Rifles308

Shooters who have considered purchasing a semiautomatic rifle chambered for .308 (7.62 NATO) likely balk at the question of which rifle they should buy, bypassing completely the question of whether to buy such a gun. Unquestionably, self-loading .308s are coveted by nearly everybody, mainly because they can do so much. They can compete, they can plink, they can hunt, and, of course, they're made for self-defense, should such a situation arise.

Though there are many options if you care to search them out, there are basically three readily available rifle types in .308. They are the FAL, the M1A (M14 clone), and the HK-91. We did a several-years-long study of these three types, going to the...

Tired of the same ol' hamburger in your rifle selections? Want to add something a little different to the gun menu, perhaps something exotically foreign to our jaded tastes? We thought it would be fun to sample a couple of foreign hunting rifles, one of them fairly common, the other seldom seen, and test them against typical U.S. offerings. Accordingly, we acquired a pair of European rifles, one from the Czech Republic and one from Germany, and two common U.S. makes, to find out if the foreign rifles offer desirable features or characteristics we might have overlooked.

[IMGCAP(1)] The problem of reliably driving one bullet into the center of a target at long range has plagued riflemen ever since the first rifled arm was created. In the quest for this holy grail, thousands of shooters have fired millions of groups over the years, and from time to time these groups have achieved incredibility. Still, after generations of riflemen, the problem is still with us.

A group of products, generically called tactical rifles in their use by law enforcement and military sharpshooters, purports to solve this problem. Instead of tactical rifle, we prefer the moniker "precision rifle," for such a firearm is built to put one or two shots—precisely—into a very small targ...

[IMGCAP(1)]When the .308 or .30-06 isn’t enough, most gunnies turn to the .300 Winchester Magnum, and that’s probably a mistake. While the .300 Winchester Mag is a step above the ballistics of the .30-06, it’s not a huge step. There’s not a lot of practical difference between the two, at least not enough to be more than a few minutes’ discussion among knowledgeable riflemen. We’re talking 200 fps difference with 180-grain bullets. This makes very little difference in trajectory, though it would make somewhat of a difference in bullet performance at long range.

Rifle power may be succinctly defined by the velocity at which a cartridge can propel a given weight of bullet, and that’s a simp...

We get lots of questions and requests for information about .308 semiauto rifles, particularly about those we haven't tested. Back in April 1999 we tested the M1A and a similar custom M14S; a version of the FAL in the form of a British L1A1 built on an Entreprise receiver, and another from South America; and both Greek and German versions of the Heckler & Koch HK-91. The winners of that outcome were the two M14/M1A types and the two FAL types. We really liked the custom M14S with its Chinese-made forged receiver fitted with best-quality U.S. components by Fulton Armory, as well as the Entreprise-actioned L1A1/ FAL.

But this category seems to be rich in products, so we gathered three more and took a hard look at them. This time the three .308-caliber semiauto rifles were a U.S-made FAL with 16-inch barrel built by DS Arms, Inc., on its own receiver; an ArmaLite AR-10A4, and a Stoner SR-25 by Knight's Armament.

The three rifles in this test all accepted scopes on their top rails. The FAL came to us with a Leupold 3-9X Tactical scope already mounted and sighted-in. The AR-10A4 and SR-25 came with flat-top actions with the scope-mount rail integral with the rifle, and both had accessory handles with iron sights included. We looked forward to testing these rifles with both scopes and iron sights if time permitted, but decided to begin with iron sights on the AR-10 and SR-25. Here's what we found:

Ruger's Magnum takes the cake as a dangerous-game gun, and we also like Sako's 75 Hunter. Pass on the Winchester Model 70 Safari Express.