Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Ballard acquisition

Newest member of my rimfire family. Ballard, with Stevens-Pope barrel, .22LR. Action dates to circa 1885, barrel early 1900's. Normally wears a Lyman 5A scope (see thread in single shot forum), Fecker 12x scope installed for the range session. It'll shoot- those are 5 shot groups, 50 yards, Eley Tenex. Yeah, I'm happy with it!

On man, a Pope barrel and shoots lights out! Congrats. Grew up reading the Pope stories in the old Gun Digests.

Wowsers! History that shoots! What, no NF Competition scope?

She's a beauty!

UH OH, squills are askeerd now!

Nice rifle gnoahhh! Are you bringing that to PA in August? Please????

Probably, Steve.

what a beauty! Jealous..

Great snag.

You sure have some Uber cool rifles! That’s a beauty.

Gary thats way COOL! hope to see it in PA. with Luck maybe shoot it!

Old school cool and it shoots! What’s not to love ?

But, But, - It's not tactical !!!!

Those are some fine groups from a neat old rifle. I bet that there are a lot of modern rifle shooters who find it hard to believe just how well those old rifles can shoot.

Congrats on a neat find.

drover

Back in the day Mr Pope fixed it. People been trying for decades to fix that what’s not broke.

I wonder just how he managed to do such precise machine work back then. Too many barrel makers today still haven’t figured it out.

Thanks. It just goes to show that the old guys back then knew their stuff. They created precision instruments using their brains and hands, not digitally controlled wonder-machines.

The thing is, accuracy such as this was virtually unheard of 100 years ago. Look at publications from the teens, 20's, 30's wherein writers/correspondents published "bragging" groups with their state of the art equipment and their then state of the art premium ammo. We would yawn today over such performance. You take that same equipment and feed it today's state of the art premo ammo and the picture changes dramatically. It's all about the ammo in the rimfire game.

Lot of truth there, but old Harry pulled off the same stuff with CF target guns. One of his records stood for over 50 years and would qualify as excellent performance by today’s standards. His famed muzzle loading cartridge gun concept still dots the “eye”. Have one built by another genius...lead+BP...stupid accurate.

Was going to say something about how lucky you are, but I kinda think you make your own luck. Just like the lottery ads that say you gotta play to win, you gotta look to find.

Pretty slick, luck or not.

True, you are. I should've prefaced my statement by referring to the world of rimfire target shooting. CF stuff is a horse of another color!

Beautiful rifle and great shooting.

I'd like to see what it will do at 100 yards, if you're so inclined. I did fairly well at 200 with my .22 low wall against the centerfire Schuetzen rigs. Shot for fun, as I didn't have a centerfire. Held my own against the bigger guns, if the wind wasn't too strong.

Paul

That's in the offing. Pugs and I still hope (at least I do!) that the local Schuetzen smallbore 100/200 yard matches will resume sometime soon.

I hope so too! They're still saying the August matches are on. http://www.tcandsc.org/index.php/disciplines/schutzen/48-schutzen-information I need to get the Martini out beyond the 100 yard we played with it a few weeks ago. Looking forward to seeing the Ballard.