Bushmaster Firearms in Windham, Maine
has become one of the premier builders of quality AR-15 type
rifles in the world. Their rifles are relied upon by many
law enforcement agencies along with thousands of private
citizens to resolve social situations in which a dependable
and accurate semi-automatic rifle is the preferred weapon.
Also, many varmint hunters and target shooters use
Bushmaster weapons to pursue their respective sports. I have
found no semi-auto varmint rifle that will perform better
than the Bushmaster
Varminter, and there is not a week that goes by
without me receiving email from Gunblast readers who concur
with my findings.
While Bushmaster makes more .223/5.56mm AR
type rifles for civilian sales than anyone else, they were
slower to jump into the .308/7.62mm AR market than were some
of their competitors. AR-10 type .308 rifles have been
available for a few years from other AR builders, and we
have tested a few of the better ones here. At the 2004
SHOT Show, Bushmaster unveiled their AR-10 type
rifle, and I immediately started begging for one. Finally, a
production gun arrived about three months later, and I have
been shooting it off and on since that time.
Bushmaster's .308 is offered in several different configurations, the
difference in which is barrel lengths, stock types, and
sighting equipment. The one sent to me for evaluation is the
A3 type, which has no sights, but is equipped with a
Picatinny sight rail atop the upper receiver. The A3 wears a
full buttstock with a trapdoor butt plate, and has a twenty-inch
barrel with a muzzle brake that closely resembles that of
the Soviet AK-74 rifle. I at first thought this to be an odd
brake for an AR-10 type rifle, but after shooting the
weapon, I can certainly understand why Bushmaster chose this
brake design. It is very effective at taming the recoil and
muzzle rise of the .308 cartridge.
The A3 weighs in at nine and three-quarters
pounds with an empty magazine, and the overall length
measures forty-two and three-quarters inches. The trigger
pull on the A3 measured seven pounds and ten ounces. I would
like to see the Bushmaster .308 offered with the excellent target
trigger from the Varminter as an option. It would greatly
improve the practical accuracy of the weapon from a
benchrest.
The Bushmaster .308 differs from the typical AR in a
few of its controls. While the forward assist and safety are
normal AR type controls, the bolt release is at the bottom
front of the trigger guard, and is ambidextrous, having a
mirror-image release on each side. This is an excellent
design for the bolt release, and it is easily reached with
the trigger finger of either a right-handed or left-handed
shooter. The magazine release is in the normal AR position,
but also has an ambidextrous twin on the opposite side of
the receiver. The upper and lower receivers are forged, and are well-fitted. The twenty inch
barrel has a twist rate of one turn in ten inches. The gas
block has attachment rails machined into the top and sides
to accommodate sights and accessories.
One of the best features of the Bushmaster
.308 is
its magazine. Unlike most of their competition, Bushmaster
is supplying its rifles with twenty-round magazines. They
are able to do this because they designed the rifle to use
the readily available, cheap, and reliable surplus FAL rifle
magazines. Since our US Congress banned the manufacture of
magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds for use by
anyone but the military and law enforcement, manufacturers
of AR-10 type rifles have been shipping their rifles with
modified twenty-round magazines, or with magazines of
ten-round capacity. Bushmaster chose to use the cheap
and plentiful, but really durable, FAL mags, and the
Bushmaster .308
can use either the metric or inch pattern magazines
interchangeably. I have seen these magazine available at gun
shows for less than seven bucks each! The engineer at
Bushmaster who had this idea deserves a big hug and a bonus.
Even when our elected representatives to Congress try to
give us the shaft, it is good that somewhere, like in
Windham, Maine, American ingenuity prevails.
Shooting the Bushmaster .308 proved to be a pleasure.
The weight of the rifle, the straight stock, and the
excellent muzzle brake worked together to make the felt
recoil very mild. The rifle was function tested with several
different brands of ammunition, both military surplus and
civilian. There were no failures to feed, fire, or eject any
type of ammo tested. For accuracy testing, I mounted a Pentax
six to twenty-four power target scope using a one-piece ArmaLite
mount. The best accuracy was achieved with two different
types of Winchester ammunition. The 168-grain
hollowpoint boattail match ammunition proved to be capable
of grouping into less than five-eighths of an inch at one
hundred yards, and this was with a gusty crosswind at the NRA
Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. The 168-grain
Winchester Ballistic Silvertip hunting ammo did almost as
well under the same shooting conditions. With calmer
winds and a lighter trigger, I know that I could have done
better on my part, but the rifle still turned in an
excellent performance.
For those in the market for an AR-10 type
rifle chambered for the .308/7.62mm cartridge, I suggest
that you have a look at the Bushmaster. It is reliable and
accurate, and has the unique advantage of using the abundant
supply of good, cheap, twenty-round magazines that are
readily available.
Check out the Bushmaster .308 and other Bushmaster
products online at: www.bushmaster.com.
