The Ruger
Mini-14 rifle has been around for thirty-five years now, and
has proven to be a very popular, reliable, and handy weapon.
Styled somewhat like the US Military M-14 rifle, but with a
simplified operating system and scaled down to shoot the
5.56x45mm NATO cartridge, the Mini-14 is a fine weapon. Now also
chambered for the 7.62x39 (Mini-30) and 6.8mm
SPC cartridges, the Mini is still very popular with
shooters, hunters, farmers, and ranchers. It is a weapon that
can be bounced around behind the seat of a pickup truck daily,
or put away and ignored for months, and it will still be as
reliable as ever when needed.
I have always found the Mini-14 to be a rifle
that was plenty accurate for my needs. While I would bet on an
AR of equal quality to beat the Mini for accuracy from the
bench, the Mini has never let me down, until this past Summer
while on a prairie dog shoot in South Dakota.
Cousin Melvin and I had loaded up for a long-planned
trip to go dog shooting in South Dakota, and as expected, he
brought along his Mini-14 to do the work. I had two ARs with me,
but Melvin has never really warmed up to the AR-15, and prefers
his Mini, which is reminiscent of his old M-14 service rifle
that he was issued many years ago. Melvin’s Mini has always
worked perfectly, and maintained plenty of accuracy. However,
shooting prairie dogs is different than popping a groundhog or
deer. With those two animals, getting even as many as a
half-dozen shots in one day is unlikely, but when shooting
prairie dogs, several hundred shots before noon is not unusual.
On the hunt, while we were driving around on
a six-thousand acre ranch, shooting a dog or two and then
driving around some more, the Mini did just fine, and Cousin Mel
was popping as many dogs as I was. However, when we crested a
ridge and sighted a huge dog town, things changed. With my ARs,
I was shooting as fast as I could get a dog in the scope, and
connecting pretty regularly out to four hundred yards and
beyond. However, as Melvin’s Mini heated up, his accuracy
degraded quickly. The Mini’s thin barrel was getting too hot
to touch, and shots even at one hundred yards became
unpredictable. He laid wet towels on the Mini’s barrel, but it
helped very little. Allowing the rifle to cool completely,
accuracy would return, but after a few shots, hitting was as
much luck as skill at that point. Melvin knows how to pull a
trigger, and I knew that it was the rifle, and not his
marksmanship that accounted for the misses on the dogs.
There have been several accuracy aids on the
market for the Mini for a few years, but until now, I had never
seen the need for one. Anyway, shown here is the accuracy kit
from True Shot Technologies. The full kit consists of a barrel
stabilizer, a new front sight, sight adjustment tool, and a
flash suppressor, along with the hardware needed to assemble.
Both the sight and suppressor look to be of high quality, but my
interest lied mainly in getting that barrel on the Mini-14 to
stay put when shooting it to the point that it is too hot to
touch, so for our purposes here, we are only testing the barrel
stabilizer, so as to not skew the test results by changing any
other variable.
Before attaching the True Shot barrel
stabilizer, I fired the Mini both cold and hot to establish a
baseline for the accuracy of the weapon, so as to compare
directly the affect of the barrel stabilizer upon the sustained
accuracy of the Mini under the same controlled conditions, using
the same scope, rifle rest, and ammunition.
First, without the barrel stabilizer, I fired
several cold-barrel groups from the Mini, allowing the barrel to
cool between groups, to establish the accuracy of the rifle.
After that was done, I quickly fired two twenty-round magazines
of 5.56mm ammunition through the Mini as fast as I could load
the mag and pull the trigger. At that point, the barrel was
definitely too hot to touch. Firing groups using the same
ammunition, it was readily apparent that accuracy had degraded
slightly as relative to group size, but the impact on the target
was much lower at 100 yards. Even as close as fifty yards, the
group on target was over one inch lower. This explains the
difficulty which Cousin Melvin was having connecting on those
prairie dogs at extended ranges; the point of impact changed
dramatically as the barrel heated.
The True Shot barrel stabilizer consists
basically of an aluminum rod and two clamps, along with the
screws needed to secure the device to the barrel and gas block
of the Mini-14. The rod has a matte black Lumicald coating,
which matches the finish of the Ruger rifle pretty well. I
attached the rod and clamps as per the instruction, using
Loctite thread locker on every screw. Again, I did not attach
the flash suppressor nor change the front sight on the Mini. The
reasons for that are that the rifle does not belong to me, and
mainly because I wanted to change no other variable on the Mini,
with the exception of adding the stabilizer. The True Shot
stabilizer supports the barrel very well, much like a truss
supports a beam on a bridge. The clamps and rod also serve to
pull some of the heat away from the barrel, which was proven
just by feeling the temperature of the rod after firing the
rifle.
After the barrel stabilizer was installed, I
followed the same procedure of firing groups with a cold barrel
to establish another baseline on the targets. Then, again firing
quickly forty rounds of 5.56mm ammo through the rifle, I settled
the rifle into the rest and again fired groups on target.
Although the groups did open up slightly with the hot barrel, as
they did without the stabilizer, the impact on the targets did
not change. The rifle held the same zero setting as with a cold
barrel, at all distances tested. The barrel stabilizer works,
and works well, to keep the Mini-14 on target as the barrel
heats from sustained fire. The True Shot barrel stabilizer is a
definite aid to the accuracy of the Mini-14 for shooting long
strings on target, or in the field.
Check out the True Shot barrel stabilizer,
along with the flash suppressor and front sight online at www.trueshottechnologies.com
The products can be ordered as the whole kit,
or the components can be ordered separately, if desired. The
True Shot barrel stabilizer works as advertised, and is a
reasonably-priced, well-designed device to improve the sustained
accuracy of the Ruger Mini-14 rifle. It also looks pretty good,
giving the Mini-14 a look that is closer to the M-14 service
rifle.
Jeff Quinn