Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Anyone shooting a Kimber Hunter

Bergara has made most of the barrels for all Kimber models since 2014. There was sporadic barrel production in NJ in 2014 and for a couple of years after but the majority of barrels came from Bergara. Kimber never made the barrels for the Talkeetna or Caprivi as I mentioned earlier. A good Kimber barrel is as good as any other properly buttoned barrel but the consistency from Bergara is what drove the huge drop in accuracy related issues and customer returns.


Criterion started making 6.5 CM and some .308 Win barrels in late 2019, early 2020. I would be happy with either a B or C in the extractor cut, and if there's no letter and the rifle shoots well then all is good.

My 6.5CM is a B barrel and a 2 magazine, the magazine that came with the rifle has no number, might be why I prefer the spare?

Only complaint of the Hunter stock is the comb feels sharper/narrower that the Montana which I prefer. In Australia the Hunter is significantly cheaper than the Montana. I don’t mind the magazine.

Well I looked at my .243 Montana and no B or C. There is a vertical line, looks like a scratch. Does that indicate anything?

Your rifle was made before 2014?

Where are you guys seeing these markings on your Kimber barrels. My Montana just has a P on it.

Look inside the breach of the barrel and just above the extractor cut you’ll see a B or a C on the barrel face.

Thanks, just looked mine is a B. Never had any accuracy complaints with it either so I guess I got a good one.

Am I missing something, who made the barrels before 2014? I didn't see a B or a C on the extractor cut

I was going to bring this up on another thread but my information isn't rock solid so I never did, plus I really don't want to believe it.

According to a major gun dealer(Australia). He informed me that they heard it firsthand from one of the biggest rifle importers here, that Kimber is slowly pegging-back their rifle sales to concentrate on their pistol market. Whether or not there is any truth in this its still a concern. I cant imagine having no Kimber rifles options in the future

Making control round feed rifles is certainly a more costly exercise, especially when the action-length is suited to that caliber and not a universal one.

I hope this is just that, a rumor.

The way he explained it Kimber did.

Exactly. Prior to 2014 Kimber made the barrels at the Ridgefield, NJ facility, but with no investment to replace or upgrade old and worn out tooling and machines the quality was inconsistent. Then along came Bergara and things got a whole lot better. There were many suggestions to advertise the fact that Bergara was making the barrels but it was decided to keep it under wraps. I always thought that to be a mistake.

Wasn’t it about that time (~2015 iirc) they introduced the sub moa guarantee?

Well not too shabby minute of nickel . 46 gr of Varget and 155 Scenars at 2900

Group measure .51”


https://imgur.com/a/ELd1uSp

It was introduced as a "sub moa accuracy standard" rather than guarantee and it was the brainchild of a number of idiots in marketing who never even bothered to ask if all or any of the models were capable of meeting the stated accuracy standard. No testing was performed to validate the claim but they loved the idea of a hang tag with a target on it. In addition, the hang tag states 0.99" or less at 100 yards even though as we all know 1 moa at 100 yards is greater than 1", but having 1.0472" or less on the tag isn't as catchy as 0.99". CS would get calls from customers stating that their rifle doesn't meet the standard because they were getting 1.0" groups and not .99" or smaller.

Good info, thanks for sharing MCMXI.

Jason

Agreed ^

A lot of useful information shared. Some myths and mis-perceptions put to bed.

A very informative thread! Thanks all for posting.

I made the mistake of buying when they first came out.

I ordered it in 257Bob and it showed up as a 6.5CM. I went ahead and took the rifle home as 6.5CM wasn’t so “boutique” then. Long story short. I didn’t have any reloading components for the new to me chambering so I bought one box of 143G Hornady and a box of 129g hornady American Whitetail... When I got the rifle to the range, I couldn’t get it to chamber a factory round.

I took it to my smith just to see what he thought the problem was, he fiddled around with it for a bit and somehow determined (bear with me here if I get something wrong as I’m not a smith and it’s been a good while) that there was too much material on the bolt face and that somehow prevented the cartridge from sliding up under the extractor completely and that was causing the issue. He fixed that issue and then the rifle seemed to work fine, but it shot like absolute garbage. I don’t think it ever turned in a group under 2”.


Hope your luck is better than mine. As I really liked the rifle. But I wouldn’t buy another.

I remember several people sending in their Kimbers that were spraying 3" groups, then getting letter back from kimber that their rifle met their accuracy standards. And shipped the POS back. Turned me off from ever buying one. ... Sounds like things are better now.

I know some folks got bad barrels in the mid 2000’s, as a guy I knew at the time was so amazed with the handling and accuracy of mine that he bought one himself. Ended up having to rebarrel it after wasting unknown numbers of components and rounds to no avail. I can’t see how Kimber could go wrong having Bergara supply the barrels. And with less than 20 rounds down the pipe of my new .308 it’s shooting 1/2” groups, no complaints here.