Forums.NitroExpress.com

I'll bet there are a lot of members who have owned and shot Mk1 Ruger 77 rifles at some time.
What do you think of them?
While I've owned 4 Mk1's, and been happy with all of them, one in particular took a pretty good flogging from me over a couple of years and came through it pretty well considering.
I bought it from a little second hand shop in Stones Corner in Brisbane in the early 80's at a very cheap price.
It was a 22-250, was missing some blue and also had a few little dings in the woodwork but the metalwork was in very good condition and throat looked good but the bore was a little pitted and dark like it had been rusty at some stage in its life.
But after I bedded the action and free floated the barrel it shot very well.

A few years later I was Kangaroo shooting full time in outback Queensland and that Ruger was my roo rifle.
It lived in my shooting vehicle 24 hours a day except if it was being cleaned or a repair or adjustment was being done to it.
I'd shoot as often as possible and the shooting would start just on dark in the evening and usually go through to daylight next morning and sometimes longer.
The Ruger would fire about 50 to 70 rounds each working night.
Conditions were VERY dusty and the fine red dust in that country is extremely abrasive.
Even though the Mk1 is just a push feed action, I never had any dramas with the spring loaded ejector plunger in the bolt face despite the fact that it had to operate with dust all over the action and cartridges night after night.
The rifle was shot enough to wear out 2 barrels and most likely fired about 12 to 14 thousand rounds while I owned it, maybe more.
I did have problems with trigger sears wearing and needing constant stoning to keek the trigger pull crisp but otherwise the Ruger was pretty dependable.
This rifle was a pure workhorse and only recieved the minimum amount of cleaning and maintainence required to keep it working well.
Roo shooting keeps you busy all night and much of the day and there is little time for any playing around.
You get damn sick of reloading cartridges when you're doing more than 50 of the same old cartridge every day.
This rifle was also carried on my dirtbike in a frame which held it beside the right side front fork and this allowed me to hunt roos in the daylight in areas that were too thick to sucessfully use a spotlight.
The Ruger also shot a lot of pigs and foxes and also quite a lot of feral cats and these animals were also worth money if shot and handled/prepared/skun/gutted etc properly.
When the original sporter weight barrel shot out I rebarreled the rifle myself using a genuine Ruger heavy barrel.
There is a rather strange story connected with that original barrel that you may be interested to hear.

To be continued...maybe

Edited by 4seventy (10/02/04 01:30 AM)