Target Sports

RIFLE REVIEW: ONCE UPON A TIME...

Created on 27th May 2009

LAURIE HOLLAND ventures into the fairytale world of mystery and magic to test a born-again Czech classic

Once upon a time a Scottish schoolboy pressed his nose against the gunshop window and said: "That's what I want!" ‘That' was the Brno Model 2 from the land of Good King Wenceslas, the nation's best-selling rimfire rifle in the 1960s. Lots were sold because they were cheap, looked good, shot even better, and were as tough as old Red Army boots. Come late 2007 and this rifle, now called the Cz452, is still the nation's bestselling rimfire sporter and our slim handsome hero (well, this is a fairytale!) was sent one to play with, so Santa Claus really does exist!

Princess to frog

But there is more to our tale than that, as things went pear-shaped between then and now. The Brno was styled with a slim forend, Schnabel tip, and a ridiculously long tapered barrel that mounted Mauser 98-type iron sights. We thought that looked cool in the 1960s, even though our Yankee cousins would have disagreed. However, that didn't matter because Good Kings Nixon, Johnson and Reagan said the Brno came from the land of Castle Kremlin, so the Americans couldn't have any.

But nobody is happy forever, and bunny bashers soon started to make ungrateful noises: "Old-fashioned looking," "the rearsight is where my new Nikko Stirling scope wants to be!" and "the barrel's so bl***y long I keep tripping over it." Beautiful princess to frog! Meanwhile, Castle Kremlin cast a spell over Wenceslas-land so that everything was frozen in time forever, while the peasants were forced to build unreliable Skoda Estelle cars and try to sell them to rude Germans.

Fairy dust

One day in November 1989 the Wenceslas-folk announced they'd had enough of the workers' paradise. A man called Boris was now in charge in Castle Kremlin and he'd ‘forgotten' to pay the Red Army, so his soldiers were too busy selling their tanks and Kalashnikovs to spivs to invade anybody. Instead, Good Fairy Capitalism told the people of Wenceslas-land that they were in charge now. If they privatised state industries wholesale, took Western partners and venture capital, and adopted new behaviours called market research and design, they'd all become free and rich.

So everything was good, right away? Well, not quite, as improvements and new models came slowly at first. But CZ had gotten itself a shiny new outfit in Kansas City called CZ-USA complete with high-powered Midwestern businessmen who said: "Look buddy, we can sell your 9mm pistols to Americans, but this .22 rifle - you've really got to do something with it. Like cut 6" off the barrel and offer a synthetic stock version. So the fairy waved her magic wand over the CZ factory, and lo! we have lots of Cz452 variants - nearly double figures-worth. (The fairy was really chuffed, too, as none turned back into pumpkins and packs of rodents at midnight, as when she'd performed a similar trick for Cinderella.)

As well as traditional half-stock walnut there are the synthetic Style and Silhouette models; a Mannlicher fullstock type; the short single-shot Scout for youngsters; and the American that's got a different stock form to suit American tastes as well as high grade blueing and finish, and which sells well here too. The new CZ453 model has a single-set trigger and also comes in various versions. A few still have open sights for the remaining traditionalists, but most are bare. The .17s - HMR and Mach2 - were adopted and are available in most versions.

Varmint

The model I asked for was the .22LR Varmint - a handsome, Turkish walnut half-stock given a wider forend as suits the name and purpose, mated to a fat, heavy barrel. Most CZ rimfires for the UK market come with muzzles threaded for sound moderators at Edgar Brothers' request, and many end up so equipped, but the extra length can make a 20" barrelled rifle over-long, so a 16" barrel version was introduced, largely for British shooters. You don't lose any velocity with the .22 Long Rifle, and a stiff, short tube often enhances accuracy. However, if you want a traditional barrel length, there is a 21" version.

Without a moderator, the 16" Varmint looks over-truncated, with hardly any barrel protruding ahead of the wood, but screw a ‘can' on and it looks and feels absolutely right. Finish is excellent, with good wood for a rifle of this price and swivel studs already fitted. As with most models, apart from the American, the receiver is given an attractive semi-matte black finish with dark blueing running almost to black on the barrel.

