What is the worst rifle you have ever owned?

The worst gun I ever owned was a Model 110 Savage 30-06. Kicked like a brown mule! Viscious, sold it, but took years to get over the flinch. POS Brian

Worst firearm was an SKS made in China that I picked up at a Texas gunshow. Was so poorly made, that upon closer examination I decided it was unsafe to fire. Took it back to the dealer and traded for a Browning BPS shotgun that is still a favorite after 18 years and never an issue with it.

Current worst firearm is a Hi-Point carbine in 9mm. It's louder than you would think because of the gas leak in the loose chamber and the fact it is a blowback design. It took some work to get it to shoot a 1.5" group at 50 yards. Bore looked like 10 miles of rough Montana gravel road, so I expended some time on it with JB bore paste. It kicks far harder than you would think being only 9mm, but my CZ 527 rifles in .223 Rem and .204 Ruger are far more pleasant to shoot in spite of the fact they pack at least 3X the muzzle energy. My Colt AR-15 is more pleasant to shoot as well, and besides being much more accurate, costs very little more to shoot.

I must have been on medication when I bought this last POS. The Hi-Point carbine is currently for sale for $200 with 2 mags, and it's one saving grace is that it feeds very reliably with hot 9mm defense ammo. Would make a good home defense firearm where close range work demands reliability over accuracy. An absolute sick pup in a hunting scenario except maybe for small deer in very thick brush at close range. For that it would work. Also for bobcat hunting in thick cover down south where you want very short range for safety reasons. A southern whitetail poacher wanting a throwdown carbine would probably love it, except they would like a .22 WMR semi-auto even better, or maybe a MAK 90. Does not fit Montana rural conditions. It also "looks mean" which will scare criminals ignorant of firearms away without firing a shot. I'm sticking with my CZ 75 for a 9mm self defense firearm, as it also never fails to feed and fire and is much more compact.

Worst gun ever was a Remington Titanuim in .270 win. The best I could get from it was 4" groups at 100yds. I ended up trading it for a Sako M99 in .338 Lapua, I love that gun, I put a $65 (including installation) Pachmeyer decellerator pad on and it tamed the recoil quite substantially and it is a tack driver. The other guy and his gunsmith buddy tinkered with that .270 incessantly and could not get less than 1 1/2" groups no matter how much time or money they spent on it. He was still quite happy with the deal though because the .338 was more recoil than he could handle.

The Absolute Worse Rifle I have Ever owned!

Christian Snyder said:

What is the worst rifle you have ever owned? By that I mean a rifle that is full of issues, shoots patterns, etc. OK, I am going to post mine.


The worst rifle I have ever owned was a Marlin 336 CS in .35 Rem. It was a nice rifle and it had a williams peep sight. So me & my dad took it to the range and it consistently shot 5-7 inch groups at 50 yards with Remington 200 grain core-lokts. My dad looked it over and couldn't really find anything wrong with it exept that 2 screws on the cartridge tube were way to tight (which can affect accurace with lever guns). So he fixed that problem and it still shot 5-7 inch groups at 50 yards. So we sold it to a guy. We told the guy what was wrong with it but he still gave us 325 $.


So, what rifle was the worst you ever owned?

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This is an easy question! I had a 500/465 H&H Dominion grade that was a really piece of crap! This rifle was cased in it's original leather cased and was very nice to look at. The bores were excellent as was the outward appearance of the rifle. No matter what I tried, it would never group better than 6 to 7 inches between right and left barrels! I tried everything imaginable in reloading the rounds and it would NEVER group better than I mentioned above! When I say, 6 to 7 inches, I was shooting at a range of 50 yards! This "beauty" also had the habit of discharging both barrels at the same time, if you fired the right barrel first! What fun!! I sent to gun off to two different people to have these problems corrected, spent good money and it never performed! I eventually sold it and vowed never to own another Holland as long as I lived! I have a 470 Rigby that will shoot right and left barrels touching at 50 yards and a 476 Westley Richards that will shoot just as well. No more Holland's for me! I think they are terribly over rated and over priced!

A Savage 110LH in .264 Mag.
Was a Christmas present from my parents, and was a POS.
Inside of the barrel was so rough it was hard to run a patch through.
It had two tight spots in the barrel which caused pressures so high it routinely stuck cases in the chamber.
Had "pressed" checkering on a cheap Walnut looking soft wood stock.
Never wanted to look at a Savage again.

Ruger hawk eye in 300 RCM, first shot had to beat the bolt open, they had put the wrong extractor on it. Send it way, got it back shooters 5 inch groups, changed scoped a bit better. Had it bedded still 4" groups at 100 yards with the original scope. Will change scope and try again, if that doesn't work new barrel and stock. I think the last 3 Rugers I bought are it.

A Mossberg 12 gauge I had as a teenager. It was a bolt action shotgun and had a two round detachable magazine that blew right out the bottom after most shots ... absolutely horrible. I gave it away finally and still felt guilty for passing it along!

Ruger Alaskan Hawkeye in 416 Ruger. Would not feed correctly, trigger felt like it hand a cup of sand tipped in to it. The open sight did not shoot even close to where advertised (even with hornady ammo), could not single load for fear of breaking extractor claw. Very rough finish on metal work. But I guess this should be expected for cheap mass produced rifle, although I think ruger have slipped in their quality since the MK I.

