Saw this post and had to reply.
I started out buying a savage 12bvss in .243 for a varmint gun with last year being my first year hunting coyotes. I have no argument for the savage nuts on the board, the gun shot great out of the box, .7 inch 3 shots at a hundred yards. It will shoot right at .6-.75 all day long with any 58 grain v-max I put in it, loading with imr 3031. My father bought the cheaper model 12fv in .243 and get the same accuracy with a ramshot powder and the same bullet. When I bought this gun I had one thing in mind, accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. I had dreams of plugging coyotes at 4-5 hundred yards, and the deadliest snyper in northern nevada desert that I live in. This was my first gun I ever put together myself, and at 23 my inexperience would show later. Unfortunately the gun is a pig and with my bipods and 6-24 sightron it currently weighs 14 pounds. That's alot especially since about halfway through the winter I started packing a shotgun with me to every stand I do.
So, a few months back I started looking for the lightest coyote gun I could find, but this time it needed to be a semi-auto for the times when I got lucky enough to see more than one coyote coming in. The light weight and semi-auto were a must, with accuracy dropping out of the top tier. If the gun could shoot under an inch I would be very pleased, but if it wavered between 1-2 inches at a hundred yards than it should always be my fault for a missed coyote(almost all my coyotes are called withing a hundred yards, and the last five I killed were with the shotgun at under 50 yards).
possible guns to fit these guidelines were:
heckler and koch 630, price $1200-$1500-
a .223 that is said to have excellent accuracy, reliability, and is a small barreled gun which should be lightweight. it is used in the predator quest videos and is also recommended by crit'r calls major boddicker on his crit'r call website(he actually shoots the .308 model instead, hk 770)
any ar15, price $800(for lighweight no frills gun)
the possibilies are endless here, and at rock river arms they still guarrentee that their carbines will shoot under an inch with their lightest and shortest barrel.
ruger's ranch rifle in .223, price 650-
I've never seen a gund that had so many mixed reviews on the web. Many say they get sub inch groups, and the other half say they could never get better than 2-3 inch groups with it. This may be from people buying terrible bulk ammo, or just plugging the barrel up with several hundred rounds and not cleaning them. semi-auto's get shot a bit differently at the range than most bolt rifle's. I found the uncertainty of the reviews to be too much of a risk for my 700 dollar investment. the shortness of the stock also made the gun feel like a toy, similar to the 10/22.
browning bar shortrack in .243, price 750-
also reccomended on the crit'r call website. I chose this gun because after looking on the internet it was hard to find any one that could say anything bad about this gun. i found alot of people that said it shot as good if not better than any bolt they had(i thought this was a bit of a stretch too).
The h and k 630 was too expensive and nice for a coyote gun, and I wanted a traditional type stock so the ar15 got dropped as well. I've heard too many bad stories about remington semi's so they were never really considered. The .243 is also a big reason I went with the browning, it bucks the wind better than the .223, has a small enough recoil to not be a concern, and I can load the 58 grain hornady v-max up to 4000 fps with great accuracy.
The bar weighs in at 6 lbs. 10 ounces naked and felt great at sportmans warehouse. When I got the gun, after sighting it in it shot it's first group right at .5 inches with three shots out to a hundred yards. Beat my super accurate savage with the loads I made for my savage right out of the box. I can say nothing bad about the bar except that if you load the 58 gr. v-max to slow, 3500 fps or less it has trouble cycling. I think this will be cured after the internals rub themselves smooth with time, but with a faster or heavier bullet it cycles just fine. I painted it the second day I had it, along with a sightron sII 4-16 w/mildot and can't wait for this years pups to mature and the season to begin.
p.s. as far as the 10/22 discussion goes, you could do it and will lose some dogs for sure, but it would work the majority of the time if the dogs are close. I lost a dog after I shot off it's hind leg with my savage at under a hundred yards this year. A few months later my father killed a three legged dog in the same area.
here is my first coyote gun:
savage model 12bvss in .243
sightron sII 6-24 with target dot in stainless
harris bipod with swivel lock HB25C-S
and the replacement:
browning bar shorttrack in .243
sightron sII 4-16 w/mildot in black
painted with a tan ultra flat paint
hope this helps and good luck
