Browning's X-Bolt Hunter

The X-Bolt’s rotary magazine design accomplishes a few things. The rotary storage puts more rounds in a shallow, flush fitting magazine. Rounds to be fed are centered to the bolt and chamber for positive, reliable feed. The magazine release catch is out of the way, but easy to release even with gloved hands. Preloaded spares can be carried in a coat pocket and polymer lasts forever.

The Browning’s bottom metal is matte black anodized aluminum, framing the detachable magazine. The piece fits the lines of the rifle well and adds little weight. The mag is flush and out of the way, but the mag release is still easy to access, even with gloved hands.

The interior of the Browning stock is cleanly inletted, with the action glass bedded to the stock at two points as indicated below. The result is a very tight barreled action to stock meld that assures uniform contact and clamping pressure. The barrel itself is floated all the way down the forearm with no pressure pad at the forend. Each Browning barrel is target crowned, button rifled, air gauged and hand chambered.

The three lever Feather Trigger. No take up, no creep, clean braking and virtually no over travel. The trigger is preset to 3 1/2 Lbs at the factory, but pull is adjustable from 3 to 5 Lbs. The components are hard chromed and precision finished to assure the same quality trigger pull persists through thousands of rounds without maintenance.

X-Lock, Browning’s four fastener scope bases, hold scopes in precise alignment. In this case, Weaver bases are used with Warne steel rings. The X bolt has a low profile receiver, rising not much above the recoil lug and barrel shank. The benefit is low scope mounting which keeps optical centerline as close as possible to bore centerline. The result is a shallow intersecting line of sight and bore centerline angles with no amplification of scope adjustment.

The Browning’s tang safety blocks the sear and blocks the firing  pin. It also locks the bolt in the closed position. Depressing the bolt unlock button allows the bolt to be cycled to empty a loaded chamber with the safety in the on position.

The Browning X-Bolt has three locking lugs and a shallow 60º bolt lift for reduced bolt throw and increase scope eyepiece clearance.

The bolt face is recessed, providing additional safety by enclosing a cartridge’s case head. The ejector is a spring loaded plunger type. Rather than a long non-rotating full length claw type extractor, or a small fixed extractor embedded in the recess of the bolt face, the Browning has a spring loaded hinged extractor that is recessed into the side of the bolt.  The result is no extractor drag and no space taken away from inside of the the bolt face.

The bolt body is fluted rather than round to add stiffness to the assembly. The bolt handle is a separate assembly.

The Browning Hunter stock has a quite functional design; full where needed and relieved to keep weight down when acceptable. So the forearm is broad, widely checkered and finger grooved where held and tapered to narrow farther out. The buttstock comb in wide for support, but relieved below. The pistol grip is spade shaped to fill the holding hand and well checkered, but narrow behind the palm and fingers.

The buttstock has minimal drop at the comb and heel, providing good cheek support for scoped applications. The X-Bolt Hunter is fitted with one of Browning’s Inflex  recoil pads. In addition to the typical recoil absorbing mass, the pad has an internal skeleton that directs the stock’s comb down from the shooter’s face in addition to cushioning the blow to the shooter’s shoulder. The large surface area spread recoil.

Extracting a good deal from the 308 Winchester

The 308 Winchester works well in short barrel rifles and pistols, but there is a velocity penalty. The Browning Hunter’s 22″ barrel brings the best out of the 308 Winchester without being unwieldy or heavy and yields significantly higher velocity.

The 1:12″ twist Browning is an accurate sporter delivering sub MOA performance even with Federal Edge’s long VLD type bullets. The rifle is comfortable to shoot, light to carry and a good looking. Browning… still something special about firearms bearing the name.