Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting 257 Roberts up next

My rifle generally performs best with an COAL of 3.00 inches depending on ogive but pretty close generally. This Ruger Ultra lite is the most finicky rifle I have ever owned, never seen anything like it. Is it the barrel? The cartridge design? It is free floated, has a Timney trigger and with certain loads is a really good shooter notably with boat tail bullets for some reason. It should not take a box of bullets or more to find a load it likes. Or several different powers either. For instance the Grand Slams shoot adequately with AA 4350 but barely under 2 inches and IMR 4350 with any load generally 3.5 to 4 inch groups! With 120 gr. Speer BTSP's, 117 Hornady BTSP's, Sierra 117 BTSP's and the 100 gr. Ballistic Tips once you find the magic load will shoot MOA or better. The difference of one grain of powder can make a 2-3 inch difference in groups size. Do a lot of 257 Roberts rifles exhibit this behavior? I have a Ruger 77 in 270 that shoots everything well and load development is hardly anything more than deciding what velocity level you want to run, looking in a manual to get data and loading them up.

IME, the Roberts is more finicky than a Creed, but most are.

That one sounds pretty extreme.

If it was mine and acting like that, it may end up with a new barrel.

DF

Exactly what I was thinking. I carried the rifle from Thursday night to Saturday night, saw 10-12 deer but nothing I wanted to spend a buck tag on. Got a call from the wife saying I ought to shoot a young one for Thanksgiving. But for some reason I switched out to my 7-08, first deer I saw Sunday morning was a yearling doe and my M7 7-08 did the deed.