Re: James River Armory 03A4?
Got a chance to go out early this morning and shoot the 1903a4 by JRA. As I mentioned above, the quality of the workmanship is superb! I couldn't have asked for a nicer rifle, IMO. In with the weapon, JRA includes a flyer about needing to tighten down the rear trigger guard screw after each shooting session. In fact, they go on to claim ZERO warranty liability if the stock cracks due to firing the weapon with the screw loose. My screw, sadly, could stand to be about 1/4" longer, as only TWO threads even bite into the threading on the rear tang of the receiver. I'll address this with JRA later this morning. Now, here are a couple of pics from when I first got to the range showing the rifle with the Weaver K4 scope on it.
After sighting it in at 25 yards, I moved back to 100 yards. Windage was pretty much right on from the beginning, which I was glad, since I'd spent a fair bit of time at home last night doing a simplified "boresighting" down in my basement getting the rifle set up. I planned on using a 300 yards zero, which BulletFlight for my iPhone said should put the rounds 4.25" high at 100 yards. I had Prvi Partizan 150gr FMJ, and some Sellier & Bellot 168gr HPBTM rounds. The bulk of the rounds I plan on using are the Prvi ones. After getting it sighted in for what I wanted at 100 yards, I put up a new target and shot 4 rounds of Prvi for group. The Weaver K4 is only a 4-power scope, and for me being used to scopes with MUCH more magnification, this took some getting used to. The group is shown below:
The trigger pull came set right about 5.5lbs. It is very smooth, but it is much heavier than I've been used to on other rifles in the past. I was pretty pleased with the results, given the extremely cheap ammo, that many reviews just said it's "very reliable". It works great for me, IMO. The left flyer could've been the wind gusting up to 10MPH, as there was a pretty steady 5-7MPH wind from a straight 3 o'clock position. I adjusted down about 1", as I could see that I was still about 1" high at 100 yards from where I wanted to be. I then shot some 168gr's to see how they might group. These are the results for the 4 shots:
Once again, it was probably me and this time my breathing, but 3 were good, and 1 was low. That, and again, I'm MUCH more used to a higher power scope than a 4x one, but I wanted to keep it somewhat 'old style'. The S&B rounds grouped fairly well, especially so if I discount the one pulled low!
All in all, this is a fun rifle to shoot, and I'm glad I have it in my collection. I'm going to look into some trigger options, and see what I can do to lighted the pull. I'm also going to address the very short screw for the guard with JRA. That being said, I love the gun! On youtube, MAC TV does a review of the Gibbs rifle, and he makes a comment about "stout recoil", and the rifle being "silly accurate". He shot a much better group than I, and he wasn't kidding about the accuracy. However, he very much understated the recoil. That steel buttplate, combined with a 150gr bullet coming out at 2910 fps smarts! My shoulder definitely felt it by the end of the morning. LOL! Well, that's the end of my initial experience. JRA has been great to work with so far, and the quality of their product is just plain amazing, IMO. Later! Jason
