Accurizing an m77 hawkeye?

In my experience if you don't know how the rifle shoots you don't know where to start. I have a machinist buddy who tears down is rifle, beds it, tunes or replaces the trigger, and recrowns the barrel. He never knows how the rifle shot before he started and if it doesn't shoot likes he thinks it should then he sells the rifle.

My suggestion before you change anything, get a good baseline on how your rifle shoots.
 
Taylor, your buddy sounds a lot like me. Why even waste time shooting it until it is blueprinted? Even if it does shoot good out of the box, it was not supposed to.:D
 
My Hawkeye Predator is nicely accurate. It also has the same two stage trigger as the Target IIs have, some don't care for it, I do. It is certainly good enough that I wouldn't spend money on a replacement.
 
I never had a MkII that shot all that great---wasn't that big of a deal because at the time they were a dime a dozen and Scheel's was always deeply discounting them---traded them off for something better and didn't look at another Ruger until the Hawkeye came out.

Waited till Scheel's started discounting the Hawkeye's and picked up a couple over the years and they were all decent shooters---currently have an All Weather Hawkeye in .30-06---its an inch to inch an a half shooter---not great but not bad either and good enough for my purposes and certainly hell for stout------and not going anywhere.

My precision shooter is a Browning X-Bolt .270--but when the conditions are really bad the Ruger is coming out to play.

With the Ruger American out its near impossible to find anything Hawkeye and you're definitely going to pay full price if you order one in---thinking $800--$900 these days----at that kind of money there are a lot of options out there----they also no longer offer the stainless variant.

Back to the original subject---my Hawkeye is bone stock other than the scope and is a decent shooter using cheap ammo.
 
---they also no longer offer the stainless variant.
Click to expand...

Not exactly correct, the "standard" Hawkeyes are blue, but all of the Hawkeye FTW Hunters are stainless, as are the Hawkeye Predators, the Laminate compacts and the Hawkeye Target IIs.
 
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The tang safety Rugers are the easiest to do a fine trigger job on. Usually it takes about 10 strokes on the sear with a diamond stone.
 
I love the "M77s have bad triggers" theads...

I think the M77 Hawkeye trigger is one of the best out there. It has a very simple design and is easy to get a light, repeatable trigger pull. If you replace the trigger spring and spend about 10-15 minutes polishing the mating surfaces of the trigger and sear, you should be good to go.

I'm no machinist but I've done this several times with good results. I have a stainless 7mm-08 that has a repeatable trigger pull of 2.5 pounds. All it cost me was about $6 for a spring and 30 minutes at the workbench. I greatly prefer this trigger to the bladed type used on many Savages and the Ruger American, and also prefer it to enclosed triggers like with Winchester/Browning MOA.

My dad and I have owned about 10 M77 rifles of different vintages and finishes in calibers ranging from .22-250 to .338WM. They have proven to be sufficiently accurate for all hunting purposes and are at home bouncing around in a truck or slung over a shoulder somewhere in the mountains.

I think that if you want a rifle designed for shooting tiny groups at far-away paper targets, perhaps the Ruger M77 Hawkeyes aren't for you. But if you want a rifle that you can actually drive/carry around, get rained on, get dirty, and still kill game, the M77s (of any vintage) are hard to beat.

SR
 
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