Use Your 5.56 mm Ammo and AR Mags…In Mossberg’s Crossover Bolt Gun, a Hot Bolt Action Rifle

The first of Mossberg’s expanding lineup of MVPs (Mossberg Varmint Predator series) started appearing at the ranges early in 2012, with the Varmint 24-inch fluted HBAR wowing gun writers, prairie dog hunters and bench shooters with its style, grace and accuracy.

The MVP Predator is equipped with a “medium fluted bull barrel”, which can create somewhat vague connotations. To put some teeth into this title, I measured my Predator’s relatively thick mat black oxide coated carbon steel barrel at three critical points along its 18.5 inch length. She’s .75 inches at the muzzle, which features a recessed button rifling; .844 inches at the midpoint; and a full 1.00 inches thick where the barrel screws into the receiver. A six-pack of 6.5 inch long recessed flutes wrap around the barrel forward of the laminated sporter stock’s foregrip, to lessen muzzle weight and to increase surface area to promote faster cooling. The barrel is also totally free-floated in the laser-routed stock and pillar bedded via a pair of beefy hex bolts into the meat of the steel receiver. Translated, if you use a sling to steady your aimed shots, a bipod, or simply rest it on a sandbag before sending your rounds downrange, barrel harmonics and accuracy will be consistently the same throughout.

The heart of the MVP’s appeal rests in the user-adjustable Lightning Bolt Action (LBA) trigger that’s common to all family members. This unique consumer feature allows each operator to custom-tailor the trigger squeeze to his/her precise liking, something that is just not offered on many competitively priced bolt action rifles. To dial it in, merely loosen the barreled action from the laminated stock via the front and rear action screws and turn the trigger pull adjusting screw as needed…the pull can be set anywhere from two to seven pounds.

I set my trigger for 2.5 pounds, which worked best for my hand and shooting style. That’s pretty light…but the Mossberg engineers have insured that the light trigger will not be a potential hazard when you go afield (where the possibility exists that an owner might accidentally drop a loaded weapon). Their solution is a safety bar (similar to those Glock handguns) that protrudes from a groove in the center of the LBA’s trigger, and must be fully depressed to disengage the sear. Only then will the firing pin drop on a chambered cartridge.

The MVP’s safety is a simple on/off lever design located starboard (right) and aft (rear) of the bolt handle. Its operation is simplicity itself, with the lever to the rear indicating “safe” and the lever forward exposing a large visible red dot that indicates “fire.” You can only make the weapon “safe” if the striker is cocked and the LBA trigger will indicated a visible center safety bar when the weapon is cocked and potentially loaded.

Modern Loads for a Classic Cartridge

Handloading the .270 Winchester

Being nothing more than a .30-06 Springfield necked down to a 0.277”, the .270 is easy to load.

Story & Photos by James E. House

 I was not around when the .270 Winchester was introduced in 1925, but I became aware of it at an early age.

A well-to-do resident of the small town where I grew up had taken a serious hunting trip to Alaska and some of his trophies were displayed in a local store. That bear was huge but I think I was more impressed with his rifle and the cartridge it fired which were also on display. The rifle was a Winchester Model 70 and the cartridge was a .270 Winchester.

The .270 is still a very popular caliber. The reason is simple: it performs. With a 130-grain bullet having good sectional density and ballistic coefficient driven at over 3,000 ft/sec, the .270 is one of the best choices for medium game at rather long range. Even in comparison to some of the current magnums, the .270 gives up little in this regard.

The .270 is even more versatile with the development of newer high performance bullets. The 140- and 150-grain premium bullets such as the Swift A-Frame, Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, and Nosler Partition make the .270 even more suitable for use on game such as elk than was the case when the cartridge was introduced.

SELECTION OF COMPONENTS

My .270 has not seen a lot of use in recent years. Therefore, I wanted to test it using a range of powders and bullets. To keep the project to a manageable size, I selected five bullets, the 90-grain Sierra hollow point, the 100-grain Hornady spitzer, the 110-grain Sierra spitzer, the 130-grain Sierra Spitzer, and the 150-grain Speer spitzer. Propellants employed were IMR 4064 and 4350, Alliant PowerPro 2000MR and Reloder 17, and Winchester 760. Winchester cases were trimmed to 2.530” and Winchester large rifle primers were used in all loads. Powder charges were weighed to the nearest tenth of a grain. Five cartridges were tested with each load, and they were fired at a target at a range of 100 yards to produce a five-shot group. Velocities were measured at 10 feet from the muzzle using a Competition Electronics ProChrono chronograph.

The load with the 90-grain Sierra hollow point and IMR 4064 gave a five shot group of just over an inch, but four of the shots gave a 0.64” cluster. The 100-grain Hornady driven by 55.0 grains of Reloder 17 gave a very nice group that measured only 0.83”, but four of the shots constituted a group of 0.45”. The four groups with hunting weight bullets averaged almost exactly 1.5” and these loads were not optimized in any way. I believe that with some experimenting and tweaking, even with those loads groups in the 1.2”-1.5” inch range would be obtainable.

The .270 Winchester is even more versatile today than it was half a century ago because of the wide range of bullets available now. Handloading is a way to exploit that versatility. My old Winchester 770 has always performed so well that I have never had the urge to get another .270 Winchester rifle.

In Search of a Trophy

This South African Safari Included an Encounter with Poachers and a Search for a World Record Mountain Reedbuck
By Thomas C. Tabor

"Tom, you've got to hunt mountain reedbuck. I know where we possibly could find the next world record," my PH and close friend, Carl Labuschage, kept telling me.

But in all honesty, I hadn't even considered hunting reedbuck of any kind on this trip. Months before I'd arrived in South Africa, I'd prepared a well thought out list of other plains game species that the walls of my trophy room just seemed to be screaming out for.

Surely, if finances weren't a consideration, I would have booked a 30-day safari all-inclusive of everything, including the Big Five. But unfortunately, like a lot of hunters, I don't fit in the category of being a wealthy financier and as such, expenses played a major role in the 10 animals that I'd selected to hunt.

TOP OF THE LIST

On the top of that list, I'd hoped to take a good kudu bull, which would move me a little closer to completing my collection of spiral-horned antelope; I wanted to bring home a warthog, which had somehow eluded me on my earlier safaris; and the eight others on the list were no less desirable, or no less challenging to hunt.

But what was possibly even more of a concern than the fairly small trophy fee for the reedbuck was my time restraints. There just didn't seem to be enough time to include a mountain reedbuck, but Carl persisted, pleading with me that I had to make time even at the cost of missing out on some other species. Knowing full well if I didn't agree I would surely regret it down the road, I finally asked Carl to make the necessary arrangements. First, however, I wanted to see a kudu bull on the ground and in the Zululand area, good quality kudu are not all that easy to come by.