Nice write up. These 6.5 and 6 Grendels are awesome shooters. I have had cz 527, 3 howa’s, Ruger American ranch...all shoot factory eldm tight and consistent. I have one howa left and even with a green dot or fixed 2.5x or currently fixed 4x it’s nothing to pound out 3 shot groups at 300 in 2” range holding top of gong. It can do better than that with a good scope and bench technique but it’s the most redeeming quality that I like and the second one I like is it’s light.
Those are the only two redeeming qualities I can thumbs up.
My list of what I don’t like about the rifle is as long as my arm and wouldn’t buy another.
I did buy a Sako 90 peak in 308 to run 168 eldm which is the 100% scale of the 6.5 Grendel 123’s (3/4 scale with 55% less recoil) in my quest to satisfy my rifle desires and goal achieved. It is perfect.
I hoped to get much closer with a howa project but you couldn’t throw enough money at it, it can’t ever get even close. A budget rifle that shoots good is all you can get, any attempts to change just turn it into a money pit. That like Chinese food will leave you perpetually hungry.
Stock. Mattel
Bottom plastic and double size magazine. Mattel
Trigger, 2-stage, breaks clean and not hard to get light enough but over travel long and mushy. Mattel
Safety...stamped tin. Mattel
The barrel and action itself are good but wrong material...no stainless. What a miss in the biggest gun market in the world where stainless Tikka’s fly off the shelf as a staple. Legacy sports could not actually get any dumber.
Stocky’s carbon stock...also Mattel. Flimsy bendy crap finish loud hollow cheap af. No nice feel where hands go. Better off with the double oversized heavy hogue overmold tank of a stock that doesn’t fit such a svelte little piece of wrong material metal lol.
Even if they bring on stainless here you’ve been warned. Swap trigger, swap stock to Pendleton, Jefferson outdoors hinged bottom metal or cz magazine bottom metal kit(I have both and are awesome) and then for about $2k you might have something to where it should have come for about $1200. There will be no value when it comes to getting one of these even mostly correct.
Better to just get a tikka or sink money into a kimber if needed, or bump up into a Sako. You may not get the Grendel cartridges though. So suffer if you wish. I like my Ruger American ranch way more and the value is more than there, needs nothing!
So if things like I mentioned get on your mind and will never leave...you’re welcome, that’s howa in a nutshell imo. Or should I say legacy sports.
Kids will kick crap out of my howa and I won’t even react if they drop it down side of a mountain lol. They like it and shoot it well but I personally hate the thing other than how it shoots and my wallet hates it even more. Spent too much to do anything about it now lol. Just love to hate it.
The sako peak 90 is actually perfection. I cannot find a fault anywhere with it. Worth the money imo. Nothing got on my mind and sticking there. There’s a dollar value for that, glad I finally found it. Tikka is good value but much I dislike still but they do a ton more right than wrong. One length action bothers me for short action cartridges, poly single stack low round count mag that smashes poly tips under recoil bothers me (just shoot fusion, smashes em less), get 5 round mag and you have a shark fin hanging down uber the gun where hand likes to be, plastic bottom metal bothers me, the faafo one has to do for proper cheeking alignment also bothers me, also quite a few short action cartridges in lite should come with 20” barrel, that’s mostly it though. By time I got my tikka 308 to mirror my Sako in many ways I prolly spent half the sako money and much more time to get it done. And it will still never be good enough to Sako.
Rants and praises over for the day.
