Walnut Hill

Terry Wieland

A Kenny Jarrett rifle, chambered in 300 Jarrett, with three targets shot by Kenny’s rifle tester, along with the note on ammunition. This is an accuracy guarantee that actually means something, but it’s expensive to do.

What is an accuracy guarantee worth in real terms? Exactly nothing. There, I’ve said it.

This is not to say there are not highly-accurate rifles coming out of factories these days, because there are – more than ever before and, on average, they are more accurate. Where the problem arises is with the “guarantees” that have become, during the past 30 years or so, de rigueur for any riflemaker expecting to be taken seriously.

The first such guarantee that I know of, with a mass-produced factory rifle, was Weatherby’s 1.5-inch guarantee that began sometime in the 1960s, after they introduced its Mark V magnum rifle. Three shots into 1.5 inches was pretty daring back then, when anything under a 4-inch group was considered adequate for a deer rifle. Weatherby even included a target with each rifle, with three neat round holes in it, supposedly shot with that rifle using Weatherby factory ammunition. Since the Weatherby factory ammunition was made by Norma, and that was all you could get, the parameters were pretty straightforward.