All these years of shooting Rugers and never an opportunity to shoot a No. 1, so traded off a few dust collectors in the safe and made the plunge. Glad I did. I'm being absolutely honest when I say that I can't remember ever so falling in love with a rifle the way I have with these single shots. It's almost backfiring on me. When I take one of these Ruger single shots to the range and start shooting it, I lose interest in shooting everything else we brought with us. Heaven help me, these single shots are insanely addictive in a way that is just hard to put into words.
Today will feature the One we bought over a month, ago. It's a Ruger No.1S (S for Sporter) in 44 mag. It's a new, very expensive gun, one of only 200 some made in this run and the first No. 1 ever offered in 44 mag. It's also unusual for its short 20" barrel, instead of the more usual 22" or 24" S configuration barrel. Overall length is only 36", but at 7 pounds, it has enough heft and just the right balance to be a superb offhand shooter.
That same heft makes this the absolutely most comfortable to shoot 44 magnum of any kind I have owned. Period. Nothing else comes close. Way easier to shoot than a Marlin 1894 44 mag. Again, this rifle has somewhat backfired on me. Switching from this rifle to shooting my 44 mag single actions makes the revolvers downright painful and NOT fun to shoot, now. Why bother when I have something like this to shoot?
So how does it shoot? Shot it with the open sights, right away, and quickly learned that open sights simply don't do this rifle justice, once I moved out past 25 yards, that is. Did fine up close with irons.
Not crazy about scoping such a classic, but no way will I let this gun sit at home for lack of a good day with proper light. Wanted a low power scope for such a carbine, but that proved to be a headache to get done, properly. The problem was getting a short tubed scope back far enough from that barrel rib to get proper eye relief at higher scope magnifications. Interestingly, the solution proved to be a Leupold R Scout 30mm tube scope with 1.5-6x magnification. Perfect match and no need to change my head position on the stock thought the full range of magnification. (Awesome scope, by the way. The scope really deserves a report of it's own. Not today, though.)
When scoped, one hole groups at 50 yards, instantly, but I didn't buy this gun to shoot from a rest. Got the scope dialed in close from the rest, then shot this offhand group with a few tweaks to the scope.
Will move out to 100 yards at some point with this 44 mag, but for now, it's my favorite 50 yard shooter.
Besides, for long range work, I have this one we found, earlier in the week. It's a 1B in 243 and it shoots every bit as sweet. More on this one in another report. It also deserves one of it's own.
