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Left Handed R1


BobbyJackson42

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Is anyone else out there left handed and interested in the R1? I have been researching rifles for a while now and love the ideal of the recoil assorption of the R1. I have shot my father's bolt action rifles for years and never liked the recoil of the high caliber brass and the ideal of the R1 seems to eliminate that. I don't understand what it would take to get Benneli to come out with a left handed model since the safety being mounted on the trigger guard makes the right handed model very inconvienent for left handed people. You have to reach all the way underneith the trigger guard to unlock the safety. I can't imagine that it would be too hard to make the safety universal or make a left handed action like they have in the Super Black Eagle II. That is the first shotgun I have ever bought and I love it; its blisterd many dove, ducks, and pheasants for me without failure. I just wish that Benelli would introduce this gun for left handed shooters. I don't beleive in the traditional beliefs of older generation hunters and bolt-action rifles are superior to any semi-automatic rifle becuase of their accuracy. Until the R1 the only option for a semi-automatic rifle was a Browning BAR which frequenty shoots 3 inch groups and a 100 yards. This would back up that traditional hunting beliefs for long shots, however the reporst of 1 inch groups or less at a 100 yards of the Benelli R1 forms a new theory of the superiority of Semi-Automatic Rifles over their counterparts due to comparable accuracy, superior rate of fire, and superior handling/recoil. The recoil reduction alone allows for more nockdown power at longer ranges. My father bought a custom .300 winchester magnum 700 Remington with Kevlar stock which I started shooting at a young age. This gun almost took my shoulder off when I would shoot it and I missed over a dozen shots because I flinched. You can see that the military also agrees with this theory due to their deployment of the semi-automatic .50 caliber Barrett rifles. I believe that the R1 toped with the new Laser rangefinder auto-adjusting scopes would be the ultimate big game setup.

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  • 2 months later...

Spot-on, BobbyJ.

 

I have an M1 Super 90 in left-hand and it's the ONLY long gun that I've ever owned in left hand (except the flintlock I built from scratch for myself). Having always before shot right-handed guns, I got used to doing that. Having the M1 is - well, better, for me. Much more "natural".

 

Now I have the R1 in a right-hand version beccause I was told it'd be a long time before they make one. But I was also told that it'd be a while before they did the .308 in a Comfortech stock and that happened the next year, so maybe there's hope yet.

 

The R1 is the "softest" shooting .308 I've ever had. That alone leads to more accuracy - when you know you won't get "thumped" you won't flinch - well, not as much anyway. On the other hand, the .308 is not a hard-recoil round (well, not like a 30-06) and that helps, too. BTW, I have the one of the prettiest pieces of wood on my R1's stock that I've seen, but admittedly it would produce less felt recoil if I had the Comfortech.

 

As for accuracy, the old-time wisdom is that the bolt-action provides less violent and a more straight-line movement from the magazine to the chamber, and the loading motion can be controlled even more with smooth operation of the bolt. True enough. There was also the idea that you couldn't make an auto action to a close tolerances as you could do with a bolt action, because the relatively violent movement involved in the auto loading sequence would jam a gun with bolt-action tolerances. In some guns that may have been true. But modern autos are built to much closer tolerances in the chamber areas, just like bolt-actions, and that leads to increased accuracy. BTW, I have seen BAR's that would easily hold 1moa, and yet even my own R1 would go silly at times, but that had nothing to do with the rifle in either case - it had to do with finding the right ammunition for that particular gun. Unless you put the time in - and the investment in ammo cost - to do the work at the range to find the best round for your individual rifle, you'll never get the best accuracy it can produce. And no, that doesn't mean you have to go to handloading. It just means patience.

 

As I said on another thread, I can produce 3/4" 5-shot groups with my R1 just about any time I shoot. But I can also do the same thing with my .308 99A lever-gun. But the two guns use quite different ammo to get there (the R1 likes Hornady 150gr SST's, and the 99A likes 168gr Winchester Ballistic Silver Tips, although I'm currently messing with Hornady 165gr HPBT rounds because the Winchester rounds have doubled in price in the past year). One is an auto, one is a kind of bolt gun. In my opinion, the old myths are just about dead.

 

In lieu of the Comfortech stock, if you want to reduce felt recoil, consider a special-purpose recoil pad as well as a special-purpose cheek rest. Or even, having your stock fitted to your special measurements.

 

Uncle Russ

Edited by Uncle Russ
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