Browning BAR accuracy

Song Dog Assasin

Song Dog Assasin

New member
I recently inhereted a Browning BAR in 30-06 that belonged to my brother. As far as I know he never fired it.

It has an older (late 80's era) Nikon 2-7 scope on it, with Leupold bases. I thought I would get it ready for deer season, so I picked up a box of 150gr. Hornady Superformance, cleaned it up real good, leveled the scope which was terribly canted, and headed to the range. The performance was less than stellar. After burning through the entire box of shells, I had to settle for a pattern that would hit anywhere inside of a 3.5" circle. Is this normal for the BAR? I'm guessing that maybe it prefers heavier bullets?

This gun reminds me very much of my old .243 Browning model 81 BLR, which is the only other Browning rifle I ever owned. They are both beautiful guns that are impressive to behold, but don't actually shoot worth a darn. I never could get that BLR to shoot good, and I tried at least 10 different loads, I finally traded it off. I'm hoping that this isn't going to be a repeat.

What's your experience with the BAR? Good, bad, or indefferent. Any advice? Obviously I'm going to try some other loads before I give up on it.
 
I had one in 300 win mag and I personally didn't like the gun and ended up trading it for a brand new Savage .243. It has been several years and I never shot it much but I don't remember it being anything impressive as far as groups go. You are right though, it was a very nice gun to look at but I never looked back after I sold it.
 
I have had several of them, .30-06, .308, 7mm Mag, .300 win Mag, a friend had a .338 Win mag.

None of them shot very accurately. Certainly good enough for hunting, but not precise by any stretch of the imagination. 2" would be considered good, at 100 yards...or lucky.

I have heard that there are things you can do to them to make them much more accurate, and there have been some articles written regarding just this, where they were designing them for sniper type work.

I was not impressed with mine. They are very beautiful, shoulder very well, and reduce the felt recoil on magnum or large cartridges...but not accurate.
Also, I had trouble getting the reloaded cartridges to feed propertly. Reloads must be matched to gas pressures to cycle appropriately, and sometimes small base dies are required to get them to feed right.

I felt they were gorgeous...but not worth the effort.
Missed a really nice buck once because one of them did not feed all the way and the bolt was open a tad, making it so it would not chamber and fire.

If they could figure out the feeding and cycling, and improve the accuracy, I would probably use one.

Otherwise...too much trouble.

re
 
I have a 1967 BAR in 30-06 and it loves the 150 hornady sst over 4064... sub minute for sure. My brother had a 270 that gave him fits though.
 
I am sure there are some dud BAR rifles around here and there. However you couldn’t prove that with my experiences. I have two BAR's and have shot and loaded for another 3 or 4 BAR's over the years. Never seen one that shot over 1 ½” and most will cut under a 1" with loads it likes, sometimes a lot under an inch. My Lightweight Stalker .243 is one of the most consistently accurate rifles I own. I’ve never personally experienced a malfunction with one of my BAR’s. Maybe that is because I keep them clean and well maintained. The well known writer Craig Boddington relates a story about a hunter he is acquainted with that has extensive world wide experience and only has one big game rifle – a Browning BAR in .30-06. With that rifle this guy has hunted all over North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and collected all manner of exotic game trophies. The interesting thing is this fellow swears he has never cleaned his rifle even one time!
 
I have a 7mm mag BAR that I also inherited. It was made in 1973 and the best group I have ever shot is about 2" using the 40 year old ammo I also inherited. I plan to reload some rounds to see if I can improve the accuracy. I also have some 175 grain bullets I plan to try next week to see if longer bullets might improve the accuracy.
 
I have 6 BAR's and all will shoot around the 1" mark but I must confess that for some to do this I had to shoot several different brands of ammo in different weights. In my older BAR 30-06 I shoot the Federal Game-Shok 125gr and it really likes them. I would try some of the cheaper, flat-based bullets like Remington Core-Lokts, Winchester Power-Points, or Federal Game-Shoks.

I have a 243 BLR and it didn't seem to like any 95-100 grain bullets but I bought some Hornady 58gr supeformance and it groups them very well, just at or under 1" at 100yds.
 
Red Elk said:
I have had several of them, .30-06, .308, 7mm Mag, .300 win Mag, a friend had a .338 Win mag.

None of them shot very accurately. Certainly good enough for hunting, but not precise by any stretch of the imagination. 2" would be considered good, at 100 yards...or lucky.

I have heard that there are things you can do to them to make them much more accurate, and there have been some articles written regarding just this, where they were designing them for sniper type work.

I was not impressed with mine. They are very beautiful, shoulder very well, and reduce the felt recoil on magnum or large cartridges...but not accurate.
Also, I had trouble getting the reloaded cartridges to feed propertly. Reloads must be matched to gas pressures to cycle appropriately, and sometimes small base dies are required to get them to feed right.

I felt they were gorgeous...but not worth the effort.
Missed a really nice buck once because one of them did not feed all the way and the bolt was open a tad, making it so it would not chamber and fire.

If they could figure out the feeding and cycling, and improve the accuracy, I would probably use one.

