Ruger made a run of their Model 77 rifle in 22 Hornet a few years ago. Anyone have any experience with these little rifles ? How did the rotary detachable magazine work ? how did they shoot ? Any comments from owners would be appreciated

I have 4 of them. Two shoot great, one is OK, and the other is my personal challenge project. The best shooter of the bunch is the 77/22VBH that CPC worked over and turned into a 22 KH. It's a 1/2 MOA gun on a calm day. The 17HH magazines work perfectly with the 22 KH. If I were to purchase another 77/22 it would be a 17HH in sporter configuration.

I had one of the early ones. Neat little rifle, but after trying every accurizing trick known to man, it never shot very well. Good luck.

Actually, they're not Model 77's, but Model 77/22H. The action is a rear-locking rimfire action rather than a front locking centerfire action. The earlier ones were generally disappointing. However, I have a friend who bought a later one (now about 10 years old) in the stainless heavy barrel version and it shot fine as it came from the factory.

I have one which has a custom barrel, custom trigger, and K-chamber. It is a genuine shooter, but that says little about the factory jobs. The rotary magazine works fine but holds one less in the wider-shouldered K-Hornet.

quote:

Originally posted by craigster:
I had one of the early ones. Neat little rifle, but after trying every accurizing trick known to man, it never shot very well. Good luck.

I had the same experience. Accuracy was poor on a good day, even after pouring lots of money into various accurizing schemes.

df06: Did you shim the bolt to remove play between the forward and aft pieces of the bolt? Did you do any work on the trigger? Free float the barrel? My Ruger 77/22H was very disappointing accuracy wise but after doing these things I was able to reduce group size to 1/2" - 3/4". No matter what I do it still will not shoot less than 2" groups with PPU factory ammo.

while not finicky on function when dirt, these are dust and grim TRAPS .. a friend guided in south texas carried one of these, and used it well... he'd had it a couple years, riding around in an open jeep the entire time, and he had had a failure to fire TWICE.. asked me to look at it ... i did ... sighed, took it out of the stock and after dinner, we drove a couple miles to the local car wash -- after degreasing and cleanout, we went back to the ranch, i tore it down, cleaned out the mudslide in the bolt, went through a packet of qtips, and oiled it up with CLP ...

fun story, if no point, really

I have a new Lilja stainless barrel 1-14 twist that was chambered to 22-250 imp. Chamber so sloppy, cases wouldn't extract from the swelling. The reason it was given to me. Enough meat to cut it off and fit to a small receiver.
Now back to the 77/22 hornet. I have the barrel and a reamer, and one day a poor shooting Ruger will come my way and I will put it all together!

Had one last year that was opened up to K-Hornet. Had the bolt shim installed for tighter bolt lockup. Neat rifle. Only issue was the rotary magazines. Had to modify them for the fatter K-Hornet round. Can use 17 Hornet mags with no modification.

I bought one of the stainless varmint ones and it wouldn't shoot well. I tried a few different things and then called ruger. They said to send it in. I got it back with a different barrel on it and now it will stack them up at 100 yards. The magazine only works with stubby bullets.

I have an “all weather” in a factory laminated stock. All stainless with some kind of coating Ruger called “target gray.” The factory trigger sucked, replaced it with a Rifle Basix. It shoots Hornady factory loads to about 1 moa. The rifle is maybe 6-8 years old.

Thanks to all for their comments. I think I will spend a couple dollars more and get a CZ built on a mini mauser action.

Probably a good decision.

Ruger's big problem with the early 22 Hornets (other center fire rifles too) was their poor barrel quality. They've seem to have that straightened out now.

quote:

Originally posted by bobmn:
df06: Did you shim the bolt to remove play between the forward and aft pieces of the bolt? Did you do any work on the trigger? Free float the barrel? My Ruger 77/22H was very disappointing accuracy wise but after doing these things I was able to reduce group size to 1/2" - 3/4". No matter what I do it still will not shoot less than 2" groups with PPU factory ammo.

I shimmed the bolt, had it glass bedded, and free floated the barrel. I don’t recall if I had any trigger work done.
The alterations made a slight improvement, but it was still an inaccurate rifle.

df06 thanks for the report. You must have had one of those $6.00 Wilson contract barrels

I've been involved with 2 of them, since the early 90's, one is mine and a buddy owns the other. Both are the 20" Sporter version.

They both had a Timney spring/sear kit installed, which helped, a lot.

Another thing that improved accuracy was Lilgun powder and small pistol primers.

Using a Lee Collet Die, helped a bit more.

So, now, both rifles shoot MOA, with mine shooting 3/4MOA.

No bedding or bolt-shimming on either.

Prior to the above, the rifles were solid 2-MOA shooters.

Where there's smoke there's fire..They are a neat little mess!! a threaded barrel connection to the action would be a good start, and yes I meant start! Lots to be done according to some of the best gun builders I know...

Any I saw had threaded barrels.

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
while not finicky on function when dirt, these are dust and grim TRAPS .. a friend guided in south texas carried one of these, and used it well... he'd had it a couple years, riding around in an open jeep the entire time, and he had had a failure to fire TWICE.. asked me to look at it ... i did ... sighed, took it out of the stock and after dinner, we drove a couple miles to the local car wash -- after degreasing and cleanout, we went back to the ranch, i tore it down, cleaned out the mudslide in the bolt, went through a packet of qtips, and oiled it up with CLP ...

fun story, if no point, really

Their is a reason I will not borrow a firearm to my IN. farmer in-laws.

Back 40, your correct I was trying to post and talk on the phone on a similar subject, my bad..The problem was in the beginning it the lugs varied up to 5000th and the two piece bolt did not go together flush and the barrels were screw in crooked...Some years back there was a seething article in The Varmint hunter magazine as to why the early guns anyway would not shoot..

Read that article. I think it was by Jack Belk.
I remember he went to single point the threads square to the reciever, but they were dead straight. Barrel and out of square bolt parts, as you said.

quote:

Jack Belk

I did two 77-(K)-Hornets with new barrels in about 1988. By that time, I'd had twenty years experience re-barreling rifles and 'blue-printing' actions to be sure the new barrel made a difference. Straight, Solid and Square equals Accuracy is the first step and the Ruger was put together like a pile of un-square blocks. The bolt race-way was pointing a different direction than the barrel threads, neither side of the bolt was square with either the bolt body, the barrel threads or the bolt face. The top locking lug was .005 off the recess as it came out of the box. When I called Ruger to mention a few basic mistakes, I was told "Everybody knows a Hornet isn't accurate anyhow." I wrote an article for Varmint Hunter about it and it was published in issue 22, April, '97.

I finished those two and got them to shoot minute of ground squirrel and traded them as a pair to a friend in Texas for his boys.

The 77-Hornet magazines don't like K-Hornets but can be convinced to feed them with some tedious work. Quite frankley, I was doing the K-Hornet Kimber Model 84 for Ross at the same time and it outclassed the Ruger SO bad it was hard to get enthused over something so wrong right out of the box. I've had several sent me over the years to examine and every one was the same pile of zig zag components that take more work than they're worth.

In the Hornet, I would opt for the Sako L-461 in rifle or manlicher, A Ruger no. 1, and then their was the brno in HOrnet and Bee..great options..dainty and cute describes them, accurate they are as a rule..

I found a like new CZ. Lovely little rifle