Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Bear creek arsenal. Any good?

If you want to go cheap, buy PSA.

Their prices are pretty decent & they've raised their game significantly & have a pretty broad range of product.

Anyone dealing with BCA after all the horror stories, gets whatever they deserve...................AR roulette.

Hard to fix stupid (or cheap) sometimes.

Rock on boys.

MM

I’ll be in Charleston in two weeks and plan on stopping by PSA just to see what they got. I’ve had PSA AR’s before and was not too impressed. Probably just looking for an excuse to visit a LGS.

Traded for a BC 350 Legend upper 2 years ago. It was the biggest POS I've ever owned. It shot patterns not groups. A couple of friends experience the same results with BC uppers. NEVER AGAIN!

I have a 450 Bushmaster upper from BCA. Functions fine and good groups. Seems like luck of the draw.

Guess I'm just lucky, I have 2 BCA uppers, a 50 Beowulf and a 350 led. Both shoot fine, and functions as they should.

At least they are cheap enough that you can throw a new barrel on them and/or other parts and be about even.

Whatever. Be prepared to do some basement smithing or put up with some idiosyncrasies.

Looking harder at Windham or White Oak. Already dealing with a Bartelin that is refusing to behave on my 300. Hearing Bartelin is having problems, which would fit my situation right now.

I may buy some of their side-charging uppers for suppressor host, straight pull, hunting uppers….but their barrels are [bleep]. I’ve had two buddies bring BCA 300 uppers to me with issues, that would disassemble loaded rounds when unloading, leaving the bullet stuck in the neck and dumping powder everywhere.

Wyndham is the original Bushmaster employees, IIRC, that started up their own shop with the original facility, after the company was sold. I’ve had a few of their rifles, and they were good ARs. Didn’t keep them long enough or use for enough crazy hard or long range work to say if they compare with ‘top shelf’, but I’d have no problem buying from them.

What's the problem with the Bartlien?

Just my POV, but I'd have a hard time justifying a Bartlien on a 300.

As for PSA, don't know how long ago you had any of their stuff, but they've definitely upped their game over the last 3 years or so...........they're using a lot of FN chrome lined barrels which are very good barrels for something not stainless. And they're offering some options with top shelf parts. FN generally gets their gas ports sized right.

For the most part, I usually build, & tend toward high end parts, but we've bought 3 of their P&W'ed 14.7" uppers, 2 with Geiselle rails, one with their rail, & all 3 have been dead solid perfect in performance with all the accuracy you can use with a red dot sight.

Here's a pic of one of them with the Geiselle rail.

MM

Very nice rifle. What about Aero Precision? The BA barrels they use seem to be pretty good. I'm also wondering about Stag.. Larue seems to have a following, but I don't believe Larue makes anything like what the OP is asking about. Just so I am reading this right, the OP is wanting an AR with an A2 front sight. Does it have to have a carry handle or can it use a flip up rear sight? I think being able to run an optic to diagnose precision would be a good idea, as 79s also agreed. Didn't hear from the OP if that was acceptable or not. Also, wasn't brownells building some A2 rifles a while back? I believe you could get an upper from them, but not sure about right now.. If so, how did they shoot? I saw some youtube videos on them, but like most of the youtube videos, guys can't shoot for schidt there. The only mother fugger than can shoot on Youtube with an m16 style rifle is one I've posted videos of before:



Any of you guys, besides 79s go to AR shoots or the like? So maybe you can share some of your experience on what you've seen. I know rost has shot the hell out of these, and some supposed camp perry guys here.. I've shot with some high master class shooters at my club. They come from the big city, but their rifles are no where near what the oldschool M16 looked like. They look more like a space gun to me. Very heavy long barrels with aperture sights in the front and even magnified rear apertures. Those guys shoot well enough, but it only forces me to pull my noveske out. Boy oh boy, talk about sniveling. Those guys hate getting beat..

