Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ruger American bolt action thread

I thought we needed a good centerfire Ruger American thread. AI mag anyone?

AI mag is a 'No Brainer" if you want a reliable repeater......



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Really - a separate forum for an inexpensive cookie cutter entry level rifle ?

POS rifle like many of the other cheap plastic guns being made.

Only the stock is plastic, like many modern rifles . No question they will outshoot most factory offerings these days.

Oh contraire, the American rifle is a very accurate rifle designed to be manufactured as efficiently as possible, with design elements that contribute muchly to accuracy.

Like the 721,722 and 700 Remingtons, only better.

Why do you need a rifle with AI (artificial intelligence)?

For some people, that's as close as they're going to get to being smart.

223 Ackley Improved is a great caliber.

yep. AI's....

.Read the thread title..

It says THREAD not "Forum" you dumbazz.

I like mine and would buy another for the same price I stole it for...

Just never could like one. Hated at first sight, heard good stuff, then thought, ohh they're ok I'll try it, then, well, I just don't like 'em. They feel like a cheap chincy disposable rifle to me in all regards. I've bought, then sold two, without firing them, another after one range trip although it was accurate. LOL. Still have one just because it doesn't get used . It's great they shoot well for folks.

Let me add a +1 for the RAR. I have only one. It's a 223 Rem RAR Predator.
I bought it for one reason. I am a deer hunter who only recently started thinking about reloading and shooting for accuracy. I was told the RAR was an ideal entry level rifle for this purpose. I find it fills this requirement quite well.

The stock is not to my taste, but it does the job. The trigger is better than I would expect at this price point.

The magazine works. Mine was purchased late enough that the rotary magazine has given me no trouble. However, I still see the mag as the one great flaw for me. The rifle does not single-feed well at all. Somebody needs to market a dummy magazine that allows for single-feeding.

Here's the way I look at it. Back when I was a kid, a really good rifle that would get you 1 MOA straight out of the box was over $100 and a scope might set you back the same. That same rifle is now selling north of $1,000.

You could get a $40 rifle back then that might shoot 3-4 MOA if you worked at it. However, you had to learn how to be a shade-tree gunsmith to get there.

Here it is 50 years later, and the rifle mfgs have been able to produce a $300-400 rifle that gets you 1 MOA accuracy out of the box. Granted, it's not built like a $1,000 rifle, but it has parts that were machined better than that $100+ rifle fifty years ago. It goes together at the factory without a whole lot of tweaking. The stocks look like they were made by Mattel but you can take them out in the rain.

For all those wonderful pieces of craftsmanship I have in my safe, I can afford to go slumming once in a while.

For comparison, I have two Savage 340's on the rack. 1 is in 223 Rem. Both shoot reasonably well. By comparison, they are far and away less of a rifle than the RAR. The triggers are adequate. The magazines work. However, the rifle is needlessly heavy and the designs are not nearly as strong as the RAR. I also have 2 Winchester 670's. These are the functional equivalent of the RAR from the 1970's. However, they cost relatively more than the RAR, and neither has as good a trigger.

Who is Al, and what's he doing in the magazine?

You can't beat the accuracy for the dollar. I've had versions with rotary magazines and now the AI style mag. The rotary mags fed and functioned fine, but 2 of mine broke when they were dropped on the ground while loaded. I sold mine with the rotary mags and replaced them. I currently have a Predator in 308 and a Ranch rifle in 5.56 that takes AR magazines.

Ths stocks are cheap, but work. I can't see spending money to replace the stock though. I've got a couple of $350-$400 rifles. A $200 aftermarket stock puts me into a $550-600 rifle. If I've got a $600 budget I'll just buy a Tikka and be done with it.

Off subject..
Been looking for a north haven marlin xs7 in .308 for awhile myself.
Not a Mayfield one.
Accurate rifles. Inexpensive. Lines of the synthetic stock aren't over the top.

Haven't bitten yet, but they keep making them for interesting cartridges, and at a hard-to-beat price point. It's pretty clear they're good shooters. I wish more were available in SS, but then who worries much about a $400 gun?

In general, I'm against putting much lipstick on pigs, but Don really knows how to tart 'em up right.

I have one in 30-06. To me, a gun's a tool, not something to be cuddled. If it shoots well and can stand some abuse, that's what I want. I don't care about the looks. The RAR does all of that. My only gripe is that it doesn't have a bolt lock. When carried on a sling, the bolt will sometimes work it's way open.

Every time I hear someone complain about what someone else likes in firearms it makes me cringe. If I don't like something I don't buy it but I don't put someone else down because they do like it. We're all in this together and there's a hell of a lot of people trying to take our collective rights away. It's an incremental thing and we've capitulated far too much. We gave up the bump stock earlier because a lot of people don't like them so we discriminated against those that do. Today it's the AI magazine and tomorrow it'll be the AR. One of these days it's going to work it's way around to your OX so be careful what you bitch about.