Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Tuning a Hawkeye mkII Control Round Feed

Hi,

I just acquired a Hawkeye mkII in 22-250 and as I was playing with it yesterday I noticed that it rarely actually controls the round on feeding. It will feed the round into the chamber no problem and control it once the bolt is slid forward fully (camming the bolt closed is not necessary), but it doesn't control the round before that point. It looks like the round is being stripped at the right time and the case head is positioned in almost the correct place, it just isn't high enough or forced up strongly enough to actually pop under the extractor. It appears to me that once the round is mostly into the chamber, the case head is leveraged upward and that's when it slides under the extractor, but I think it should be occurring earlier in the feeding process. Having now screwed around with my Hawkeye mkII in 30-06, I see it has a similar "problem." So, neither rifle controls the round into the chamber until the bolt is fully forward and it's not necessarily a short vs long action problem.

When cycled upside down, both rifles gain control of the case head much earlier in the process, but when turned right side up, the cases kind of slip from under the extractor again and are not being fully controlled. Maybe this is just the way these guns operate, but I'm sure I've read about people tuning them to be fully CRF so that the rifle can even be muzzle down and the extractor will still control the case directly from the magazine.

Any advice, tuning tips, etc. are appreciated.

Thanks.

Did they make Hawkeyes marked also as a mark II ?


I thought the Hawkeye replaced the Mark II . Maybe there was some overlap of both mark II and Hawkeye in the beginning of the Hawkeye rollout.


I’ve read that the Ruger is not truly a CRF in the sense of a pre 64 Winchester . Built like a tank though

Early Ruger MK 2 had a lip on the bottom of the bolt that prevented controlled feed.

Ruger would retrofit a new bolt for free for a while they later charged $186 and I missed the window, So I removed the lip on 2 of my MK 2,s I own they both feed more like a Win 70 CF than the later Hawkeye rifles. Good smith should be able to tune extractor and bolt relief.

I may be wrong with the nomenclature; I have the latest variant of the rifles, whatever they were called. Both made in 2011 or later and both left handed, if that matters. I will look at the bolts later to see if mine have the a lip on the bolts.

Yours doesn't have the lip, if it is a Hawkeye. If its not feeding right, send it back to ruger.

The early MK 2 pre-Hawkeye,s had a lip around 1991 ERA, none of the later MK 2 or Hawkeyes had a lip on the bottom of the bolt.

A Hawkeye is a MK-II with a better trigger and some cosmetic changes.

A rifle needs 3 things to qualify as CRF to me. The large claw extractor, a blade ejector and the extractor should grab the rim before closing the bolt.

The tang safety Ruger's only had the claw extractor. VERY early MK-II's did not have the cut out on the bolt face and would not let the extractor grab the rim until the bolt was closed, but this was corrected almost immediately. To find a rifle like this is very rare. They were only made for a few months, maybe weeks before the change was made.

Most Ruger's, as well as my Winchester's don't pick up the cartridge from the magazine immediately. There is a very short delay before the extractor grabs the cartridge rim, but well before the cartridge is in the chamber. I don't consider this a problem at all. This trait bothers some people. And some will argue that the Ruger's are not true CRF because of it. IME feeding the round into the chamber is the easy part and any PF rifle is just as reliable as a CRF at FEEDING. It is the extraction and ejection that make CRF better. And the Ruger's excel at that.

Thanks for the assistance, guys. I guess I should probably leave well enough alone. Certainly, both guns extract like a CRF rifle should and don't require camming the bolt closed to gain control of the case head.