Otherwise...too much trouble.

re
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Let me tell ya. My dad gave me one and it shot 3” at a hundred and did not cycle well! So I took it out to the farm and cut 2” off the barrel ( I cut behind the front sight) and took the gun down and cleaned with solvent and re oiled with Gun CLP from stable ( you can use synthetic transmission fluid) and the gun shot 1/2” and cycled smooth and pretty. The gun looks awesome and it was a one day project. Now I’m going to restore the gun because I really like it now. I might cut an inch off the stock and put a Browning Pad on it.
 
My experience mirrors that of others. Had a 7mm Mag BAR back in the mid 80s. It was a 2.5-3" (@ 100) gun with a 3x9 Leupold on it. I think it was capable of better groups, but the trigger was terrible. Gunsmith said there wasn't much that could be done to it. Good hunting rifle, took a couple of nice bucks with it. Eventually sold the gun, went back to bolt actions, never looked back.
 
Of all the rifles I own or have owned a BAR has never been on the list. I like their shotguns and bolt action rifles but the semi auto just never interested me much. They are nice to look at though.
 
Picked up a .308 Win. BAR MK 3 DBM to use specifically as a calling rifle to replace my Dtech 243 WSSM. Admittedly, it had a tough act to follow. It proved to be a daunting task to achieve not great but acceptable accuracy w/110 gr. Varmageddons.
It would put 4 out of 5 sub moa, but almost always threw one random flier that opened the group to a bit over MOA, and that was the only bullet I found that would shoot under 1.5-1.75" five shot groups @ 100. The DBM is not a pretty rifle, handy, not all that great in accuracy dept.
1744916620430.jpeg

Sight in tgt top. Shot #1, moved Rt 4 down 4, called #2 high left, shot 3-5
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1744915815588.jpeg

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GC said:
I don't know what all the fuss is about...
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Yeah, I know; guess I need to start shooting 3 shot groups, it seems to do well 4/5 and, so far, it only takes one shot in the field.:ROFLMAO: I do generally let the barrel cool a minute or two between shots, but the light barrel may be sensitive to temperature on a 5 shot string.
Also, in all fairness to the rifle, I finally noticed a phantom crosshair in my scope, which very well may be the problem. Unfortunately, found that it is due to macular degeneration in right eye, so no fix. The flier is always elevation errors.
 
I'm liking the 110 Vmax in 308W with 1680 powder, about 3k fps. This is reticle B (only 2 shots though) @ 50, got to bring it down an inch (Iray tx60).
308 ir04152025.jpg
 
Three shot groups... I bought that rifle at Christmas and there was a wicked cold front that had settled in our area just then. I took the rifle home, ran a patch down the bore, mounted a 3-9x40 scope and snatched a couple boxes of shells from my ammo cabinent. It was late evening by the time I got to the range. I threw my rifle rest on the bench, trotted down to the 100 yard line, stapled up a target, and loaded the magazine with some 100 gr. handloads. I fired three on target, noted the position of the group, made some scope adjustments, and proceeded with the 100 grain bullets until I was dead center with those. BTW, it shoots those 100 gr. Hornady Interlocks nearly as well as the Remington 75 gr. factory loads. I was already pleased by the groups with the 100 gr. handloads and then I fired this group with the 75 gr. factory load. Looking through the spotting scope I kinda figured that must be a fluke so another three shot group went down range. That was danged near a duplicate of the first group. Alrighty then, I didn't move a thing and just went out killing stuff with it. Everything from crows to deer. And never a choke or jam of any kind. I guess I'm just lucky when it comes to BAR rifles. My steel frame .30-06 has the same boring story.
 
I will say, the BAR has never choked with anything it was fed. Perhaps that is due to the very dynamic gas system which launches brass into low orbit. In fact, it is bordering on being over-gassed IMO, maybe contributing to the occasional flier.
 
I am really quite surprised at the number of negative replies regarding BAR accuracy. My 243 is just about a tack driver without even trying. I gunsmithed for about 35 years, had a lot of customer complaints about BAR’s mechanicaly but never about accuracy
 
sourdough44 said:
I have the BAR in 308. I think one has to check a handful of loads. No sense taking just one load and going with it.
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Absolutely. Believe me, I tried GI ammo, both ball and match, many different target loads, proven over the years in a several .308 target rifles (both bolt guns and service rifles), lots of different powder/bullet combinations and only a few would consistently shoot 5 shot groups under 2" @ 100. I do believe tuning the gas system would benefit this particular rifle, but ran out of time to dig into that so settled on the 110 VG load which does the intended job for that rifle.
 
parson said:
I am really quite surprised at the number of negative replies regarding BAR accuracy. My 243 is just about a tack driver without even trying. I gunsmithed for about 35 years, had a lot of customer complaints about BAR’s mechanicaly but never about accuracy
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The problem with accuracy is different people have different views on what an accurate rifle is. I use to hunt with a guy that used a 30-30 Marlin. If he could hit a paper plate at 100yds he considered his rifle accurate enough.
 


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