SAK

Why .22, when ‘everybody' buys .17s these days? Dealers tell me they sell more .22s because of ammo choice and price, plus the subsonic option. Moreover, this is a review for a target shooting periodical, and if you want to use your rimfire in this activity, it has to be a .22, because you can't shoot the .17s on most rimfire ranges. While our helpful fairy facilitated the provision of lots of new models, happily the factory didn't change the basic mechanical format - the receiver is still a machined forging and, uniquely now amongst budget rimfire rifles, the barrel is screwed into it. With lots of meat, this gives a rigid joint, which always helps accuracy. The bolt has a substantial locking lug on a rotating collar attached to the handle; both it and the weight-adjustable trigger assembly, exactly as on the original Brno, although no doubt everything is now produced on CNC machines and CZ has long produced hammer-forged barrels in-house (on state of the art Austrian machines even in the communist days). The varmint barrel is 0.985" at the breech tapering to a still hefty 0.755" at the muzzle. The only thing that sees ABS substituted for steel is the five-round magazine, albeit as a solid, robust example.

In keeping with the dual-purpose concept, I needed a sound moderator, a new gizmo for me. A call to Jackson Rifles provided one of the neat Finnish SAK models the company imports. At a shade under 6" (145mm), it's shorter than most competitors, but is a fattish 1.355" (35mm) diameter for an all up weight of only 6oz (170g). Does it work? Well, rather - in fact, I would have wondered if the rifle had fired with the first silenced shot if I hadn't seen the bullet impact on the paper through the scope. And it wasn't just me - some regular bunny bashers came to see what I was using as the rifle was so quiet. What does it do to accuracy? There was no negative effect with any make of cartridge tried, and groups were tightened a bit by reducing a slight tendency to vertical stringing with one or two makes.

I hold my hand up to being a serial offender when it comes to mounting over-large riflescopes on sporters, but the Edgar Brothers Opti-Mate 24X44 target model looks right on this pest-control rig, especially with a Harris Series-S bipod mounted. For field use, a 6-24 variable with heavier and illuminated reticles would be preferable to allow variation in size of the field of view and take account of light conditions.

Groups and gold

I tested the rifle off the bench at 50m using six different ammunition makes - two hollow-point subsonic types and four standard velocity solids, all groups being five-shot. The subsonic HPs and two makes of solid that grouped well were fired with and without the moderator fitted. The traditional accuracy standard for an ‘untuned' sporter is the ability to achieve 1" groups at 50yd, and after excluding results from one make of cartridge that the rifle didn't care for, a grand total of 22 groups from five cartridges averaged 0.74" (2/3" with the range adjusted from metres to yards), so this rifle can really shoot. Late production PMC Scoremaster (made by Industrias Tecnos in Brazil) and German-manufactured Lapua Standard Club produced odd groups under 0.4" and gave averages that ran around the ½" if corrected to 50yd. No cartridge would be classed as match, so there is scope for further group-size reduction on the range.

We have a well-made, nicely finished little rifle that really shoots, so will not disappoint either in the field or what a club shooter recently described to me as ‘Redneck Sporter Benchrest' competition. How many gold crowns will it cost - £400? £500? No, only £275 from Edgar Brothers. Alternatively, South Yorkshire Shooting Supplies fits the Eric Brook trigger tuning kit to all Cz452s it sells as standard, and even with this enhancement is currently advertising the 16" Varmint model for £310! (.17 calibre versions retail for slightly more.) This is no fairytale, but Cinderella should note that the clock is chiming midnight! With the pound dropping like a stone against the euro and forecast to fall further, buy your CZ sooner rather than later.

Technical Specification

Model: Cz452 Varmint 16"
General description Heavy barrel, bolt-action sporting rifle
Maker: CZ (Ceská Zbrojovka a.s.) Uhersky Brod, Czech
Republic
Calibre: .22 Long Rifle
Action: Single-lug bolt-action
Magazine: Detachable box. Capacity: Five cartridges (10-round version also available)
Sights: No iron sights furnished. Receiver grooved for scope mounts (11mm dovetail)
Stock: Walnut half-stock
Weight: C 6.38lb ‘bare' (2.9kg). All up weight of combination as tested i/c bipod: 8.75lb (4kg)
Overall length:
Bare: 35.3" (895 mm); i/c SAK moderator: 40.5" (1,028mm)
Barrel : 16" (405mm) heavy; 16" rifling twist
Pull: 13.75" (349mm)
Trigger pull: 3.5lb (1.6kg)
Importer and further info: Edgar Brothers, Heather Close, Lyme Green Business Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 0LR. T: 01625 613177
W: www.edgar-brothers.co.uk
E: admin@ edgar-brothers.co.uk
Prices: From £275 (see text)
Opti-Mate (model Opti-37) 24x44 target scope: £183.99. SAK moderator: £29.95. Complete rig as tested: around £600.
Cz452 also available as: .22 WMR (Magnum), .17HMR and M2 calibres (not all variants).