Hornady used the same design conventions from its 6.5 PRC round to update the 7mm Remington Magnum class of cartridges with a new round named the 7 PRC. We wanted to test the new 7 PRC to find out if it was the latest, greatest thing or an incremental improvement on an already very good round.
Mossberg Patriot Predator 28171 7 PRC, $467
We love a bargain. Especially when the quality of the product seems to be substantially greater than a higher-cost item. The Mossberg Patriot Predator uses a standard polymer stock that has been finished in-house in the Strata camouflage pattern. A mixture of green, browns and tan, we like the look and the way it breaks up the outline of the rifle. Though not as rigid as the FFT stock on the Christensen, the Mossberg’s stock showed very little flex.
The fore end could be squeezed to touch the barrel, but we had to apply real pressure to make that happen. The rear of the stock features a Monte Carlo-style cheek piece and a negative comb on the stock that pulled recoil away from the shooter’s face. None of the stock is smooth, with all of it exhibiting some texture. Coarser gripping surfaces have been molded into the side panels of the grip and through 270 degrees on the fore end. Resulting contact with the hands was secure, but not obnoxious. The trigger guard is part of the stock requiring a different approach for the magazine and associated parts. The stock is slightly flared, allowing placement of the magazine, but there is no bottom metal per se. The Patriot uses a polymer insert that is secured by the action screws between the stock and the receiver. It provides the attachment point for the mag. Release is accomplished via a recessed latch located at the front of the trigger guard. We found it easy to release without it being prone to an inadvertent drop. We had some problems with the last round in the magazine not wanting to actually stay in the magazine and would like to see that addressed. Sling-swivel studs fore and aft are standard, as is a pretty effective recoil pad.
Mossberg also tries to provide an easily carried rifle and they look, primarily, to the barrel for their weight savings. Our Patriot comes with a 24-inch tube and what we expect to be a standard 1:8-inch twist. Profile on the barrel is very thin, narrowing to a diameter of about 0.640 inch just behind the muzzle. The tube is capped with the expected 5⁄8×24 threads that are actually a wider diameter than the barrel. Accordingly, the muzzle flares to about a 0.750-inch diameter, leaving a shelf behind the threads against which a thread protector or a muzzle brake could abut. About 11 inches of the barrel have been fluted longitudinally, and the bolt has been fluted in a spiral pattern. Everything combines to leave a rifle with recoil that is noticeable though not punishing. If the shooter is already accustomed to 7 RM or 300 Winchester Magnum recoil, the 7 PRC will be a piece of cake. If the shooter’s experience has been mostly hunting with long guns in the .223 to .243 range, we predict he or she will be buying a muzzle brake for their Mossberg shortly after the first shooting session.
The action brings a few nice bells and whistles to the table. The entire barreled action is Cerakoted in the company’s Patriot Brown color and arrived with a 20-minute-of-action Picatinny rail installed. The bolt handle had an oversized knob that was easy to operate but still cleared the scope body by a good margin. The dual-lugged bolt uses a single plunger for the ejector and a sliding-plate extractor. The thumb safety is a two-position rocker switch behind the bolt handle on the right side. Bolt removal requires depressing a tab that is located on the side of the action where it is protected by a flange on the bolt head.
This Patriot Predator uses the Lightning bolt-action trigger — a system which employs a safety blade in the trigger, allowing for a lighter pull while maintaining safety. Our sample required right at 2.5 pounds pressure to activate and did so with very little take-up, creep, or overtravel.
Our Team Said: This Mossberg Patriot Predator proved to us once again that, with the right skills, inexpensive does not have to mean cheap. It came in second place in these tests with an average three-shot group size of 0.86 inch, and that was including the Hornady 175-grain hunting ammo that the rifle did not particularly like. It shot the ELD-X to an average 1.19-inch group. The Hornady 180-grain match ammo, on the other hand, snuggled down into a tidy 0.54-inch average that we would gladly take from just about any rifle. Our only real concern was the magazine. We don’t know if it was the follower, feed lip design, spring tension, or something else invisible to us, but the Mossberg magazine did not want to secure the last round. It consistently popped a cartridge loose when we opened the bolt to chamber that round or when we tried to load the rifle with a single cartridge in the magazine. Everything but the last round fed fine, but that one item cost the Patriot a full letter grade.
