AllOutdoor Review: Bergara B14R Steel – ELR .22 Long Rifle Build

Half a year ago Garand Thumb invited a fan who claimed he could hit a soda can 700 yards away with .22lr. This inspired my friends and I to attempt this challenge ourselves. I reached out to Bergara and they lent me this Bergara B14R to use it as an extreme long range (ELR) platform in our own 700 yard soda can challenge. Let’s check out this sweet .22lr training rifle.

Bergara Coverage on AllOutdoor:

Bergara B14R — Stock setup, Pill box and Magpul MOE bipod not included.

Last June my friends attempted to shoot a soda can 700 yards away. My friends Kythe and Kevin used their Vudoo Gun Works rimfire rifles. I only had my Ruger Precision Rimfire and that was not up to the task of ELR especially on a soda can 700 yards away. I have heard great things about the Bergara B14R so I was excited to try it out in this extremely difficult challenge. My friend Kevin was able to hit the soda can. On another range trip, Kythe hit a soda can 700 yards away. We decided to raise the stakes on the 700 yard soda can challenge and do it at night. More on that later.

Bergara sent me their B14R with an 18″ steel barrel. They thought the steel barrel would be better for ELR shooting over their carbon barrel. You can definitely feel the weight of the Bergara B14R even in their HMR chassis. I was a little disappointed that the Bergara B14R receiver did not come with any scope base or a picatinny rail. However this was only a minor inconvenience since the B14R was designed to be a Remington 700 pattern. So any 700 style scope base or chassis will work with it.

I already had plans to change the chassis out since I like the ability to mount night vision clip-ons on my guns. So when I got home I pulled the barreled action from the HMR chassis. I decided to test the Bergara B14R’s compatibility by swapping the factory trigger for my Geissele Remington 700 trigger.

I am not familiar with Remington 700 pattern rifles nearly as much as I am with the AR-15 platform. When I pulled the Bergara factory trigger off the barreled action I noticed the top of the trigger looks nothing like the Geissele. See that dark gray hinged part? I assumed that was the hammer.

Upon looking at my Geissele trigger, it does not have anything remotely similar.

I decided to try the Geissele trigger anyway and that part on the B14R trigger is not a hammer. The Geissele trigger worked and I love the light trigger pull.

Next up was to put the Bergara B14R barreled action into a different chassis. I opted for my Q Side Chick chassis. It has an optic rail and full length handguard. My friend Kythe gave me a spare Q-Sert picatinny rail so I could mount my PVS-27 clip-on night vision device. I added an Odin Works MLOK ARCA rail at the bottom so I could use my tripod and Atlas bipod.

The Geissele trigger shows nicely in the Q Side Chick.

I mounted my Gen 1 Vortex Razor HD but it is only 5-20x. The other problem is the Q Side Chick optic base is a zero base. If I am going to try and lob .22lr at ELR distances I need all the elevation I could get my hands on.

Kythe had a spare Eratac adjustable inclination mount but it is for 34mm scopes while my Vortex Razor HD is 35mm. I reached out to Athlon Optics and they were kind enough to lend me their Ares ETR UHD 4-30×56 which has a 34mm tube and higher magnification which will come in handy when trying to shoot 700 yards away.

Here is the Athlon Ares ETR UHG mounted in the Eratac mount. This mount is designed for ELR shooters and starts at 25 mils of elevation. The mount has a cam that adds 5 mil increments all the way up to 45 mils of elevation.

I set the Eratac at the lowest setting, 25 mils, and proceeded to try and zero the Athlon Ares ETR UHD to the Bergara B14R. I knew I would be using sub sonic .22lr ammo to try and shoot 700 yards so I used SK Standard Plus as my break in load.

Due to the immense amount of elevation I dialed the Athlon Ares ETR UHD all the way to the bottom. I still had to hold under by 9.5 mils to hit this steel plate 100 yards away.

Next up was to get muzzle velocity of the ammo I plan to use so I could enter it into the Garmin Synapse ballistic app and then upload it to my Instinct 2x Solar watch to spit out the ballistic calculations for lobbing sub sonic .22lr out to 700 yards. I used my Bullet Seeker to measure some SK Standard Plus. The standard deviation was not great.

