Range Time
I’ll say upfront I’m a bit embarrassed. Our test gun, rather than being a loaner from the manufacturer, is personally owned by our own ace photographer Rob Jones. As a major acolyte at the altar of accuracy, he is wildly frothy about the B-14R and graciously sent the gun to His Worshipfulness The Editor for a test run.
The reason I feel bad is because of the conditions. Due to deadlines, range schedules and Midwest springtime weather, I didn’t have the best circumstances to wring out the gun. In fact, if you’re slinging tiny, slowpoke — 40 grains at 1,200 fps — bullets in a 23-mph wildly gusting quarter-value wind, it’s not really being fair to the gun or ammo. But, as they say, “It is what it is,” and you push through because you have no choice. Deadlines wait for no one, even editors.
At 25 yards, I found the gun boring, as in “10-shots-into-one-hole” boring. Even with the wind ripping the baseball cap from my head and pushing a half-full box of ammo off the table, a full magazine routinely created a single large rent in the paper despite the gun being just a touch too long in length-of-pull. The stock includes spacers but since Rob was gracious enough to share his prize, I didn’t want to monkey too much with the set-up.
The problems started when I moved back to 50.1 yards as determined by my faithful Halo XLR 1600 laser rangefinder. My range is an open field surrounded by berms, so the wind was funneled right to where my portable shooting table was sitting. Normally stable enough for long-distance riflery, today’s wind had the scope reticle bouncing around like a bowling ball in a washing machine. This was compounded by the target stand which, in spite of 30 lbs. of steel resting against the legs, insisted on moving back-and-forth during the heaviest gusts. Trying to outwait the wind proved only marginally successful as I often rushed the shot whenever the wind slacked, resulting in a slapped trigger and an eight-ring shot.
After an hour of trying, I gave up and moved under the cover of the range shed porch where I commandeered a composite picnic table. Out of the wind, the heavy table provided a steady rest for my sandbags and rifle. The Halo XLR indicated the distance to target was 59.1 yards and I was 20º off perpendicular.
However, this caused another problem — the wind call. Now, protected against the gale, I couldn’t tell what the wind was doing. This meant I’d get a nice stable shooting position and perfect trigger pull but suddenly the round would go 2″ or 3″ off the mark because I couldn’t tell the wind was ripping downrange. My best five-shot group using Federal Target ammo measured 0.916” — truthfully, not too shabby for 60 yards in these conditions with a rimfire using non-match ammo but I still feel it’s not representative of the Bergara.
The .22 LR guns are notoriously finicky about ammo but the 14R didn’t seem to mind much. Other than the groups opening up a bit, it was generally happy with everything fed from a bouillabaisse of different manufacturers, velocity and bullet weight. A few twists of the .1 MRAD scope turrets and I would have been dialed in for any particular round.
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