Barrel Length Question/Upper Recommendations

[BVickery1974]

I already checked the forums and couldn't find a definitive answer. My main purpose of the rifle is hunting, which will be for Deer and Hog both here in FL and the like, which will be on wooded/brush. I also want it for general target practice. I am curious if a 16" barrel would be fine. I am looking at 300 yd shots at the farhtest/rarest, most being in 75-150 yds.

As I'm coming from the 5.56/223 community with the focus more on self protection/SHTF, I am not sure who would be a good company to look at buying an upper from? I don't have the tools to properly build one, and the money I put into the tools is money towards ammo and better gear. I was looking at Grendel Hunter as on review they had great results with their 20" barrel.

[A5BLASTER]

Yes 16 inch will be more then enough. Provided you choose the correct bullet and place the shot correctly.

Hard to beat a 120 golddot into the pukp house are high shoulder cns type hit on deer and hogs. Very hard to beat.

[RobertFL]

june2019hogs.jpg I made my first purchase before I found this web site. I have a 16 inch upper from Sanders Armory, he is near Ft Myers Florida. At the time of ordering he had a Faxon match grade, Stainless Steel, hand lapped "Gunner" barrel available. Most of my shots are less than 40 yards since our place is pretty thick with no open fields. I have only shot hogs with the 6.5 Grendel. I mostly use Hornady 123 grain SST Ammo but I did head shoot one with a 85 grain Maker bullet once. Last year I bought a 12 inch Group buy barrel from BFT on this web site and had a friend install it onto an Aero upper, I have it on a pistol lower. It shoots nicely and is pretty light and handy for scouting and hunting.

[LR1955]

I already checked the forums and couldn't find a definitive answer. My main purpose of the rifle is hunting, which will be for Deer and Hog both here in FL and the like, which will be on wooded/brush. I also want it for general target practice. I am curious if a 16" barrel would be fine. I am looking at 300 yd shots at the farhtest/rarest, most being in 75-150 yds.

As I'm coming from the 5.56/223 community with the focus more on self protection/SHTF, I am not sure who would be a good company to look at buying an upper from? I don't have the tools to properly build one, and the money I put into the tools is money towards ammo and better gear. I was looking at Grendel Hunter as on review they had great results with their 20" barrel.

BV:

Yes, a 16 inch barrel ought to suit your needs. Same with a 14 or 18 inch. Maybe even a 20 inch barrel too.

If it is hunting, look on the Hunting Forum and see what the hunters use. I bet primarily a 16 or 18 inch but one thing in common will be a quality barrel.

There are dozens of threads on the quality of Grendel carbines and rifles from various manufacturers. If I were to buy a Grendel today I would go to Precision Firearms or LaRue.

LR55

[grayfox]

16" will probably handle most things for your case.
The barrel is uppermost in importance as far as the upper goes, actually it is the main thing. So buying rack grade barrels is a roll of the dice for you - Grendelhunter is a rack grade barrel/upper. You should hold out for a better one.

I'd look at Precision Firearms, for a complete upper. Second choice I guess would be one that uses a ballistic advantage barrel (better than rack but not as good as Mark's at PF). I don't have any experience with Sanders.

The other 2 critical pieces of your system are the trigger and the optics. Don't skimp on those either. Optics is a case of what do your eyes need - which can be different than what somebody else's eyes need. But don't use cheap glass at any rate.

Welcome to the horde by the way!

[grendelnubi]

Not sure what your budget is but there is an 18" Oden works upper for sale in the classifieds. You should also consider building a 12" pistol, its what I hunt with mostly. It carries 1000 energy to almost 200 yards. pushes a 120 grain to around 2200 fps and 129 grains to 2120 fps. 18" will give you another 200 fps and 1000 energy to about 300 yards.

My 18" oden will shoot accurately with my creedmoor up to 500 yards.

[Klem]

BV,

This calibre is relatively slow so I would go an 18" as a decent compromise between velocity and size.

You can buy just about anything for deer and hogs at 150yds. Target practice is a whole other level and depends on your definition of accuracy. If you source an Olympic grade barrel your hunting will benefit also.

Tools to put together a gun are heavily subsidised by the savings if you do it yourself. In other words the tools will be almost free given the alternative is to pay someone more to put it together. Precision Firearms are reputable.

[BVickery1974]

Well, saw I was leaning towards 'confirmation bias' to what I wanted, and as a newbie to the so called Horde, I'm listening.

I am hoping to get a Lilja, but will wait a few weeks to see what my actual budget will be (Teacher that is taking 3 week gig for summer school, hoping I get it).

Are all the barrels on PF's site pretty much gtg? His Criterion and PF branded blanks? What about Sigma Six from the forums and the Lilja group buy. Even though it is over, I can build a rifle around the barrel I want and customize it to save in some places (IE regular handguard instead of carbon fiber).

[A5BLASTER]

Well, saw I was leaning towards 'confirmation bias' to what I wanted, and as a newbie to the so called Horde, I'm listening.

