I have a 52B Target I bought many years ago that was in extremely poor shape. I decided to rescue it and had my gunsmith bob the barrel back to 22" in the original profile, recess the crown and reblue the barrel when he was done. I then built a sporter style stock of quilt maple to house this front heavy rifle and took it to the range.
With my favorite ammo- Winchester Power Points and CCI Mini Mags, it would shoot .15-.2 groups at 50 yards with boring regularity. These are game bullets, as I just don't have time or inclination these days to participate in competition or target shoots, so I don't invest in the higher priced target fodder. Just a joy to shoot, but a little front heavy for carrying too much. I've posted pics of this rifle in the past on a different forum. If I can find the pics I'll repost them. It is the one on the bottom in both pics.
This weekend, during a lull in our Turkey hunt, we decided to do some informal target shooting. Several very nice, but not necessarily high end .22's were in attendance, including my buddie's Win 52 Reproduction.
Everyone wanted to shoot my 52 after seeing how it was shooting. My buddie's daughter-in-law was especially smitten with the results. Not surprising after watching her overtake us in number of squirrels and wood chucks taken this weekend.
Soon, the target boredom set in and they were setting up targets of opportunity like shotgun shells and empty .22 cases. They were regularly hitting the empty .22 cases off the top of the target stand and shooting the primers out of the empty shot gun shells. I was having as much fun just watching the others enjoy shooting my rifle and laughing about how easy it was to hit little bitty targets with the rifle/ Weaver V16 scope. Weather was perfect, company was enjoyable and relaxing, and everyone got plenty of shooting in for a change. Hope you guys had a great weekend too.
Bob
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