I have never owned a BCA lower but have dabbled in a few uppers. The first was a M4 looking carbine upper in 6.5 Grendel. MOA shooter and never once failed to function. The second a 350 legend that needed a bit of love to get to function properly, that was a magazine issue. still shoots great with cast and jacketed loads. The last was a 223 Wilde upper I got for the parts to install a 300 Ham'r barrel on. Well crap that durn barrel is a tackdriver. No function issues at all, I recently ran 300 rounds through it testing a pile of old magazines with cheap steel cased smmo and not a single problem of any kind. Gave it a deep clean and expect it to do the same thing again. I guess I have been lucky. My last PSA lower gave me issues with the bolt release and the trigger. Easy fixes but still.

The Bartelin was suggested to me by my gunsmith. He’s done several rifles for me and they’ve all been tackdrivers. This was a 700 300 Win originally. Back in the good old days of production. Ohhh but that wasn’t powerful enough. I had to have a 300 RUM. He suggested back then, a Shilen match barrel, along with his own muzzle brake. Life was good. 1/2” groups pretty much every time. After a dozen or so years I grew tired of getting the living hell kicked out of me (the brake could only do so much). Told my friend John I’m ready to go back to the original chambering. Was told Bartelin is the barrel making all the noise right now…good stuff. The rifle would shoot decent one day, ok the next but never ever a three, four shot group with bullets touching. Inch and a half, two inches. I got much better with the Shilen/ RUM combo. Thought it was the scope. Got rid of a perfectly good S&B Klassic. Tried a Leupold VX5-HD. No good. New Schmidt Stratos…..inch and a half.

The barrel has 175-180 rounds down the tube and no group or bullet combination clicks.

If, and that’s a big IF now, I swap out barrels again I’ll probably hit up Krieger.

You know I do. All my friends are Service Rifle knuckledraggers. We are all sporting 4.5x scopes and lots of UBR stocks. That's exactly what we call those rifles, "space guns". In HP that's Match Rifle class. Ineligible for Leg Points. Lot of guys go to them once they've got their Distinguished Badge. The sights are easier to use for old guys than A2 sights. Now that scopes are legal, most guys are sticking with Service Rifle.

I've had that experience too and reached the same conclusion.

Yep at EIC match those space guns stay at home. We have one last hold out who refuses to shoot AR15 for leg match and drags out the old M1A, for the leg match. Shooting irons is fine and dandy but unless you have phenomenal eye sight shooting out 600yds sucks. Lol.

I watched Norm Crawford shoot a clean 600yd match at Butner with M14. The conditions were not optimimal, but not terrible. Hot with a fish tail from 6.

Watched him clean 600 in anther match while having to stop and take care of one of his kids that was cutting up behind the line. The kid must have been fearless, I always thought that if I looked at Crawford wrong he'd just kill me on the spot.....

I legged out with a M1A in the late 90's. I've been out of it for a long time but I'll bet the "good" scores from that time wouldn't even make the cut now.

Moved to a bolt match rifle asap. My eyesight was terrible and getting worse, very nearsighted all my life and then the presbyopia on top of that. A regular Mr. Magoo I was!

I like reading you all's posts on High Power matches.

I've owned dozens of AR's, some "match grade" with Krieger barrels, Colt, Armalite, RRA, Spikes, BCM, Sabre Defense, Bushmaster, Green Mountain and numerous others. Oddly enough, my most accurate 5.56 barrels are plain old RRA chrome moly, a 16", followed by a 20". Not a fanboy of any particular brand, just stating my findings. The RRA's I have are older guns from their early days.

OK, sorry, I misunderstood what kind of rifle you were taking about..........since this was an AR thread I just assumed you were talking about a 300 Blackout AR.

Bartlien's are normally very top shelf barrels & their pricing is top shelf too.

You should have just sent it back as I'd be surprised if they wouldn't have addressed the situation.

MM

Talked to my gunsmith buddy this afternoon about this. Bartelin is going through something or another, as they are dealing with some negative feedback. My gunsmith buddy and a fellow gunsmith have been in conversation with them about some issues and the folks at Bartelin are hanging up on them it’s gotten so bad.

BCA is "ok" for some raw parts, like a barrel for example, but there is no way in hell you could convince me to buy anything "complete" from them, even if it's just an upper. Rather buy Palmetto State if I'm looking towards that price range.