x Weaver.

My 7Mag shoots very well with 150NBTs, the only bullet I've tried so far. I call this my light load, more like a 280Rem at 2890fps. 62gr IMR4350.



This is 68gr RL22 at 3100.

The stocks work just fine but some of the barrels on Rugers of the era were not always good shooters. I have a number of the stocks and have dropped new Rugers in them, mostly 375 and 416 Rugers and everyone has shot under MOA

I had one in 35 Whelen that shot 1 MOA with 250-grain Hornady RN bullets at 2,550 fps. It might have shot better, but recoil was about all I could stand. I never saw the Zytel stock as an accuracy-limiting factor.


Okie John

...or an accuracy-enhancing factor

I have a 257 Roberts Hawkeye UL that was terrible in the factory wood, good groups were 3" normal was around 5". I swapped it into a boat paddle and it immediately shrank the groups to down around 1". The factory wood was not cut deep enough under the recoil lug and I guess when everything was torqued it put something in a bind.

A little stock gouging and a tube of JB Weld or Acraglas might have fixed the original.

I have two Tangs, that both, with bedding and free-floated barrels, went from not so good (3+ or more) to 1.25 MOA, or better with some hand loads. For that matter, my first Ruger (77V )Tang in .25-06, shot 5 inch, 5 shot groups with factory, but MOA with neck-sized only hand loads from fired brass. Didn't like a clean barrel either, so one shot always went down the tube before going out into the killing field. Factory standard all the way, never "tweaked". But I didn't know any better then...

I thought about that and while I really like the look of the factory wood dropping that UL in a boat paddle made it perfect as far as weight and balance. I bedded it into the boat paddle stock and I just put the factory wood up in the safe.

I have several used, but not very dinged wood Ruger stocks in storage myself, from my gunsmithing days, from guys that wanted "plastic". Weight, balance, and personal preference are not to be gain-sayed.

Mine came in a laminate stock as was retro-fitted with a Zytel skeleton stock. Several years back I took it and a Zytel .338 WM to the range for a final scope and range check.

After checking the scopes at 100, I went to the .600 yard range where I had some clay pigeons on the berm. With a total of 5 shots (3 for one, 2 for the other), I nailed a pigeon with each rifle. Pretty sure the three shot effort was for the .338WM, which went first.

The Ruger laminates are heavy. They are a strange combination for a rifle with a relitively light contour barrel.

Calling a boat paddle an upgrade is damn funny!!!

What's not to like about the Zytel boat paddles? I've got three of them. One came that way, one was a build and one I "upgraded" from a laminate.

Accuracy has never been an issuw with them. In 2012 I took the .338WM and .30-06 to the range for a final scope check. After a shot or three with each at 100 I headed to the 600 yard range where I put clay pigeons up on the 600 yard berm. Five shots total, 3 with one, 2 with the other, and a pigeon apiece.


L to R, .338WM (build), .300WM (factory), .30-06 (upgrade). Put a Limbsaver on the .338 and tamed it considerably. The other two don't bother me.



Always on the lookout for more Zytel stocks at "reasonable" prices.

My all weather 77 Hawkeye .30-06 does 1" @ 100 with 165 gr. Winchester power point factory loads and about 1 1/2" with 180's. The only thing I did to it was cut the sear engagent down to eliminate creep and file the mag box so it wasn't pinched beteen the action and bottom metal. I don't plan on shooting prairie dogs with it so that's good enough for me.