Now the marvelous thing about the bolt face is that it is interchangeable--along with the magazine and the barrel itself. With two or three bolt faces and a handful of polymer magazines, a hunter could have one rifle in several different calibers--all interchangeable in a matter of minutes. The scope bases attach to the barrel itself, so each barrel will always come back to perfect zero when reassembled.

The Blaser R93 breaks down into the four major components—stock, barrel, bolt and magazine—with the use of a simple (and supplied) Allen wrench.

Blaser had neglected to include a scope base, and as Blaser bases are particular to both the gun and the scope rings you intend to use, they proved hard to get. Fortunately, Petersen's Hunting editor Lee Hoots happened to have a base and rings and let me borrow them.

After mounting a 3-9X Kahles scope on the barrel, I gathered a handful of boxes of .243 ammo and headed for the range, dragging my lovely wife along to spot for me. After posting targets and getting on paper, I settled in to see what the little rifle could do.

Honestly, I was expecting groups in the 11⁄2- to two-inch range. I popped three rounds of Remington 95-grain AccuTips into the magazine, settled in on my Sinclair benchrest, and promptly shot a 3/4-inch group. Amazed, I shot three more. They impacted in a little row--again about 3/4 inch.

I got up, stretched and rescued my wife from the friendly little old man who was talking her ear off. I needed a witness. With her behind the spotting scope, I really bore down, realizing that the rifle was offering much more than I had expected and intending to see how far it would go.

My first two shots weren't just touching; they were overlapping by half the bullet diameter. I fired the third. As the rifle came out of its recoil and I began searching for the bullet hole in the target, my wife said "Whoa!" (She grew up with horses, too). The hole was no longer a peanut. It was a perfect cloverleaf, all holes overlapping.

ACCURACY RESULTS: BLASER R93 PROFESSIONAL
.243 Win Ammo Type	Bullet Weight (gr.)	Muzzle Velocity (fps)	AVG Group (in.)
Remington AccuPoint	95	3,110 *	.43
Speer Nitrex Grand Slam	100	2,950 *	.64
Federal Speer TNT	70	3,400 *	.73
Federal Sierra GameKing	100	2,840	.59
Hornady BTSP Light Magnum	100	3,044	.89
Hornady V-Max	58	3,659	.55
* Manufacturer's velocity figures. Notes: Accuracy tested off a Sinclair bench rest; results are the average of three-shot groups at 100 yards. Velocity recorded 10 feet from the muzzle with a Chrony chronograph.

The accompanying chart will tell the rest of the story. The Remington AccuPoint load that I first tried proved the most accurate of those tested, with a .43-inch average over three groups. To be sure I wasn't experiencing a fluke, I fired three more groups and added them into the equation. The average came down to .38-inch. Of all the loads tested, none averaged over an inch.

Being a lightish hunting rifle, I wondered how it would shoot with varmint bullets. Again, the chart shows the results of my testing with two varieties: aA Federal load incorporating a 70-grain TNT and a Hornady 58-grain V-Max load.

The Blaser liked the V-Max load almost as much as the Remington AccuTip. With those two loads--both of which averaged 1/2 moa or less--I would consider myself well-equipped for deer, antelope or some serious coyote hunting, as well as for bumping off the odd groundhog on Grandpa's farm.