Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Colt, and Browning?

As said above, Browning designed the Remington model 17. Beautiful little shotgun. 5.75#. Everything I love about the Woodsman applies to the 17 as well. Ithaca stole the design and waited for the patents to expire, but made cost cutting changes to it.

The other designer was an employee at FN. I also forgot his name. But he was working with John Browning on it when Browning died.

I think their name recognition are about the same

Did Browning ever make a poor firearm?

Grizz:

Before I knew any better, I accumulated a small cohort of Browning A-bolt 1 and 2's; calibers range from .22 to .375 H&H.

I'm not denigrating anyone or dismissing their experiences with A-bolts that differ from my own, and I know that for myriad reasons the A-bolts aren't everyone's cup of tea; I'm just sharing my experiences with them. Over the past 25 years, I have shot many thousands of rounds through A-bolts, have taken them on a lot of hunts that encompass a lot of different country, have loaned them out to friends and acquaintances for hunts and trials, and have yet to experience the first problem of any sort with one. Some of my A-bolts were bought second hand and were well used and ill cared for before coming my way.

I mostly started in them because they had a good assortment of left hand offerings and because I really like their tang safety that locks the bolt down. I do a lot of upland hunting with O/U shotguns, and taking tang safeties on and off has become a near unconscious evolution for me. I kept buying them because of the safety arrangement in reference, the low bolt throw, the floor plate mounted clip, and the high level of out of the box accuracy I've experienced with them.

I now have a lot of different bolt action rifles from a number of manufacturers, but I still do a lot of hunting and shooting with A-bolts. To me, they (now the X bolt) still present a good option for a person who wants to buy a gun, scope it, and expect very good out of the box accuracy and function with minimal added accoutrements and/or gunsmith processing. I've handled some of the newer X-bolt pro's and hells canyons, and they've shot and functioned exceedingly well right out of box.

But, perhaps I'm missing something? It has happened a time or two before.

Some say the A-Bolt fits the bill.

AB3 is quite the Piece-o-[bleep]
Recoiless was stillborn
Newer T-Bolts aren't great

If all I had was an Abolt to hunt with , I wouldn’t be real mad.

I am partial to Browning Hi-Powers.

Model 2000.

In Japan, they call it A-bort.

I've not had bad experiences with A-Bolt rifles.

Ya, I got a thing for Colts, An AR, 1911's, Snakes guns, 1860 Army, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Gen. SAA and a Colt reproduction Dragoon. I also have a Browning A-Bolt, left hand short action 7mm-08 with a BOSS, usually wins the Turkey Shoots on site-in days.
One of my Colt SAA's was sent to the Browning Brothers Gun Shop in Ogden Utah in 1920, when John Browning was still alive, always wondered if he handled the gun.

John Browning and Samuel Colt were both very innovative men in their time, and both changed the forward progression of both this country and the world. There is a lot of mystique it both of their names.
They were indeed legends.

I dont know had an a bolt....killed alot of stuff with it......whats to say it was a poor firearm......bob

a Colt....


a Browning....

Snazzy pics, sweet guns!

Yep. Colt wasn't so much a gun designer as idea man. He came up with some original ideas for self-indexing revolving pistols (cocking the hammer also turned and repositioned the cylinder to align a fresh chamber with the barrel), based on how he saw certain machinery on steamboats operate, then hired gunsmiths to turn them into real working revolvers. Browning, on the other hand, was both an idea man and a gunsmith who could literally transform an idea of his own for a gun into an actual working gun with his own two hands.

J.M. Browning actually made wooden functioning, non-firing of course, models of his lever guns for the Patent Office. I think both men were over the top human beings and innovators, but I don't think the Browning firearms ever took a slide in manufacturing quality that some Colt's have over the years, at least in respect with some of the 1911 pistols which by coincidence were John Browning designed. For a few years, the Colt 1911 was a very loose fitted handgun. Some of this was by original design and some by slacking standards.

Thought the Browning .380 - 4” was somewhat crappy. Think it was called the Model 10/71 if memory serves.