Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints Short barreled varmint rifle ?

My favorite calling rifle is a 16” AR in the boring old 223.... but where I call 10-150 yards are my average ranges. I shoot 55BT’s. I wouldn’t think either you or the coyotes will know the dif of how fast your 40 vmax was going when it hits and I’m sure it’s going to be a few hundred FPS faster than my trusty AR.

Well I chopped off 8 inches of barrel, crowned and bead blasted it to a nice matte finish.
Loaded some rounds with 40 grn Vmax and made it to the range to get it sighted in just before dark.
23 grains of 4198 was the ticket for group size, but it was too dark for the chrono to get any readings.
Waited a half hour before heading into the woods and had one coming in about 20 minute later.
It ended up just staring in my direction for a half hour behind some brush about 150 yards away.
When it started to meander away, it made the mistake of going into the only small opening I had.
Dropped it at 130 yards.
Luckily it wasn't at 150 yards, or the projo would've probably bounced off of it.
I loaded another 50 rounds and am all set to see what my new short barreled rifle can take down this weekend.
SJC

Man, are you lucky....

My varmint rifles are a SAKO 222 Remington with a sporter barrel and 2 AR15s, both with 16" barrels in 5.56 NATO (223) For prairie dogs the heavy fluted match grade AR and the SAKO are best for me and both shoot under 1/2 MOA. For getting real low to the ground the SAKO is easier to use then the AR.

But for shooting varmints for hides, the king of the 3 is the light barreled AR. It's got a Weaver fixed 4X scope and a match trigger, but it's the least accurate of the 3 rifles. It will do MOA, just just MOA and sometime about 1-1/4" is what I can expect at 100 yards, depending on the ammunition I am using.

However I am nearly as fast for the 1st shot with the light AR as I am with the SAKO, and if there are multiples (as does happen not infrequently with foxes and coyotes) the light weight AR is the king. Almost no recoil so 2nd shots are REALLY fast and I don't come off the scope at all, so if I miss the 1st shot I have a correction and a 2nd on on the way in less then 1 second, and in the cases of pairs and packs there is just no comparison between the AR15 and the SAKO. I get a LOT more hides using the semi-auto.

So for varminting for money, the AR15 is probably the best tool yet invented

Here in western oklahoma I use the 16 inch AR and it is an improvement to have the fast second shot as sometime we have 5 to fifty hogs for targets. Another thing to help fast recovering on the second to maybe 20th shot is one of those slip on recoil pads and a red dot to keep both eyes open. It will become automatic to just pull the trigger if a hog is in the sights. The stocks are mostly adjustable so they are easy to fit comfortable with the recoil pads. And I am old enough that calling me a sissy don,t bother me.

Just wondering if you had any time to get this shorter barrel over a chrono? And is it so much louder for you?

I'm kinda wondering about the fireball outta the barrel after dark.....

My best calling rifle is an AR with a 16" stainless bull barrel, it's lighter and wayy handier than a 20".
And accuracy is inside 3/4" with many 55gr-65gr bullets. This is one AR upper I would not want to give up.

Haven't had a chance to get it chrono'd and since it's snowing like a bitch right now, it's not looking like I'll be able to get to the range to do it anytime soon.
I took two short videos of me shooting coyote and I didn't notice any fireballs in them or a big difference in the noise level, but that could be because I was focusing on the shot.