Ruger or Howa Bolt Gun?

[WVB4]

[grayfox]

I have both. Matter of fact, I've had both 2 times each. Took me a while to really make up my mind, lol. I settled on howa.
On the forum here you will hear love it/hate it stories for each one, the howa and ruger. I'll tell mine.

Both of them come with tupperware stocks, so in either case you will need to upgrade that. But both models have 2-3 options or more to choose from, so that's a wash between the 2.

The ruger mag issue, from my experience I could not get it to feed reliably for all the bullet types I use, from 90 gr up to the 129's, with trying lots of different mags. 1 or 2 bullets, mainly the 123's, would feed if, and it's a big IF, you cycle the bolt fast and smartly - if I let up ever so little smack! no feed. The problem usually is the bullet will hit the forend of the barrel below the feed ramps, on that vertical spot of barrel-end surface. No amount of fiddling, jiggering, tape or mag swaps would do away with this issue. For me it was a fatal flaw, so I got rid of them. Some guys say they don't encounter that, all I can say is I'm happy for them, but I had enough of it.

For the howa, its mags always fed and do feed (I still have one of these) flawlessly. Lots of guys complain about them being plastic, but they have never been an issue for me. I'm not going to war and I don't crawl any more through brush or swamps, so they work fine in my situations. The mag catch/release on older models was much too easy to hit and drop your mag. Howa has fixed this in the latest models, as mine is fine for that. A little too stiff if you ask me but I can live with that (there are also after-mkt fixes if you don't like that mag release). The one big drawback for the howa is the bottom "metal" which is really plastic, and the forward (or back one? I forget but you will encounter this) action screw-hole can and will break on you if you try to torque it down. So you either go for an mdt chassis (which I do and love them), or get an after-market bottom real-metal magwell/trigger guard, from DIP products, Jefferson outdoors or Oregun-smithing... those work very well. Jefferson and maybe the other guys also offer an internal mag-style bottom so you can go that route also. I had the DIP one and it was great.

Trigger-wise, both are acceptable, I found myself lightening them both up to my liking. Or you can leave them stock as-is. Ruger is a blade/2-stage and howa is its "single" hact trigger. As part of my barrel upgrade I also put in the timney adjustable (really for howa 1500) and it works great in the mdt chassis. It does need some trigger guard room so in original stock IDK if it works or not.

Barrel-wise, both shoot pretty well, they are rack-grade so might be a bit picky on loads and stuff, but I could get them both to do the job. I did upgrade my howa barrel to a Preferred Barrel one (it's a howage-style savage-like barrel nut so you can do it yourself), 22". And I'm real happy with it.

Ruger has a 22" medium barrel, threaded. Howa's medium barrel is 20" threaded. I like threaded b/c I use a muzzle brake/suppressor so they both can do the job there. Ruger has a slight edge due to 2" more barrel length, which gives you a shot at maybe the next higher MV-node. But they both are capable of shooting/hunting farther than I could go, so both were fine.

[Harpoon1]

[MachV]

Well here is my limited experience,some of its pertinent to what you asked.
Bought the first CZ527 Grendel i could put my hands on,24" barrel and set trigger= great gun! Liked it enough to put together an AR with Anderson parts and a 20" BCA barrel, againd another great gun...For me.
The daughter however is much smaller so the CZ doesn't fit her well and I aint cutting the stock! The ARs stock adjust to fit her well but is too heavy, it shoots great as is so not inerested in changeing it.
Now this brings us too your question. We went to the local gun shops to see if we could find something she could work with. The Ruger youth fit her well but the action on all of them we tryed left much to be desired, looking at it there was nuthing obvious that would fix it. Nobody in town had a Howa in Grendel but did have a couple of 6ARCs. As much as they pushed she did not like the Howa and I'm not messing with a round so close to the Grendel. The Howa to me is not as good as the CZ but hands down better than the Ruger ( I'M a ruger fan....when they work but that short action is junk!)

[WVB4]

[grayfox]

From a pure bolt action perspective, if you can handle the initial cost, look at the uintah upper, I have the 6Arc but they also have a 6.5 grendel. It goes on any spec AR-lower, but is a totally bolt action of their own design. the barrel is outstanding, the feed is great. The only downside is that it's a bit pricey. But you get what you pay for in it.

But yeah, echoing some of the others, the howa has more after-market support. One further advantage of the howa mags, you can load longer than 2.260. Granted in some ASC or duramags you could get, AR-wise, out to ~2.285, but the howa has room for sure, believe I've taken the 129 ablr out to 2.300.
I would hope that ruger fixes a lot of this stuff in their gen 2. I have a 6 Creed in ruger predator and it's a dandy, put it into a magpul stock. Successful deer gun for me.

[kmon]

I want to see what Ruger does with the Gen 2. Wife needs a shorter LOP and would prefer a bolt action over the AR I think. Or at least today feels that way. As for me my CZ works great, built it before CZ finally got off their butts and started chambering it. 2.285 is as long as I can load in the CZ.

[EastTNHunter]

[WVB4]

[WVB4]

[grayfox]

What round(s) are you trying? what bullets.

Could be stiff extractor.
Or could be relatively short chamber...

You can Try: bolt removed, use a sharpie to color the ogive/shank area of the bullet, drop a factory round into the chamber (gravity), does it seat in all the way? I s'pose you could gently tap the back end with a dowel rod... And does it fall out easily? This would be the key.

For that round, are there any rifling marks in the sharpie color. Like a 123 sst factory round...

If you have the OAL comparator tool (hornady) with a grendel modified case, which I recommend that everyone have, measure a couple well known bullets for max OAL in the chamber. My howa's have always had a lot of OAL room in them, but see what yours has.

New brass almost always is shorter in datum length to shoulder than any saami chamber, so they will shoot in any rifle. But you should always re-size new brass anyway... if nothing else it will ensure the case mouth is round and not dinged...

[grayfox]

While out and about, I thought of one more thing.
Take a new, starline if you want, empty case and insert it under the extractor, and force back into the ejector (thus lining it up to go into chamber), hold it there and guide it into the chamber as far as you can, then close the bolt. If it closes easily then the extractor claw might indeed be stiff.
You can also try the same thing after that, with a factory round, see if the bolt closes easily on the round. Again this would isolate the extractor and see if the chamber is fine.
Hornady 123's are typically 2.245 OAL or so, so should insert and extract easily.

[WVB4]

[grayfox]

Cool.
That lil 'jector is begging for a workout!!!
cycle some rounds downrange - get that bad boy in the game!

[northdude]

https://youtu.be/IAdR9ezUPgg?feature=shared