By Kevin Reese
SHOT Show, January 2016
Six part series: Part 1 of 6 : McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG
United States -(AmmoLand.com)- As an 8-year Marine Corps veteran, I’m fed up – fed up with the hordes of Washington thugs who have deemed time and time again that we’re too stupid to know what’s best for us when it comes to the Second Amendment.
By all appearances, their sole strategy to disarm law abiding American citizens is to simply lob ill-educated, naïve and often ignorant opinions, mandates and proposed legislation into the air hoping enough anti-gun rhetoric will stick and finally reveal the mosaic of a socialist society populated by subjects. Well, I have troubling news for those who deem it appropriate to tell us by what means we can defend ourselves.
The segment of our industry they hate the most continues to grow by leaps and bounds, especially with respect to production of those scary black rifles.
Anyone walking the SHOT Show floor with an ounce of brain activity can see that our tactical segment is alive and well… and I couldn’t be happier! With that in mind, I’m in the mood to really piss some people off by talking about a handful of the “scariest” black rifles at the 2016 SHOT Show had to offer. And by scariest, I mean exceedingly bad ass!
(This will be a series of Six(6) linked articles, the following is number 1 of 6. Click the Next button below for more.)
While not presented in any specific order, take a look at a handful that deserve some serious respect and lots of trigger time!
McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG Cuts 3,600 Yards Down To Size
McRee… I know the name well since Scott McRee himself built my personal match-grade .308 (pictured above), a rifle topped by a phenomenal U.S. Optics LR-17 Riflescope. I recently used the system in the photo to shoot a sub 3” group at 900 yards.
Scott McRee was also part of the 2015 .50-cal BMG World Championship Team and placed second in the Individual Hunter Class; the guy knows his stuff… and hands-down produces the best match-grade precision rifle chassis I’ve used to date. With the 2015 .50-Cal BMG World Championship behind him and, as annual matches generally go, another scheduled for 2016, McRee set out to segue his world-class shooting and manufacturing experience into the brand new McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG Rifle he unveiled during the 2016 SHOT Show. This is one hella-scary large bore modern sporting rifle! I can only hope to setup behind it one day. His fellow 2016 competitors better be on their A-game.
The McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG Rifle, quite simply, was not designed to be pretty… or even scary, just functional, reliable and more than capable of grouping a shooter’s rounds into a run at the world championship title; after all, this is the exact platform Scott McRee intends to use to capture that individual title in 2016. To be clear, while it wasn’t designed to look good it does… exceedingly so. But, in line with McRees’ intentions it performs even better? Why? Because, he built it. He knows what he wants and he knows what we need for world-class shooting performance. That said, let’s take a look under the hood.
Scott McRees’ Big Bore Single Shot boasts a .50 BMG accuracy chamber, as opposed to a standard ball chamber, 33-in. Bartlein 15-twist precision machined steel barrel capped by an intimidating AR50 muzzle brake, McMillan single-shot action, right-handed bolt, left feed port and eject, ultra-crisp Timney 510 trigger set at 2-lb. 4-oz. and a McRee Big Bore folding stock, complete with an embedded McRees Precision patented M-Lev Cant Indicator. While this build is enough to make anyone’s jaw lock open, shooters might want to consider the options McRee himself employs for extreme distance shooting of up to 3,600 yards, enough to jump into the infamous NRA King of 2 Mile Match!
So, how does one get out to 3,600 yards with the McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG Rifle? Consider accessorizing with other options McRees offers like a cant adjustable Allied Precision Arms Folding Bipod, 30 MOA base and Leupold VX6 7-42x56mm Rifle Scope; however, those alone don’t get you out that far. Banging steel at 3,600 yards means coming up a mere 195 minutes, give or take. To successfully engage targets at that range, you might want to take advantage of an optional 150 MOA mechanical base, something McRee has added since the SHOT Show. The 150 MOA mechanical base, combined with the 30 MOA main base and scope travel, makes effective hammering at 3,600 yards achievable.
While the McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot .50-Cal BMG is completely compliant with FSCA requirements for Hunter Class competition, why stop there? Accessorizing with optional slider plates lifts this heavyweight straight into the Heavy Gun Class where maximum weight is set at 50-lbs. That said, the McRees Precision Big Bore Single Shot Rifle, without side plates, already delivers 42 lbs. of hardcore badassery!
*For optimum performance, Scott McRee recommends Thunder Ammo brass alloy projectiles, designed by Randy Powell, in either 770-gr or 802-gr. Thunder Ammo demonstrates a velocity range of 2,850 – 2,900 fps with sub-1/2 MOA at 1,000 yards.
Click the next button to read part two:
A Not-So-Scary Wrap-Up
As an obvious disclaimer, AmmoLand is poking fun at scary. While antis bounce around using loose terms like “scary”, “assault” or “clip”, generally because they are ill-educated and have no business discussing topics they know nothing about, or care to learn about for that matter, we had fun using the terms “scary” and “black rifles” as descriptors, by our definition, synonymous with super cool modern sporting rifles! They hate, we love! In fact, we want to see more! I can’t wait to see what the amazing folks hard at work in our firearms industry have in store for us down freedom’s road.
As rifles go, were there others worth talking about? Plenty! But, you’ll have to read about them in another AmmoLand feature in the 2016 SHOT Show series, 5 Rifles that Rocked the 2016 SHOT Show – a combination of more scary-cool rifles, including the mind-blowing FN M249S Semi-Automatic Saw, and other phenomenal classic-style bolt actions. If anything was clear at the 2016 SHOT Show it was that tactical is still alive, well and booming;
…however, I also noticed greater separation between the scores of we’re-just-assembling-parts-and-branding guys and those who are laser focused on improving, innovating and pushing tactical performance limits with rifle systems truly worthy of serious recognition.
Stick around. There is more to come in my 2016 SHOT Show wrap-up…
About Kevin Reese:
Kevin is an award-winning outdoor writer, photographer, videographer, speaker, host of Global Outfitters TV Show’s GO Tips and a Marine Corps veteran. He owns and administers www.mainbeammedia.com and Main Beam Blog at blog.mainbeammedia.com. The Main Beam Blog offers great articles, press releases, outdoor industry news and reviews.