Anyone know much about Howa rifles. Looking to get my son a rifle in a 22-250 caliber.

Saw the Howa at Cabela's. Smooth action.

Anyone have one?

Decent guns. Not high performance long distance shooters but solid guns for inside 300 yards. Might need a trigger job... mine had a rough hitch in its giddyup that needed smoothing out.

Dad has one that I just took to the range. It's a model 1500 and chambered in 30-06. I'd never considered them before. Very impressed with the groupings at 100 yards with 150gr core-lokt's. Trigger wasn't bad. I have no idea what's been done to the rifle or if it's stock. I'd shoot to 300 yards with it. Not bad for a gun he took in trade for a little wrench turning!

Great guns. I don't have one but a good buddy does. For the money they're awesome. Very accurate, smooth, and seem to be very well built...also Randy Newberg uses them and I would trust his opinion as he puts in more field days a year than most do in a lifetime.

For those that say "only 300yds", can you explain more about that reasoning?

I would politely disagree. The Howa rifles I've shot are fantastic.

Had a chance to shoot some Bravo's during their release. Very well built LR gun. Howa flies under the radar, mostly due to low market share and minimal marketing. Teaming up with Newberg did them well.

If a man didn't care about resale (from lack of name recognition), building custom guns off the Howa action would result in some great guns. Readily available and the equal to any R700.

PFG please don't misunderstand me. I'm very pleased with the performance of mine. They're good rifles for sure, but I don't put them on the level of Winchester's or others that I'd consider higher grade rifles, and that's not even considering customs or premiums. They're undoubtedly on par with base level Remington 700's though. And I believe Howa actually manufactures Weatherby Vanguards.

Good rifles! I was just managing expectations.

A friend and I both bought heavy barrel .308's in an attempt to customize a precision rifle. It wasn't terribly successful as the barrels just aren't high enough quality to stretch out past 300 yards or so. At least our two examples weren't. That was some time ago though, perhaps their quality has improved.

I'm open to change.

IMO, Howa is the Tikka for the buyer that doesn't want a detach mag system.

Accurate
Reliable
Multiple configs
Affordable*




*bc after Tikka clamped down on MSRP, I wouldn't consider Tikka pricing to be "cheap" anymore. They attempted to set themselves (and pricing) apart from the intro level guns, and did just that.

stdeb11 said:

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Great guns. I don't have one but a good buddy does. For the money they're awesome. Very accurate, smooth, and seem to be very well built...also Randy Newberg uses them and I would trust his opinion as he puts in more field days a year than most do in a lifetime.

For those that say "only 300yds", can you explain more about that reasoning?

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Sometimes rifling isn't cut with enough precision to fully stabilize projectiles for flight much further than 300yds. Inside 300yds there's some degree of slop that's permissable in rifling cutting as you're not terribly reliant on smooth flight. Ballistic slipstream interruption isn't a huge issue. Beyond that it becomes an issue. I found the grouping was not accurate enough for ethical hunting at 400 (to my standards, YMMV) and even more erratic beyond.

For information sake I had a 22" heavy barrel Howa 1500 in .308 Win, Hogue stock, Nikon Monarch 5x-20xX44 and found consistent ~.75 MOA inside 300yds with Hornady TAP 155gr AMAX's. .75" @ 100, 1.55-1.6" @ 200 and ~2.38" @ 300. At 400 yards it moved to a 6" group or 1.5MOA and at 500 it was more like 11" or worse than ~2MOA. It just started to get worse exponentially. Never went past 500 with it but my buddy experienced the same results and he stretched it to 700. Don't recall his group measurements but it wasn't good enough to hunt with.

It was a tack drivin' SOB inside 300 though.

Quote:

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Sometimes rifling isn't cut with enough precision to fully stabilize projectiles for flight much further than 300yds. Inside 300yds there's some degree of slop that's permissable in rifling cutting as you're not terribly reliant on smooth flight. Ballistic slipstream interruption isn't a huge issue.

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nothing against you personally, and I am far from an expert, but this kinda sounds like bs to me, and is counter to pretty much everything I've read and heard regarding bullet stabilization at distance. Curious to hear others' thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for clarifying and explaining... I wasn't there, but my buddy has shot his out to 300 and said it was great. Not sure if he's shot any further....and yeah, at 200yds it's a tack driver.