I am hoping to get a Lilja, but will wait a few weeks to see what my actual budget will be (Teacher that is taking 3 week gig for summer school, hoping I get it).

Are all the barrels on PF's site pretty much gtg? His Criterion and PF branded blanks? What about Sigma Six from the forums and the Lilja group buy. Even though it is over, I can build a rifle around the barrel I want and customize it to save in some places (IE regular handguard instead of carbon fiber).

Anything from rebby and PF will be good to go.

PF has a house brand line of barrels that start at 250, not the top end barrels but will hold sub moa with good load work up and sound marksmanship techniques.

[BowChamp]

LaRue Ultimate Upper Kit is what I recommend and get it with the TranQuilo brake.

https://www.larue.com/products/larue-ultimate-ar-15-upper-kit/

[Stinky Coyote]

16" is great, we only hunt although that includes setting up to potential with collecting drop data to 500 yards and having dial up turrets, nothing to stay moa or less with bolt action 16" rugers out to 500 yards for 3 shot groups and factory hornady black ammo, it's all we use, we have 7 head of big game with a couple different grendels, average distance is now 151 yards, average recovered distance 4.3 yards, moose, whitetail, mule deer, bighorn sheep, and black bear, all with hornady black, have a few coyotes on them as well, we zero at 200 yards, hornady black runs 2386 fps from the 16.1" ruger ranch barrels, likely see another 100 fps from 20" and another 100 fps again from 24"...whitetail buck i shot at 200 yards this fall quartering away took 2nd last rib on way in and ended in the front of the brisket after about 18" of travel, the bighorn sheep was broadside at 170 yards and exited, most broadside critters deer size and smaller you won't recover a bullet even from the 16" barrel stuff

[gwtx]

+1 on Sanders Armory. Nicest, most helpful, knowledgeable folks I have ever done business with. I bought their 18" complete upper, and it has been sub moa from "out of the box" right up to today. I have shot 123 gr "Black", SST, and 120 Gold Dots. All shoot fine. I have a hand load using 123 sst that chrono's 2500fps + . I have whacked quite a few hogs with it.
The 16" "will do", but I think the 18" is the sweet spot for my purposes. Most of my shots are between 70 and 140 yds,,,which happens to be zero at both ends. No holdover till past 250 yds. Since you are in FL., you really ought to go by and talk to Kelly Sanders , or one of the other helpful folks there. No, they are not personal friends of mine, they are just good folks with a good product, and support,,,if you ever need it. Good luck.

[tdbru]

to get the most speed out of this modest sized cartridge, consider a 20" tube with a RLGS. A Faxon Gunner won't be a heavy barrel in 20". however, everyone has an opinion and many are happy with all kinds of barrel lengths. i've seen 16", 18", 20", and up to even 28". however mostly what i've seen over 20" is heavy barrel profile, which makes a heavy rifle. fine for off of the bench, but if you have to hike a lot the lighter profile barrels, which you can get up to 20" in length, will help shed weight. the 4150 nitrided faxon gunner 20" i used on a light upper build is ok accuracy for the distances you're talking about. i did get 1/2 MOA with some varmint bullets, but most big game bullets are going 1.5 to 2 moa for me. sometimes less. So i'm still tweakingbig game loads trying to get the big game bullet groups to shrink a bit. also with component shortages it's difficult right now to try a bunch of different bullets and powders. So for now i haven't yet hit on a consistent 1/2 MOA hunting bullet load for my light weight upper. and getting 1/2 moa consistently may or may not be possible for me based on my modest skill with the AR platform, even given match grade barrels. but if i can get to a consistent 1 MOA big game bullet load for my light upper build, i'll say good enough.

for you, considering the ranges you're talking about, it sounds to me like 1 to 1.5 MOA would be good enough with a good hunting bullet. i see your trade off not so much as barrel length but a hunting rifle weight tradeoff. 16" 18" 20" will all be handy enough. How accurate do you really want and can you trade off some barrel weight vs accuracy and still hit a good balance between portability and adequate hunting bullet precision for the distances you will hunt at. if you need to ring an 8" steel gong at 1000 yards, 1/4 to 1/2 MOA consistent precision will be absolutely necessary, and that tends to get us in the heavy match barrel region. for killing deer out to 150 yards or so, consider trading off some barrel weight & rifle weight vs absolute precision and see if you can achieve 1 to 1.5 MOA with a 8.5 lb or less AR setup using good big game bullets and loads.

just some things to consider. if weight is not an issue, then by all means, get a heavy high quality match barrel. they will group.

i'm confident that eventually i'll find a big game bullet load that will consistently group at or below 1 MOA in my lightweight upper. just haven't had the chance to try all the combo's that are available yet. with high quality match barrels, they'll most likely group all kinds of bullets well. (target, hunting, varmint, etc) but they will likely be heavy too. with my light weight rack grade barrel, getting consistent 1 MOA with a quality hunting bullet is taking me a bit of load development to uncover. but that's also part of the fun of handloading for me is to develop that good load for your rifle that you may or may not ever find with factory hunting ammo.
good luck, and good hunting.
-tdbru