30 December 2022, 16:04
Bill/Oregon.450 Bushmaster upper by Bear Creek Arsenal
Well, it finally was range day for the new BCA upper, and it ran flawlessly for its initial 20 rounds. I shot five rounds of 41 grains of 296 under the Hornady 225-grain FTX at 50 yards to zero the Vortex Strike Eagle 1-6X scope. Then I moved out to 100 yards and shot another five-round group with the 41-grain 296 load, making a scope adjustment. Next, I fired a five-shot group of the same Hornady 225 over 42.0 grains of 296, and then another of 43.0 grains. This hardly constitutes a ladder, which I will do next time, but the 42-grain load gave me a wonderful group of about 3/8 center to center, with a called pulled shot an inch to the left. Dang, if I had known this thing would be this accurate, I would have taken more time -- and will next range session, and will bring the chronograph. Pretty jazzed with this 18-inch upper, 1:24 twist, and my first right-hand charger. I had an Atheris upper in .458 SOCOM a couple of years ago that seemed to punch me significantly harder than the Bushmaster, but that was with the 300-grain Barnes TTSX SOCOM. With the lighter bullets, the .450 is a very pleasant round to shoot.There were a lot of nay-sayers in the AR community when Bear Creek first started challenging price points several years back with their no-frills products and I was extremely skeptical about them. But there were a few regular shooters at my old NM shooting range whose skills and experience I respected, and when they started showing up with one Bear Creek upper, then another based on very good range performance, I changed my mind. When Bear Creek had this upper on sale on Black Friday for $239, I decided to try one and am glad I did.
My lower consists of Colfax Tactical receiver, MagPul furniture and LaRue Tactical MBT2S trigger fitted by dpcd when he built me a Grendel. The LaRue trigger is no Geissele, but it's a good one for $90.
