Ruger Hawkeye CRF or not?

Polinese

New member
I came across a couple threads on another site with folk talking about how the Ruger 77's are at best CRF only some of the time. I found this disheartening as I was planning on buying a Ruger and primarily because of what I thought was a CRF action. Can anyone shed some light on this issue? Does it actually work as a CRF or is it a 98 style push feed that sometimes happens to do a controlled round feed?
 
The original 77's made from 1968-1991 had a claw extractor, but button ejector and the cartridge rim was not grasped by the extractor until it was in the chamber. Those were not true CRF.

The very 1st few months of the MK-II's had the true CRF ejector, but the extractor still did not grab the rim until after the round was chambed. This was corrected within a few months. It is possible to see a very few Mk-II's that are not true CRF, but all other MK-II and Hawkeye's made since 1991 are true CRF.

The confusion is that at times Ruger, as well as almost all modern CRF rifles do not always have the extractor grab the rim while it is still in the magazine. At times the cartridge jumps up out of the magazine and there is a very slight delay before the extractor grabs the rim. This happens just as often with any CRF rifle except some of the WW-2 era military rifles. This does not exclude the design from being called CRF.
 
Polinese said:
So is that something you could see even on say a Winchester Model 70?

It depends on the Model 70. In the '70s and '80s, Winchester made a rifle that they called the Model 70 that was a push-feed action, similar to the Rem700 or Savage 110. There was nothing particularly wrong with those rifles, but the purists didn't like them because they omitted the claw extractor. There was one point in the mid '90s where you could get Model 70s in both push feed and CRF actions. I had a buddy who wanted a 30-06 Featherweight and he obsessed at length over the choice. One local dealer had both varieties and I remember my buddy considering the choice for several weeks. He finally went with the claw extractor.

Nowadays, Model 70s are made by FN and as far as I know, they all have the claw extractor. I'm also told that they are very fine rifles.
 
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