Worst firearm I ever had was a "Turkish" mauser (M93 or M95....I was never able to exactly determine which) in 8x57. The barrel was horribly pitted from years of corrosive ammo, the front sight was welded on and the weld had broke, so you could turn the front sight 90 degrees, and the gun shot patterns.......if you were lucky. You were lucky if you could hit a newspaper sized target at 50 yards. I took the gun apart, and got about 3 pounds of sand out of the stock. I believe the gun was originally chambered for the 7.65 Belgian round, and rechambered for the 8 mm Mauser....and the rechamber job was poorly done; the factory ammo that I would shoot in it would have a large ring around the neck.
I kept that rifle with the idea of using the action for a custom sporter, but it never happened....I ended up selling it off for parts.

Remington 7400 in 30'06 got it in 1981. it was AWFUL.
I kept it squeaky clean but rusted up often and it would not eject.
Basically worse than a single shot because it took a ramrod to push the spent cartridge out.

My Dad never cleaned his 742 and it always shot like a dream.

CZ American 22 hornet. This gun was pretty accurate but would not feed properly with several factory type rounds. It jammed every time I cycled the bolt after the first shot. This happened on day one! You would think they would have some sort of quality control and testing before CZ would even ship it. Sent it back. Once bitten...twice shy

My worst ever was a Ruger 77/22 Target stainless/laminate in 22 Hornet.

No matter what I fed it, it would shoot 3 - 4 inch groups at 100 yards.

I bedded the action into the stock with devcon aluminum and it immediately became one of the better rifles I've ever had. A one inch group is now about the worst I expect from it. Not uncommon to shoot sub-3/4 inch.

Bought it in 1997 or thereabouts, and I still have it!

Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in .30-06. Shot six to seven inch groups. Had it re-bedded. Worked on hand loads. Never improved below six to seven inches.

Also I used to handload to have the bullet touch the lands of the rifling. This rifle ended up one time with the bullet pulling out and powder spilling throughout the action. Was a pain to clean and get the action functioning again. A good Mauser 98 would work without the same effort. Now I don't load hunting loads with the bullet touching the lands but also not interested in Winchesters. Mauser controlled feed is still the best.

Worst gun I ever owned was a Savage, Model 110; 30-06. Kicked like a brown mule, it would bruise your shoulder! Got rid of that sucker, never bought another Savage gun, and it has been 40 years!

My worst was a Browning BLR in .243. At the range, you could shoot about 2-3 times and the thing would lock up. You couldn't work the action for anything - and I'm a pretty strong guy. After about an hour, it would work again. The gun was clean and worked fine dry firing. I tried shooting once, walked down to check my target, shooting again, walking down, etc. It still jammed up after 2-3 rounds. Finally sold it to a guy who bought it for what I had in it even though I told him what was wrong with it. (He sold it to another guy) At least I got a decent scope out of the deal.

Over my lifetime I have had several bad ones.
However, the worst of the worst to date for me is my brand new CZ 550 Magnum from their so called "Custom Shop", caliber .500 Jeffery.

I wrote a flurry of posts describing the laundry list of problems with it in a thread entitled:
CZ in .500 Jeffery doesn't feed
or words to that affect.
So, I will not re-bore anyone with it here (pardon the pun).

However in synopsis, it neither fed live Kynoch factory ammunition, nor would it chamber them without great force on the bolt handle, all the while with one person holding the rifle and running the bolt while another person would simultaneously manipulate each cartridge from the magazine, as the bolt was being operated.

Disgusted,
Velo Dog.

My worst rifle was a Valmet Hunter, which was basically a 'sporting style AK47' in .308 Winchester. I bought it for hunting sambar deer in the Victorian high country and thought that the semi-auto feature would be great for sambar where shots often have to be taken on fast moving animals, at close to medium ranges and in thick bush. However, the blueing on this gun was rubbish and on the first day out, and it was raining as it often does in sambar country, I could almost watch the rifle rust as I hunted. By the end of the day it was covered in light rust, and it took me hours to clean it all up and get the rust out of all of the parts, including the gas system.

I quickly sold that gun and replaced it with the nicest sporting semi-auto rifle ever made - a Heckler and Koch model 770. I wish that I still had that H&K but the Australian government decided that it's citizens couldn't be trusted with semi-autos and they 'stole' it from me and destroyed it - damn Neanderthals! The only consolation is that they would have destroyed that damn Valmet, too - unless the new owner has it buried somewhere!

Hands down the worst POS rifle I have ever owned was a RUGER mini-14 Ranch Rifle. Sent back to RUGER 4 times. Never got the accuracy issues (18"MOA) worked out. As far as I know it is still lying at the bottom of one of my fishing ponds.

A rem mod 7400 I got used but it wouldn't shoot on paper twice at 150 yds. Struggled with that gun for years. Best thing that happened was when it got stolen. Took the insurance money and bought a real gun.

I've had two that tied for the worst title. First was a Winchester 94. When you closed the lever action the next shell in the tube would go into the action and after firing you could not open it up until you took the action apart. This happened about once in every box of shells. Had it worked on and parts replaced twice, no help. A Winchester buff now owns it and it hangs on the wall in his office as it should. The second was a Ruger mini 14 in .223 we tried three different scopes, a Weaver 3x9, a Redfield 4x12 and a Bushnell 3x9 and two different type of scope mounts and several different kinds of ammo and never could get it to shoot better that 4 inch group at 50 yds. Sold it to a James Bond fan as the last three of the serial number were 007.