Originally Posted by
MistWolf
Back in the 60s, my father bought a Remington 788 in 22-250 with a varmint weight barrel for the princely sum of $78 brand new. He mounted a 3-9x Redfield on it and loaded it with the 55 gr SX bullet. The 55 gr SX was designed to give explosive expansion from a 223 and Dad was driving them out of his 22-250 at 3800 fps. We called his load "The Blue Streak Express" because of the blue-grey smoke that trailed after the bullet in flight. They were Super Explosive, alright. When one hit a jackrabbit amidships, it would blow it apart. There would be nothing but red mist, fur and the legs flying to the four points of the Earth. Dad joked that at those velocities, that little 55 gr pill had "the consistency of peanut-butter". When he first started using the 788 and his special "Blue Streak Express" loads, he saw a jackrabbit sitting behind a thin sage bush, making the most of what little shade it offered. It wasn't much of a bush, Dad could clearly see the jack in his scope. Easy shot. He laid the cross hairs on the Jack's boiler room and squeezed off a shot. There was tremendous cloud of grey dust and out from it stumbled the jack, shaking his head to clear it, ears flopping madly. The jack managed to stagger off without another shot being fired while Dad stared in disbelief and his hunting buddies were laughing to shoot. It seems the bullet struck a thin branch of that thin little sage bush and had completely fragmented, peppering the jack with lead dust.
Years later, I discovered Dad's claim of the bullets leaving the muzzle with the consistency of peanut-butter wasn't far from the truth. The reason those bullets trailed blue-grey smoke behind the was because at those velocities, the bullet was on the verge of coming apart in flight from the centrifugal force. In spite of that, it always shot tight clusters whenever Dad put it on paper at 100 yards trigger was crisp and broke at maybe 3 lbs. One article in one of the gun rags of the day claimed the 788 was a poor design for accuracy. Nine locking lugs was too many to machine so all would lock up evenly. That there would only be two or three that made full contact when the bolt was in battery. The article went on to say that the long body of the bolt ahead of the rear locking lugs would flex, hurting the rifle's accuracy potential. All I can say is that Dad's 788 and all the other 788s he and other family members bought over the years obviously couldn't read. Even with the factory ammo of the day, none of the those 788s shot more than 1.5 MOA at 100 yards. The only real down side was those cheap, sheet metal magazines and how they locked in the mag well.
It wasn't long before the Remington 788 earned a reputation for accuracy. It was so good that it was rumored the reason Remington ceased production is because it clearly out-shot their flagship Model 700. Remington couldn't have their economy model out-shoot their premier line, now could they?
I got the 788 from Dad when I myself was a young father. For some reason, I didn't shoot it much after awhile. Probably because I was busy spending time and money chasing some other rainbow with a beautiful walnut stock instead of plain birch. I still have that 788. I should dig it out, clean it up, get it another scope and see how it shoots. The 788 really is a wonderful rifle.
Well done, Pappabear.
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