My very first centerfire rifle was a 788 in 308 with factory installed Bushnell Banner 3-9 on it. It shot like a dream, but I had to have a Ruger 77 30-06 because that was what every kid wanted in the 1970's, or a 270, and so I traded it in as soon as I had the cash. Ed at Gun & Bow in Parkland said he would give me what I paid for it in trade in, any time in the future, because he just wanted me to stop looking and waiting and to leave with a CF rifle I could afford. That turned out for me to be a good deal, because my M77 30-06 was just as accurate. But then it was stolen a year later anyway.
Fast forward to last year: I was in a local shop picking up our third Davey Cricket (my buddy buys each of the kids one when they are born) thanks to I-594 or whatever that mess was. Anyway, I was reckless eyeballing a CZ 527 American for four and a half bucks (like new) and I was kinda' kicking it around.
I am always looking for a beater 788 LA though because I share a bolt between two rifles and figure that a beater gun will also give me an action and stock that I can play with or parts to sell off, and a whole beater is cheaper than just a bolt off eBay, when I saw a 788 magazine sticking out of the bottom of a stock of a rifle on the used rack.
Let me tell ya' I have a soft spot in my heart for a 788 in 223, I passed on one brand new for $199 at Big 5 (it was a factory overstamp of a 222 barrel, 1:14 twist) when I bought my 788 in 22-250 in the late 1980's... and then I picked one up at a pawn shop (a true 223, not an overstamp) and before I ever got to shoot it it disappeared out of my mother's basement along with a Redhawk 44 mag with a Burris 2x on it. Taught me a lesson in leaving guns lying around. The tag on it said $350, but I countered with $275 out the door since someone has carved their initials in the stock.
The guy didn't say a word, but pulled out the 4473 and that was, as they say - a done deal.
It's been sitting in the corner of the basement for nine months and the only thing I did with it was change out the 3-9 Bushnell Banner it was born with, for a 4-14 Bushnell Trophy that I have had for 25 years and has been on a dozen different rifles at one time or another. It is my "old tried and true" when other optics are in the shop and I need something reliable. Has never failed me.
I finally got some ammo put together last week, and with 28 grains of H335 and 50 gr Z-max it shoots just north of half inch five shots at a hundred yards.
I have a SA "hunchback" 788 stock off a 222 in the "bag of tricks" (my pile of parts) that was broken at the wrist and has been glued and pinned. I am going to cut it off way up into the montecarlo and put a one-inch Decelerator on it and then refinish it in blue w/black webbing so that the kids can get behind it and blaze away at chucks with it.
I have been kicking around chopping this other 788 off for the kids:
http://www.burntpowder.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=499&p=4964&hilit=junker#p4964 It has black with black webbing over it, but my seven-year old daughter likes blue and while I thought the flat fore end was going to make it easy to shoot, it is exactly the opposite. This rifle shoots very well, but it is a temperamental rifle to shoot. I need to take a quarter inch off each side of the fore end because it binds in the three inch front bag unless you have everything perfect.
The trigger on this one is actually fair, it is clean, like most 788 triggers are, and breaks clean, and the pull is not too heavy at all. That, my friends is where a 788 trigger usually needs help, lotsa' help. But this one is not worth separating the pull weight spring from the sear spring or putting a Timney in. By God as my witness, those kids are not getting their grubby litle mits one of the Canjars or the 541S trigger I have stashed away in the bag of tricks while I am still alive. They are way too hard to come by to "waste" them on kids. Those are mine and mine alone. I wouldn't even think about putting the 541S trigger on it, that means no safety what so ever.
That 541S trigger is being sandbagged until the day that I finally convert one of my 580s to center-fire. And they are simply not getting it. Those brand new 788 Canjars are mine and mine alone for future projects.
I don't know the history of this rifle, but there is no brass on the bolt face so it has not been shot. The front sight was removed by a previous owner and the hole filled with a plug screw that was so delicately filed down and reblued that to find the pluggged hole you need good light and a "good eye." You have to know that it was there to begin with too.
It copper fouls like a demon though, and even after cleaning it down to bare steel after buying it and then going through a one shot and clean breakin with it for forty rounds it is still picking up copper. I loaded another 40 tonight and am going to get that sorted out this weekend... maybe. God be willing.
Once it stops picking up copper we may see what it is truly capable of. A half-inch, more or less, is nothing to sneeze at when you are cleaning after each round, but me thinks that once I can sit behind it and get five off without cleaning it is going to prove to be a real "bumble bee."
I've got a few weeks to monkey around with it before I get the kid's stock ready, hopefully it will like the bedding in that stock too. Most 788's don't get snotty about being in one stock of another one bit - so long as the foreend is not touching the barrel after the first three inches... or so.
Pretty skookum rifle so far though, one I would like to go "balls to the wall" with, but I think I am going to just set it up for the kids for now. Who knows, maybe one of them will put it in an MPI one day, just because it is so reliably accurate, and hunt around for a Canjar for it (without raiding daddy's bag of tricks), and "max it out" some day like I did with my first 788 in 22-250.
God, I wish I could sit here typing this and think that a Ruger American or another "entry level" rifle, that is on the market today would give me hope that the youngsters today could walk into a gun shop and buy a solid rifle that they would not only fall in love with, but is worthy of their continued loyalty the way my second 788 has, that 22-250 wears its second Lilja barrel, after the factory barrel and a replacement Lilja had gone south, and has been sitting in an MPI stock that cost almost three times what the original rifle cost me and has a Canjar trigger that cost me almost as much as the original gun did, and it still makes me fine with every dollar I have spent on that rifle.
FWIW, I ran into a retired gun writer in central Oregon one day, Rick Jameson and recognized him from meeting him at the SHOT Show fifteen years previous and he was as more interested in my old 788, in MPI stock, with a 26 inch Lilja barrel, and a Canjar trigger - he said why not just buy a new Sako 22-250. I could have for, for the money, but this rifle has never let me second guess where the bullet will land. He said: I know. It is what you are comfortable with.