NRD09 said:

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Quote:

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Sometimes rifling isn't cut with enough precision to fully stabilize projectiles for flight much further than 300yds. Inside 300yds there's some degree of slop that's permissable in rifling cutting as you're not terribly reliant on smooth flight. Ballistic slipstream interruption isn't a huge issue.

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nothing against you personally, and I am far from an expert, but this kinda sounds like bs to me, and is counter to pretty much everything I've read and heard regarding bullet stabilization at distance. Curious to hear others' thoughts on the matter.

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I'll be honest, I got out of the precision rifle game 8 years ago when I sold that rifle. I'm not up on all the lingo and data anymore. I might be misremembering something. But the data on my rifle and my grouping is accurate. I recall reading about the issue with their rifling that I described above. Let me see if I can find it again. I'm curious if I'm remembering correctly now...

Curious to see what you dig up. To better describe my thoughts on the matter, I have heard and read plenty about bullets "going to sleep" at 2-300 yds as the bullet's aerodynamics take over any wobble that might have been introduced by a rifle or cartridge that wasn't perfectly concentric (as well as plenty of people saying that increased accuracy at distance is due to poor parallax adjustment at shorter ranges). So in my mind, the bullet doesn't care what happened 300 yards ago, as the stuff that happened initially is smoothed out now, and all that matters is how fast it's going and how fast it's rotating, and the bullet's inherent physics. So it seems strange to hear the opposite. But like I said, I'm far from an expert

No that is correct to my memory. You're correct, however without proper spin rate to weight/length ratio it can still destabilize. Under or over stabilization is a thing.

I have a 1500 30-06 in a B&C stock that's SubMOA with factory ammo. The factory Hogue stock touched and caused cold bore flyers, new stock more than took care of that.

ETA- also Howa now guarantees all rifles to be SubMOA out of the box. The one they offer in the KRG stock should be a shooter.

Howa is pretty regularly mentioned in the same space as Bergara and Tikka. With Tikka being a bit more expensive. But seems like the three really boil down to preference and all are very affordable ways to touch out to 1000 so long as your caliber/load work up is capable.

EagleFordEarl said:

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I have a 1500 30-06 in a B&C stock that's SubMOA with factory ammo. The factory Hogue stock touched and caused cold bore flyers, new stock more than took care of that.

ETA- also Howa now guarantees all rifles to be SubMOA out of the box. The one they offer in the KRG stock should be a shooter.

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Same exact gun, first deer rifle.

Changed the trigger to Timney 2lb and it's lights out. Trigger job consisted of removing one screw (might have been a nut) and replacing assembly with new and tightening screw (nut).

First deer rifle I bought for myself, as well. The trigger in mine is somewhere around 4lbs, and it's just light enough that it hasn't compelled me to swap it, yet...

Howa is the same as weatherby vanguard. Howa was making the vanguard then started making their own. Good guns for the money.

I have a Howa in 22-250, and love it. I changed out the trigger on it as well, but have had no problems shooting it up to 400 yards pretty consistently. I use it for pretty much all the hunting I do. My wife actually shot 2 does with it yesterday. You can not go wrong with this gun, especially for a kid.

Have the Howa Mini action in a Grendel, love that little guy.

What's the opinion on their scope combos?

"Give 'em the ol' Howa Handshake." - Randy Newberg

fightingfarmer09 said:

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What's the opinion on their scope combos?

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The nikko sterling scope is decent enough if you need to get in the field and are just taking 100yd feeder shots. Turrets were pretty mushy but held zero well enough.

I have been looking at Howa and like the reviews I have read. They seem to echo what others on here are saying about the quality.

I was looking at their precision chassis rifles. they have a lot of different options and I'm not even sure what all the differences are between them. but people have taken them out over 900 yd consistently.

https://www.howausa.com/apc-rifle

https://www.howausa.com/hcr-chassis-rifle

The mini action 6.5 is a sweet shooter.
Recently got for my 10yo, we shot once at 25, adjusted sights. Once at 50 and adjusted again.
This is the first 4 shot group by a 10 yo boy.

It still needs adjustment for perfect zero at 150, but this is a sub moa gun with out a doubt..