Black Friday has come and gone and with it came some pretty good deals on firearms of all kinds and with these deals I bring to you a tale of two deer rifles. Both Remington and Mossberg offer entry level bolt action rifles in the $300.00 range. (And yes I know for an extra $50.00 I could of had a Remington 700, I have already kicked myself hard for this, but at the time the store I was at was out of 700's and the NICS server went down for the whole country.) Both of these entry level guns are billed as a "buck in a box" deal, meaning everything you would need in a firearm to walk out in the woods and take a deer is included. (Except ammo)
So here is a side by side comparison of the Mossberg 100 ATR Scoped Combo and the Remington 770 Scoped Combo.
First the Remington
This is the rifle I purchased first the pro's
- Removable 4 round box magazine
- Crisp Trigger (much nicer than the Mossy's weird Acu-trigger)
- Despite being uglier than a leper with a hair lip and a bad tupe, the gun feels good in your hands.
- A very "Sticky" bolt
- A plastic nut is slapped on the back of the bolt....... Remington you cheap bastards.
- Probably the ugliest stock every to be injection molded out of high strength carbon polymer
- Noticeably heavier than the Mossy
- Is an "upgraded" version of the worst entry level produced by an American firearms company
- It's limited to 4 rounds. I know this is a hunting gun, and if you need more than 4 shots of 30-06 to kill Bambi you need more range time, but what if 5 bucks are all eating out of the same deer feeder at once?
Now for the Mossy
This is the rifle my buddy bought
Pro's
- The stainless steel bolt comes standard on all models and is much smoother than the god awful 770
- Doesn't look like something your kid drew in art class when he was 5
- Comes with a fluted barrel with makes the barrel lighter
- The whole gun is lighter and more balanced than the 770
- Comes with a free floating barrel
- No detachable mag
- Weird little acu trigger that has more trigger creep than the 770, which is so bad it is considered a talent among gun builders
- Does not have a down-turned bolt which grinds your fingers along the scope which ruins the smooth action of the bolt
- The grip on the Mossberg's ultra basic Monte Carlo style stock isn't horrible, but it feels a bit shallow compared to the Remington 770's
**EDIT**
Range Report- So me and my buddy took these two $300 30-06's down to the range and punched some holes in a couple of paper Bambi's and we found out some pretty interesting things about our plastic deer rifles. First off, straight out of the box we noticed that the two guns were pretty sturdy as we fired off about 50 rounds a piece and neither of the two guns experienced a failure of any kind. I know what some of you are thinking, "50 rounds a piece? That seems pretty weak, what you didn't want to actually break it in by putting down 100 rounds a piece and give the gun a real work out?" Well you would be wrong and quite a bit of a jackass for thinking that. These guns weren't shooting some hyped-up .22lr round like the .556, we were shooting the daddy of the .50 BMG and my shoulder felt every round. The next morning my right shoulder felt like a 2lb chub of ground beef that had been worked over by an angry mob enforcer with brass knuckles.
Second, when it comes to shooting a lot and having to reload every 4 rounds the Remington 770 has the advantage over the Mossberg 100 ATR. Before we went out to shoot, I went to my local Gander MTN. and picked up a another magazine for the 770 so I could slap one 4 round mag into the rifle and have another 4 rounds waiting to be knocked in, while the 100 ATR has to be loaded from the top which can kind of be tricky. The bullets like to slip around inside the mag well and can be tricky to get right f you loading in a hurry.
Thirdly and most importantly, each rifle shot pretty great groupings. After about 20 rounds we were finally able to walk the Mossy onto the target and maintain 1 moa groupings. At Academy Sports + Outdoors when you buy a rifle with a scope from them, they bore sight the rifle in the store for free to 100 yards. This means theoretically you can take your new rifle to the range point the rifle down range and whatever you have the cross-hairs on, that's where the bullet should be. With the Mossy that was not the case, apparently whoever had sighted in the Mossberg was cross eyed and near sighted because the the cross-hairs were set on the bulls-eye, but I was exploding dirt about 1 foot above the target. But after we walked the scope down and on to the target we knocked out the bulls-eye. The 770 fared about the same, except that the guy who had bore sighted my Remy actually had good eye sight. Straight out of the case the gun was on the target and only required minor tweaking to get inside the bulls-eye. By the end of the day we could each take a silver dollar and cover our four round groups.
No here is the grand finish, the big summary, would I use this gun as a Tactical Sniper rifle during the Zombie Apocalypse and in a word, NO. Great deer rifle, but it has a hell of a kick to it. Growing up my father has always had a Remington 700 BDL that has been into a custom shop and shoots like a wet dream. We called this gun The Mule because it kicked like an old worn out ass. When I was 5 i went to the range with my dad sat on his lap and shot the gun for the first time, and until I was about 13 I was scared of the beast that lived in the back of the gun case. That same trip my dad was sighting in his rifle and had forgotten to tuck the gun tight into his shoulder, or may be he leaned to far forward, but he pulled the trigger and gave himself a nasty scope bite. These two rifle are lighter than my dad's old 700 but they do come with a pretty good butt pad made into the stock, but that doesn't quite compensate for the light polymer stock. If it comes down to it at the end of the world and I have to sit atop my roof plowing through hordes of my neighbors I am going for my .303 Enfield. Larger magazine, better action and if all else fail it will make an excellent club until I attach a KaBar to the end of it to make a truly excellent pike. The downside is that it shoots a caliber that is harder to find than Waldo at the Superbowl. However next hunting trip I go on, the 770 is in the bag and hopefully so will a big buck.
