WCoyote Outdoors Project Ruger American

WCoyote Project: Ruger American

From time to time WCoyote Outdoors initiates a project involving acquiring, setting up, testing, evaluating and use of various outdoor products. Why? It provides useful information and normally it is darn fun. Our end result may not be highly scientific and it is possible that someone else may look at the product in question differently but there will be no engineers, lawyers, accountants, marketing geniuses or other corporate types that may or may not ever have actually used the particular product in a real outdoors environment. Only WCoyote Outdoors folks that have spent a lifetime as outdoorsman.

Project: We have chosen the Ruger American bolt action rifle for our current project.

Ruger undertook development of the American with the idea that a 100% American-made rifle could be developed that possessed the usual Ruger innovations, ruggedness, reliability and sell at a price point the does not break the bank of the average Joe. Offered in 243 Win, 270 Win, 30-06 Sprg and 308 Win giving prospective buyers a nice variety of good old American favorites.

The Hunt is On

First task is to decide where to obtain a rifle our goal is never to look for the absolute lowest price on the face of the earth. Decades of buying and watching people buy stuff has proven that usually by the time you drive many miles, spend much time, haggle, then haggle some more, irritate any number of salespeople finally arriving at your goal of paying less for a particular product than anyone in the universe, all costs considered you probably didn’t! Then there is the “deal that is too good to be true” almost always a “deal that is too good to be true”-ain’t.

Like most gun enthusiast we have the usual FFL holding individuals (many times pseudo gunsmiths) that will sell us a gun 10% over their cost plus shipping. Strangely
enough these prices usually end up within a few bucks of the sale price from the big boys (Cabelas, Bass Pro etc) please don’t misunderstand sometimes there are sound reasons not to buy from big stores. The FFL guy does gunsmith work for you, you really like the guy, you really don’t like your local big box store (occasionally getting salespeople that may not be able to spell firearm let alone advise you on them could contribute to this) and last but not least the FFL guys is your wife’s brother. If he is your ex wife's brother it could have another effect.

After checking around some we ended up buying the Ruger American from Sportsman’s Warehouse for $359.99. One of the first things we had to decide was the caliber and we choose 308 Win. I could tell you that there was a lot of really high powered reasoning behind this decision but I cannot. We basically decided on the 308 Win because there
are no 308s in the arsenal here at WCoyote Outdoors and we just wanted to. 

Opening the Box

As you might be able to guess the Ruger American does not come in a high quality, good looking hard sided case with a beautiful Ruger emblem embossed on the side – not at this price. It does come in a colorful corrugated box, actually a pretty light weight
material at that, since we are going to shoot with the box in is unimportant. The gun is assembled except for the bolt. In the box the gun, the bolt, Safety Padlock , a small get started type manual and warranty cards complete with  boat load questions that usually don’t get answered.

Features

Stock-Ergonomics are good obviously light weight; design appears to be well thought out to make handling fast and easy. Appearance is very good, much better that a number of guns on the market and 2-3 times the price.

Bedding-What Ruger calls Power Bedding™ providing a bedding block system positively locating the receiver and free-floats the barrel. Uses aluminum.

Recoil Pad-Looks good, soft rubber we’ll know more on this later.

Ruger Marksman Adjustable™ Trigger-Allows trigger pull weight adjustment from 3 to 5 pounds. Another place that when we get this baby to the firing range we will be able to form an opinion plus the jury is still out on the procedure for adjusting the pull weight as well.

Barrel- Hammer forged blackened metal. Looks good, rifling looks good and just appears to be well made. Time will tell.

Bolt-Three-Lug 70 degree bolt should provide plenty of clearance. Utilizes full diameter body and dual locking cams. We will check the shoulder cycling down the road.

Safety-Tang safety. I like it. Easy to find, mechanically solid: Looks good.

Magazine-Plastic, Plastic. 4 round rotary magazine fits flush. I cannot tell a lie this plastic magazine concerns me. But since Ruger knows considerably more about building rifles than I do I am going to give this thing the benefit of the doubt until it proves otherwise.

Weight-6.12 pounds

Here is a nice deal. The American comes with a drilled and tapped receiver plus a set of
Weaver style scope mounts installed. Also sling swivel studs are installed.
There is also an offer from Ruger for a free check pad, we ordered this up and it was very easy to do, it was here in a week and is very nice, it will be a handy addition to this rifle.

This concludes our first phase of the WCoyote Outdoors Project-Ruger American. Next time we will decide on a scope and start the process of installing the scope and move towards sighting it in. Thanks for visiting WCoyote Outdoors.