Controlled round feed real life benefits

I have both...use the CRF more because I'm more a milsurp guy...truth be told, that means I likely had a head injury.
It took a long time to warm to 98's but I am a believer now. The fact they are well thought of in dangerous game circles is kinda cool too.
The most dangerous thing around here would be a cougar I am guessing...insert older woman jokes at your peril. It's likely to offend someone out there.
In his later years Dad had a 788 get piled up with a FTE...he had a CRF and a PF in the same caliber. The CRF continued to hunt afterward IIRC. Totally acknowledging that it was Dad neck sizing brass that caused it though.
Was it SirP that posted about cycling all rounds? I am on board with this as a necessity as well.
 
Despite reading a couple decades worth of Guns & Ammo cover-to-cover...and therefore drinking the CRF KoolAid by the gallon...I did almost all of my shooting in my early years with pushfeeds, without too many problems. When I finally started playing with CRF, it was with beat-up old surplus Mausers, and in one case with a Parker Hale sporter carefully selected from out of a barrel at the local hardware store. I had a lot more issues with those CRF icons than I had experienced with the pushfeed guns...and it was shocking to me! Had the gunwriters steered me wrong? Surely that was unpossible...

So, yes, if I were to select a rifle today to take on some far-flung once-in-a-lifetime hunt, it might be a CRF bolt gun, but it would just as likely be pushfeed...and, depending upon the hunt, it would more likely be a single-shot or other "novelty" action. Whatever the choice, it would be a rifle that I had spent considerable time shooting the crap out of, and had made sure that it worked every time, with no hidden personality defects that would arise to bite me on the arse at just the wrong moment.

Let's be honest: most of the "problems" that the CRF action solves are created by ourselves, not by the rifles. A weakened spring, a failed extractor...sure, these are exceptions, and can happen to any action on any rifle. But a rifle that "tries to feed two rounds at once"...is just a tool that we tried to use incorrectly. In almost every instance, when a rifle "fails"...I tend to think of it as a failure on my part; either a failure to practice enough to not make silly mistakes, or a failure to test the individual rifle thoroughly enough to have discovered the potential weakness ahead of time.

Those tiny little pushfeed extractors and ejectors aren't plotting a way to sabotage your hunt; they're just operating as their design intended them to operate, and we are not doing our part. It's like shooting a single-shot rifle, and then complaining that it's slower to reload than a repeater. Of course it's slower! Learn to use it to its fullest potential, learn its limitations...and yours...and use it correctly.

Edited to add: tokguy hits the nail on the head with the comment on pre-testing the cycling of each individual round. So simple...so obvious...so logical...and yet so rarely done...
 
jjohnwm said:
Despite reading a couple decades worth of Guns & Ammo cover-to-cover...and therefore drinking the CRF KoolAid by the gallon...I did almost all of my shooting in my early years with pushfeeds, without too many problems. When I finally started playing with CRF, it was with beat-up old surplus Mausers, and in one case with a Parker Hale sporter carefully selected from out of a barrel at the local hardware store. I had a lot more issues with those CRF icons than I had experienced with the pushfeed guns...and it was shocking to me! Had the gunwriters steered me wrong? Surely that was unpossible...

So, yes, if I were to select a rifle today to take on some far-flung once-in-a-lifetime hunt, it might be a CRF bolt gun, but it would just as likely be pushfeed...and, depending upon the hunt, it would more likely be a single-shot or other "novelty" action. Whatever the choice, it would be a rifle that I had spent considerable time shooting the crap out of, and had made sure that it worked every time, with no hidden personality defects that would arise to bite me on the arse at just the wrong moment.

Let's be honest: most of the "problems" that the CRF action solves are created by ourselves, not by the rifles. A weakened spring, a failed extractor...sure, these are exceptions, and can happen to any action on any rifle. But a rifle that "tries to feed two rounds at once"...is just a tool that we tried to use incorrectly. In almost every instance, when a rifle "fails"...I tend to think of it as a failure on my part; either a failure to practice enough to not make silly mistakes, or a failure to test the individual rifle thoroughly enough to have discovered the potential weakness ahead of time.

Those tiny little pushfeed extractors and ejectors aren't plotting a way to sabotage your hunt; they're just operating as their design intended them to operate, and we are not doing our part. It's like shooting a single-shot rifle, and then complaining that it's slower to reload than a repeater. Of course it's slower! Learn to use it to its fullest potential, learn its limitations...and yours...and use it correctly.
Click to expand...



This appears to aimed at me and I agree with the statement for the most part but without being there your only speculating.
 
Actually, aimed at myself...but at all my fellow shooters as well, I suppose. Well-designed and -made tools tend to operate properly if we let them, and too often we blame problems on the tools rather than where it belongs, i.e. on the operator.

I see the earlier comment that you are referencing; are you saying that the double-feed was not operator error?
 
One factor that I think seems to provide fuel for the perennial CRF vs PF argument is that the CRF rifles being more complex to machine have always been available only in higher quality rifles such as Ruger M77, Win M70 etc also the Mauser M98 surplus that furnished so many budget builds back in the day was almost always also a well machined action. The pushfeed action being simpler to manufacture has of course models ranging from highest quality down to lowest budget guns.

I think a lot of this argument would dissipate if there was decades and decades of low priced and barely functional CRF actions, say M70/M98 clones on the market made by the likes of Norinco or Turkey etc. this would even the manufacturing playing field. If everybody and their cousin at the range had a matching pair of Norinco M70 rifles in 300 and 375 H and H or a $299 Canadian Tire Turkish M98 clone in 7x57 or 6.5x55, a lot of the cachet of the "classics" would be gone and so would many of these arguments on the internet (much to our loss I might add!).
77
 
^ Good observation, and probably very true.

Personally, I can't even imagine a Norc in .375H&H; the Chinese gun seems much better suited to the .375Gatehouse round...:)
 
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