Winchester Model 52 Bull-barrel .22 cal target rifle

Winchester .22 caliber Model 52 Bull-barrel target rifle

 

What a smooth trigger!  I am just blown away by it.  I shot seven groups of five and it was just so smooth!  This gun is so perfect!  Of all my guns, this one is probably my prize possission.  I inherited it from my dad and he had a penchant for fine things.  Mostly German air-rifles, but some firearms as well and this one is the greatest!  There is hardly any doubt that I will not find a smallbore rifle that can beat this gun.

Six of the 5-shot groups were scorable and came in as follows, the best being good for 5th place so far, but this gun is a contender when I sight it in and sandbag it later.

 

2.4"   2.8"  1.9"

3.0"  3.0"  3.7"

Springfield 87A Tube-feed semi-auto .22 cal rifle

Springfield 87A .22-calibre semi-auto rifle--tube feed

 

I tried to shoot this rifle, which I got from an old lumberjack friend, on two occasions this summer with the same result: The firing pin clicks but does not fire the shell.  I have to regard it as "down" and will have to take it apart to investigate, I am afraid.  It is a tube feed for LR only in that mode.  Will get around to this task when I get a little time for it.  Meanwhile there are several other .22's in the armory to sight in and evaluate.

Cooey Model 82 .22 caliber Rifle

Cooey Model 82 Rifle .22 caliber Rifle (light stock)

 

Having shot the dark stock Cooey Canadian, I decided to shoot the light one as well, and what a surprise was in store for me!  While the previous model stuck out the best group so far, the light model was fraught with problems!  First of all, I had a real difficult time getting a legal 5-shot group!  My first effort gave a nice 4-shot group with the fifth nowhere to be found!  Then I tried a couple more and got one marginal one only by including the tape that held on an adjacent target.  In addition to that, the gun had bolt issues...sometimes when I ejected a casing, the bolt would jump the restraints and come right out the back of the action!  This happened several times unless I gently operated the mechanism.  Oh boy! 

I finally put up a larger target and did manage to get a couple more groups to at least get this gun on the charts.  It may be an ammunition issue, because I shot a box of Thunderbolt LR.  We'll see how that goes down the road.

The two groups that I was able to score were:

4.9-inches

3.4-inches

 

The best one was good for 14th place of shooting so far.

Cooey Model 82 .22 caliber Rifle (Dark stock)

Cooey Model 82  Rifle .22 caliber  (Dark stock)

 

The Cooey Canadian rifle has a rich history and a great deal of information available.  I have two of them in .22 cal that I inherited from my father.  I refinished both of them and one turned out a little darker than the other and I refer to this one as the Cooey Dark. 

It was time to shake down another .22 cal rifle, so I took the Dark out and put up some rabbit targets and a couple small sighter charts at 50-yd.  The gun shot well and I realized that the common sight picture left a pretty nice group, but low, off the paper.  I changed my sight picture so that I covered the target with the front bead, bisected by the rear notch, and this seemed to do quite well.  In fact, I was very pleased with a couple of the groups, particularly after I got rid of the shooting glasses, which were fogging up on me. 

 

I obtained 8 groups I could measure, after shooting up a box:

 

1.7 "     7.1 "     3.0 "

2.4 "     1.6 "     1.3 "

1.7 "

2.9 "

The gun now temporarily owns the top four groups that I have shot.

 

The 1.3-inch group was very satisfying but one shouldn't be surprised.  These guns were commissioned by the Canadian government for training rifles, and the stocks go right out to the bitter end, so they are engineered to be good guns.  Why would you train your soldiers with inaccurate rifles?  Anyhow, it was a lot of fun shooting it.

Springfield Model 82 .22 Rifle

Springfield Model 82 .22 Rifle

 

This was my grandfather's .22 on my father's side.  I have both my grandfather's and father's (Model 15).  This particular one was given to me by my paternal grandmother, which is quite an honor because I not only am not the oldest cousin on that side of the family, but there are a slew of them which were quite close to my grandmother.  I did not see her all that often, as when my parents divorced, the dad side tended in those days to bow out. 

Anyway, I got it out of the safe for a shakedown box of bullets and had some fun on a sunny day after a rainy night.  I was able to keep seven 5-shot groups on the paper and of those three were quite satisfactory all things considered.  I was using those old macked-up Sears targets which are a little hard to see 50-yds away.  I scored the following group sizes:

2.0"     2.3"     2.5"

3.8"

4.5"     4.8"

5.2"

 

The gun seemed to be sighted in a bit high, so I took a deeper bead the second time through and that brought it down.  Next step, of course, clean it up and have a much, much more serious day and see if the groups can be tightened up.

Springfield Model 15 .22 Rifle

Springfield Model 15  .22 caliber Rifle

 

This .22 Caliber rifle belonged to my actual father and was likely his first gun for just plinking and learning about firearms in his day.  It is pretty well-kept and was given to me by my grandmother on my mother's side.  How she came to possess it I do not know, but it is likely that he had it on the farm around the time of his divorce from my mother and it just got left there.  My other grandmother gave me his dad's .22 so I have them both.

I set up some 50-yd small bore targets and shot up a box of Federal LR that was in the armory.  I didn't make a project yet of doing any sight adjustments.  I am a believer that until you demonstrate that a gun is shooting acceptable groups there is no point in making fine adjustments as long as you are hitting the paper.

I only missed the paper once so I have nine groups I can score.  From tightest to widest they were as follows:

2.0     2.3     2.5

3.5     3.6     3.7     3.8     3.9

5.7

 

all in inches + tenths of an inch.

 

Looking at actual scores from the targets, the following:

38     36     32     31     30

23     22

19     10

 

We will see how the Model 15 compares to my other .22 cal rifles before deciding which one to really work up first.  This is just a shakedown run.  Lots of fun, though, on a beautiful day.

Ruger Model 10 .22 Cal Rifle

After shooting skeet for the first time and having quite a good time of it, the fun was not yet over. We proceeded to the indoor range and checked in to test fire some of my friend's armament, since I had arrived by airplane and didn't have any of my own.  We shot a beautifully kept, like-new Ruger auto-loader which he had felt was shooting a bit left.  After a couple of groups each, he took a punch and ball peen hammer and tapped the sight over a bit.  We saw some improvement, shot a couple more groups and tapped it over some more.  We were using a rest, but not a sandbag and we either had a padded barstool or a folding chair to sit on. The chair was a bit too low and the barstool a bit high, so when we got to the point of it shooting a group at the midline of the target, we felt the job was done for the day.  He has a nice new sight put on which is really quite more useful in daylight.  There are three dots to line up, two on the rear sight on either side of the notch, and one on the tip of the barrel.  I would love to spend a session with this gun outdoors with a sandbag and see just how accurate we could make it shoot.  Maybe in the summer.