REVIEWS
Rimfire Face-Off
Three economy-grade .22s battle it out on the range.
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The .22 bolt-action rifle is, for most people, a mainstay of any firearm collection. Just for fun, Payton Miller and I decided to test three such rifles head to head. All three were guns we'd been introduced to at press events we'd attended earlier in the year, guns that caught our attention for one reason or another. The only characteristics they share are that they're bolt guns and cost less than $400.
We mounted all three--a CZ 452-2E Silhouette, a Winchester Wildcat and a Henry Acu-Bolt--with identical Simmons 22 Mag 3-9x32 riflescopes, appropriate glass in terms of the price range of the rifles and also scopes that provide parallax adjustment and enough magnification to make possible a reasonable test of the guns' accuracy. The rings came from Simmons as well.
We tested each rifle with five five-shot groups with five different brands/types of ammo: Federal Premium Gold Medal match (40-grain lead roundnose at 1,080 fps nominal muzzle velocity), Winchester Power Point (40-grain hollowpoint at 1,280 fps), CCI Stinger (32-grain hollowpoint at 1,640 fps), Remington Yellow Jacket (33-grain truncated-cone hollowpoint at 1,500 fps) and Remington High Velocity (36-grain hollowpoint at 1,280 fps).
We traded off so that both of us fired each rifle with two or three of the ammo types so the guns wouldn't benefit or suffer unduly if one of us was shooting particularly well or poorly. The guns were cleaned every 50 rounds, and two foulers were fired before shooting a group out of a clean barrel.
As mentioned, the rifles weren't chosen with any particular purpose in mind other than to satisfy our own curiosity about them, but each rifle has attributes that make it appealing for one reason or another. Accuracy results are shown in the accompanying chart; what follows are the basic write-ups of the guns, along with our individual comments.
CZ-452 SILHOUETTE
The CZ-452 American is available in a wide variety of configurations; the one we tested is the Silhouette version, which is relatively new to these shores. The action is manufactured from a steel billet, and the 1:16-twist, 221?2-inch barrel is hammer-forged. It accepts a detachable five- or 10-round magazine. It was designed to meet the requirements as a smallbore silhouette gun and thus has no iron sights; the receiver is grooved to accept scope mounts. It has a two-position safety at the rear of the bolt and weighs just under six pounds with its black synthetic stock. The rifle has a suggested retail of $389.
Scott: In the interests of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I fell in love with the CZ 452 Silhouette when I had the opportunity to shoot it on a press junket to the Czech Republic last year, so I was predisposed to like this one out of the gate. What attracted me most was the stock. The grip is super comfortable--slim with a slight flare at the base--and the comb is the right height for aligning the eye with a riflescope. At first I thought it strange that the stock had a recoil pad, but I did come to appreciate the nonslip surface, especially when shooting consecutive shots offhand without removing the gun from my shoulder.
