Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles vanguard

i have had several of these and i love them. they are my first choice when looking for a new rifle. i just would like to be told honest info when we ask.

mine have all shot under the 1.5" guarantee, and 6 of 7 (i think i've owned 7...) have been under an inch easily.

no issues with weatherby, i just don't like change. and yes the stainless vanguards will be back, according to the weatherby nation forums. a source at WBY said they couldn't keep up with demand for the blued synthetics and so they suspended the stainless for now.

I wouldn't worry about it a whole lot. Here's the test target which is right about the maximum that they will send one out with over the first few shots from the rifle shooting the cheapest ammo I could pick up off the shelf - federal blue box at $20/box just to see how it did.

According to the employee over at the Weatherby forums a lot of people got the wrong idea from the test targets to begin with. The barreled action was put into a bench mounted vise and fired to produce the target and then it was put into a stock...which was good enough for me to see if the action/barrel was up to snuff. Apparently it ticked a bunch of customers off that it wasn't done "in the stock". I imagine it also did the trick to identify which ones were then put into a sub MOA stock and labeled as such.

Nathan, looks like you got a fine shootn' three-hunnert.

My very sweet wood stocked Vanguard in .300WBY was bought at Wally World a few yrs back for $379. It had a 1 1/8" target that has held true for me with 180gr factory loads. I have no doubt that a good shooter with hand loads could improve on that, but I am pleased.

I have three Howa's. A SS/Syn .22-250 and a SS/Syn 7mmWSM that were bought new and a used Blue/Syn .300Win with a scope. All were about $350 or less, and all are good shooters. A cheap hunters dream, until Stevens and Marlin came on with their cheap tack drivers. Now one is hard pressed to shoot better groups with a $1500 custom than a $250 box rifle from Academy. Good luck.

I bought a blued/synthetic Vanguard in .30-06 at Wally World last year for $290. Tan stock.
Yep, NIB for $290.
The included target had a group that measured 0.89".
If I didn't already have a Weatherby Ultra Lightweight in .30-06 this one would be my primary instead of backup.

P

the one i just bought...shot a group while working up a load at 50 yards..tore one hole with 5 shots. this one will do fine i think

That blue box federal shoots really well in several of my rifles, little clover leafs.

ive got 2 vanguards this year both had targets.

ok in the interest of being open and honest, here goes. i shot my vanguard for the first time last weekend and narrowed it down to one load. then today i shot groups with that load to test it out.

my first 3 shots from a clean barrel went into 0.276" at 100 yards, one "big" hole.

k, i am done finding a load...check.

i love weatherby's products and didn't mean to disparage them, just thought they should include the target still. i guess when you have a written guarantee and a 0.276" group, the target would be redundant

this is almost ridiculous accuracy from a sporter weight barrel, factory trigger (unadjusted), factory fiberglass cheapo stock, not bedded, not floated, not tweaked in any way. i literally took it out of the box, mounted a scope, and worked up a load. this was my first bullet/powder combination, i shot 4 groups with varying charges of Varget last weekend, and narrowed it down and then shot this group. wow.

buying another vanguard next time i "need" a rifle.

As I have said before, usually can't beat a Vanguard, both price and out of the box accuracy.

i am really impressed. i had a vanguard .243 that shot almost this well but it was floated and bedded and tuned and i shot expensive Noslers out of it to get it to do shoot like that.