I got down to the range today and with the nice weather a lot of shooters were there. Two of them had new .223rem. H&R handi rifles, one a couple weeks old the other a couple days. Neither of them seemed happy with their targets. onw of them shooting around 2" the other around 4". After listening to them talk about how crappy the H&R single shots were and that none of them shot worth a darn I decided to uncase the rifles I had brought. One of them happened to be a H&R in the old Shikari - 45/70. I had made some targets from hard cardboard tubes used to wrap industrial film on, that were about 5" long and are 3 7/8" wide. At 100 yards I stood off hand and dumped 3 of them quickly with 4 shots using iron sights. I'll admit I was having a good day. Then a friend of mine used it to smash clay pigeons at closer range, still off hand. So, I guess I have the only good shooting H&R in the country according to those guys

Ignorance is bliss, isn't it!! If they were new, they just need a good break in, nothing unusual about that. How many rounds do you have thru your oldie, which btw has much better ballard type rifling in it compared to the new ones, specially for cast bullet shooting. That said, I have 4 late model 45-70s, 2 Handis and 2 BCs, one rechambered to 45-120 now, they all shoot moa or better, can't really complain about em. My .223 Ultra shoots moa or better with win whitebox cheap ammo, but it's got 200-300 rounds thru it. I have 16 frames and 28 barrels now, wouldn't consider getting rid of any of em, in fact still want a couple more, namely .444 Marlin, 7x57!!

It took my Handi .223 about 200+ rounds to be happy. at first I had great groups, but alot of "fliers" then one day at the range it was like magic it just decided to shoot moa. Go figure. I had about had it to.