Here a month or three ago I was "bragging" about gettin a new .223 in Remington SPS. Well I've had for a couple months now and it's taken me that long to get it in shape, what with working gobs of overtime and all. (I'm at 28% for the year) I had to remove quite a bit of plastic in the forend to get the desired floating job, but some work with a carbide burr in the old drill, the work went rather quickly.
The cheezy plastic stock leaves a bit to be desired, but after glass bedding the action it's turned into quite a shooter. This group is at 200 yards. If the guy doing the shooting could have held the darn thing still I think the group would have been better
I have yet to chronograoh this particular load but 27.9 grains of Benchmark and a 40 grain Vmax out of the 788 with a 24" barrel is running about 3800 fps if memory serves correctly, so with the 26" barrell the SPS should be pretty close to that.
The scope is a 6-24X50 BSA Contender that used to be on my 788. I wanted to use the Weaver Quad rings but unfortunatly they were to low for the 50mm objective lens so I settled for the old reliable, plain jane Weaver rings. For the money it's a pretty good piece of glass. It's no Leopould by any means but it seems to be doing a great job. Pretty clear up to about 22X, but after that it starts to get a bit darker.
I've had it out shooting ground squirrels a couple of times and it will take some getting used to. It's not like the old 788 where I just "point and shoot" but it's coming along. On Sunday it will get the real test, shooting prarie dogs.
I'll be looking to put a laminated stock on it of a yet to be determined manufacturer and use the old stock to tamp dirt in post holes. The trigger was pretty good right out of the box, but a bit of tweaking made it pretty crisp with no over travel or creep. I may go with a different firning pin/spring set-up to speed up the lock time.
If you are thinking of a new varmint rifle I'd recommend one of these. (except for Brithunter of course
) I'll have to see how it performs next to a Sako on Sunday. So far it shot neck and neck with a CZ Varminter in .223.
RJ
Remington 700 SPS Varminter
Threaded Mode
