When the Ruger Hawkeye African first came out there were reports of stocks not holding up to recoil. What has time revealed regarding this ?
Has anyone shot a lot of 375 or 416 in the Hawkeye African and has anyone had stock issues ? If so please explain.

I have a .375 Ruger African model that I've shot quite a bit. It is a superb rifle! Sub MOA accuracy is common and very repeatable. I just returned from Africa where I took six plains game with it in heavy brush. It hammers game with a 270 TSX at 2660 FPS MV. It is now my favorite rifle!

quote:

Originally posted by clayman216:
When the Ruger Hawkeye African first came out there were reports of stocks not holding up to recoil. What has time revealed regarding this ?
Has anyone shot a lot of 375 or 416 in the Hawkeye African and has anyone had stock issues ? If so please explain.

I have had a few issues at the tang area with 375 and 416 just make sure there is clearance with receiver and wood in that area. Definitely bed the action of the rifle and you should have no issues.

A few issues were found in Aus as dirk described,
tang and the wood. A few split stocks.

I bought Alaskans, both in .375 Ruger and in .416, the former in blued and the latter stainless. Both have 20" barrels instead of the African 23" one. I don't think I paid $800, including shipping, for either. When you could find them on GunBroker, those rifles were the best deals on a DG rifles available.

Since purchase, I traded with someone on A.R. for a factory wood stock for the .375 (off of an African), had it professionally bedded all the way to the fore end (since I'd heard about the tang cracking on A.R.) and put a better recoil pad thereupon after trimming the l.o.p. to 13" for my daughter. It made a fantastic little rifle for her with a great big punch. Ours, like the one mentioned above, is a m.o.a. rifle with whatever you put in it. Right now, we're shooting 250 grain TTSX's at 2600 fps and the recoil in negligible, even to my 125 lb. daughter. Here's Emmy and a bear she killed with it.



As for the .416, I just had the trigger smoothed up some and went and killed an elephant with it.

Emmy and I have put lots of ammo through the wood stocked .375 Ruger. Not a problem at all and the zero remains after 18 months and in all kinds of weather.

Why Ruger quit making the African rifle as before, I don't know. That "thing" with the muzzle brake is butt ugly, IMHO. They just could have charged a few bucks more and bedded the rifles a bit and not had broken stock issues, it seems.

But, gladly, I'm not a bean counter.

Congrats to Emmy on the nice bear...

Judge
Thank you for telling us about Emmy's experience. Excellent job Sir!