This Mossberg Patriot I recently got is surprising me. Bought one box on inexpensive Federal ammo and first three group out of the box were 1 1/8", 1" and 7/8". Had a hard time with the weather and a couple brain fart's but once it got a bit warmer, the wind and rain quit, it's doing great with handloads. 70gr SMK's are shooting 1/2" and under. If some one told me a factory rifle out of the box would do that, I wouldn't have believed it. Haven't done one thing to the rifle other than work up handloads with the 70gr SMK's. I'm in shock. Makes me want another just to see if it would work again! Might add, I've had a bunch of different rifle's brand new and most I was about to get down to just under a inch and that was fine with me. With a lot of tinkering all have become very accurate. The only factory rifle's I haven't had to re-bed Was this Mossberg and my mod 70 in 6.5x55. To get the most from all the other's it required bedding.
I paid $299 brand new with a plastic stock and soon as I got home called Mossberg and ordered the wood stock. Those first group's with Fed factory ammo were fired with the plastic stock on it. All the SMK loads came from the wood stock. Might add that I found no bedding problem's with the plastic stock so I suspect it would shoot like the wooden stock also. When I got the wood stock it was a drop in, didn't do anything but bolt it in. Right now if I was going to get another new rifle it would be another Patriot, no doubt in my mind. It also has the best out of the box trigger I have ever found. 2 3/4# right out of the box. It's adjustable but I'm not messing with it. Some time making it better is the thing you shouldn't do. My next best was my mod 70. 5# out of the box and broke like glass, it now breaks at three pounds. That one I adjusted down to 3#. I have three mod 700's and new they were all very heavy but fairly crisp. I've reduce every one to 3# and they are very very nice. But, I had to re-adjust them. They all needed bedding. My 700ADL in 243 in a plastic stock taking a lot of work. I had to slam the barrel on the back of the couch just to get the action out of the stock! Worst bedding I've ever seen in any rifle. I love the 700's and it appear's that the mod 70 is special too, but none came to me out of the box as well as the Mossberg Patriot did.