Henry Ar-7 Survival Rifle

 

Guns, whatever your opinion on them, are an excellent survival tool. While my AR-15 might be a great tool for self defense if the proverbial "shit hit the fan" it would certainly be a bit much for varmint hunting. I have been wanting a .22 caliber rifle for awhile for this purpose, and one that is this tailor made for survival is right up my alley. The Henry U.S. Survival rifle is a semi-automatic chambered in .22 LR. The biggest selling point being that it all breaks down and stores in the buttstock. It also floats when stowed. You can get it in black or camo and it comes with two eight round magazines.

First impressions, well made and sturdy, despite the light weight. Solid construction and ease of use make it the perfect survival weapon. The light weight and low recoil make it feel like the ideal weapon to hand off to a novice shooter. Right out of the box it fired dead center at 25 meters and 3 inches low and left at 50. Had it firing consistently within the 20 ring in minutes. Over the day at the range I fired off about 280 rounds... with 6 malfunctions. Normally I would consider this pretty bad, but all but one were misfeeds on loading the first round. I think the issue was mostly due to the hollow point ammunition I was using. All I shot was CCI high velocity hollow points in 36 grain. I didn't have an issue until after the 200 round mark, so I think lead fouling was a bit of an issue. From what I have read these rifles don't like hollowpoints, that is all I shot today so I guess I did pretty well. The only malfuction I had while firing was a stovepipe ejection. For those that don't know this is when the empty shell lodges in the ejection port. Other that that all malfunctions were on loading the first shell.

Overall I think that the benefits of this rifle handily outweigh its shortcomings. I don't have any reservations about adding this rifle to my kit. Aside from the couple misfeeds I had, the rifle shot well and was accurate enough to hunt with. Firing a consistent 5 inch group with hollow points is just fine at 50 meters, and at 25 the groups dropped to about three inches. Did I mention it's fun as hell to shoot?