Anyone have any preference of one over the other (Pro's & Con's)?
Any information greatly appreciated.
Thanks
You will get a bunch of replies. Most will say either one is great... “if you do your part”. That’s the rub.
Having experience with a couple dozen Montana’s/MA’s/Hunters/etc. and a dozen plus Fieldcrafts-
Kimbers: WAY more finicky to get shooting, and WAY higher chance of getting a lemon. In all that I’ve seen, only about a quarter were good out of the box. The rest landed somewhere between “do the 26 trick moves” to fix, all the way to barrel and stock replacement to get anything remotely decent. In factory form and NOT discounting shots you don’t like, your looking at a 2+ MOA rifle. Some are much worse.
The stock design is good, but have had about half that took serious work to get free floated, and relieve torque on the action as well.
When there is an issue, Kimber is all over the map about fixing them. They do seem better now, both in rifles and CS, than they were. Still extremely spotty.
Barrett: While they have had a couple issues with bedding, etc., you are unlikely to get one that needs anything. Only two that I’ve seen needed bedding compound removed from the rear action hole in the stock. The rest were good OOTB. Function, I.E.- Feeding, extraction, ejection, etc has been fine on all, except one that had weak ejection of a live round. It fed and ejected fired cases without issuse so the owner decided not to send it back.
Barrels are universally good. Stock is a good design, and is bedded correctly. Action, works correctly.
Precision has been vastly better than Kimbers. Haven’t seen one that was worse than 1.5 MOA for ten round groups. Most are between 1.2-1.5 MOA- or about like a Kimber after a barrel replacement and bedding.
If there is an issue, Barrett CS been prompt and dealt with it without a fuss.
Both rifles are virtually the same weight. One is known as being “hard to shoot” and that you “gotta really pay attention” to shoot it decent, and the other is known to be virtually trouble free.
I have a kimber Mountain ascent. Couldn't get it to shoot even close to MOA. My buddy also has one. Same thing. I've got 250 rounds total down the tube with these guns with an assortment of factory and reloaded ammo. I shot more groups over 2" than under 2" at 100 yards.
My experience is that when you do not allow people to make excuses for shots that they don’t like, your experience is the norm. There is a active thread about kimbers rife with “if I do my part”, 3 round groups that do not impact the target in the same location, and pictures where the users “called” a bad shot (why is it that 100% of oopsies, are always the one shot that they don’t like?). Yet every time someone does a barrel replacement and a bed job, all of a sudden the gun is no longer so hard to shoot well and doesn’t require 13 trick moves to group.
