RickMD said:
Agreed. I've owned over one hundred bolt action rifles during my lifetime and the only two factory guns that shot .5 MOA were Remington 40X's. I spend a lot of time at the local club with some highly accomplished riflemen and never saw anyone constantly shoot .5" groups with any factory, sporting weight rifle. The greatest group shrinking device known to man seems to be a computer keyboard.
But, I doubt you'll find any sporting weight custom guns that do that "constantly" either, unless they're in the hands of an extremely accomplished shooter. The trigger puller makes a huge difference when we're talking about 1/2 moa accuracy, and even with a good shooter it is hard to claim that the gun will "constantly" do anything.
There are certainly factory guns that
can shoot 0.5 MOA fairly consistently, but I think there is a lot more variation between guns in this pricing category (in other words, two identical guns of a given make/model may result in one that is barely 1 moa, and a second gun that can drive it to under 0.5 moa).
As I've mentioned in other posts, my Tikka T3 regularly (but NOT constantly) shoots half inch 3 or 5-shot groups at 100 yards when I do what I'm supposed to, and it was an $800 off the shelf gun. According to my log book I've recorded groups of this size at least 12 times since I got this rifle last year (mostly 5 shot groups), and the gun has only had about 225 rounds down the pipe total (a lot of which was either during load development, or while shooting at longer range steel without recording group sizes).
I've also known a number of folks who own Remington 700P models that shoot dimes at 100 yards all day long, and I have a friend with a Remington 700 SPS Tactical AAC that will also shoot half inch groups with much more surprising regularity than I would have expected from that "value priced" tactical gun. I know some strong supporters of Savage rifles, but haven't witnessed their performance firsthand.
There are a lot of factors that go into making an accurate shot, and I don't think the true accuracy potential of many guns ever truly gets realized. For example, the Tikka I mentioned above was shooting just under 1" groups with Gold Medal Match ammunition, which is obviously a very popular factory match load. But, when I started handloading that very same bullet I shrunk the group sizes dramatically, and most recently shot two back-to-back five shot groups at 100 yards that measured 0.305" and 0.334" CTC.
But, while my Tikka has been a great shooter, I doubt the company could guarantee that every rifle of the same model would perform as well as mine has (they do, however, guarantee 3-shots into 1" at 100 yards, which is still a nice statement about their rifles).
No I realy didn't but a savage 110 action with a aftermarket barrel is usualy the easiest and cheapest way to go.Most importantly is to shoot your gun until you can out shoot it.Then work your way up a good trigger, bedded barrel, good rest good scope, good stock, good barrel.I shoot a savage 110 270 win with a factory barrel had the action and barrel bedded with the factory stock and hopefully a nice nikon to replace my old redfield soon and have yet to out shoot the rifle.Only about 1200 invested in the gun so far on hard parts and about 4000 in ammo and handloading equipment.I can get 1 inch groups out to 200 yards consistantly but the rifle is capable of better and have yet to get a new barrel , or bolt.Most of your money will go into working up handloads not normaly in the rifle.