My friend Kythe gave me a box of SK Long Range to try out and they proved to be a lot more consistent than the SK Standard Plus ammo.

I ended up shooting about 90+ rounds of SK Standard plus and noticed the groups shrink. See the target below. These were the groups shot out of the Bergara B14R at 100 yards. The large group in the middle was my initial group using SK Standard Plus. I stopped and tried shooting some steel targets and then returned to try the groups again. That is the group on the right. Now I have shot over 100 rounds and the group shrunk almost in half. The third group was with the SK Long Range ammo and that is the smaller group on the left. Not too shabby at 100 yards out of a .22LR Bergara B14R trainer.

With the bullet and gun data entered into the Garmin Applied Ballistics app, the watch range card tells me I need 57.6 mils of elevation to land at 700 yards using SK Standard Plus.

Bergara B14R Ready For A Night On The Range

Aside from the scope this is the setup I used to try and shoot a soda can at 700 yards at night.

Shooting something as small as a soda can 700 yards away is tough enough. Then add the complication of trying to do it in the dark is something else. To make it “easier” we used 16oz water bottles instead of soda cans. We figured an extra 4 oz of water is not going to make it easier to hit it with .22lr at 700 yards in the dark. We removed the wrapper and inserted a chemlight in the water bottle. This will help us aim at it using our night vision clip ons.

Photo by Vic of us trying to aim at the 700 yard water bottles.

To spot the misses of our .22lr rounds we used my Vectronix JIM LR cooled thermal spotter. It is sensitive enough to see .22lr kick up dirt all along our backstop even at night. Here is a video I compiled of the videos we captured that night.

Both Kythe and Kevin were able to hit their respective water bottles. I was not as fortunate. The Bergara B14R danced all around the water bottle with some occasional close calls. I am impressed with how reasonably close it got to the water bottle. I was easily within <0.5 mils of the target. We wanted to try shooting this challenge at night in hopes there would be less wind than when we tried it in the day time. We were right, there was significantly less wind.

I was a little bit disappointed that I was unable to connect with the 700 yard water bottle. So I came back to the range on a different day. I decided to try and redeem myself by shooting a more reasonable ELR target. We have a silhouette set at 470 yards. I decided to try using my Vortex Razor HD. I needed 27 mils of elevation using SK Standard Plus. Unfortunately I did not have enough elevation to comfortably aim at this target. It would require me to dial all the elevation I have left and still hold near the bottom of my scope reticle. Add to the fact that and we were experiencing 6-8 mils of windage. I would be holding off target outside of the scope. So I switched back to the Athlon Ares ETR UHD. Below is the sight picture from the Ares ETR UHD.

This time I pulled out a 50 rd box of Eley Match ammo. I have had this box for years. the wax coating seems like it dried up. But with the help of my friend Kythe spotting I was able to make a number of hits on the steel target 470 yards away.

Final Thoughts On the Bergara B14R

The Bergara B14R is a great rifle in .22lr. I love that it is Remington 700 pattern so accessories for it are plentiful. It works great as a trainer since you can set it up exactly like your centerfire rifle if you wanted to.

Thanks to my friends who have gone down the precision .22lr rabbit hole. They warned me that I would have to season and break in the B14R barrel. My friends recommended to shoot at least 100 rounds to break in the barrel. Ideally with the same stuff I plan on using for the more precise and accurate shots. That is why I broke the barrel in with SK Standard Plus. It has a similar lube as the fancier .22lr precision rounds. Sure enough I could see the groups shrink after the first 100 rds.

While I was unsuccessful at hitting the water bottle at 700 yards, it is clear to my friends and I that a hit that far on something so small with such an inaccurate round comes down to luck. It does take skill to deliver the bullet and land it in the vicinity of a soda can or in this case a water bottle 700 yards away. With regards to the 470 yard steel target. I know I hit a number of times which was confirmed by my friend Kythe who helped me to spot using my JIM LR thermal spotter.

The Bergara B14R retails for just over $1,000. You can just buy their barreled action for less and save some money on the chassis of your choosing. The magazines are proprietary but you can buy more for around $40 each or get the third party ones for higher capacity. I plan to continue testing this rifle to see which ammo it likes best. But so far it likes the good stuff. For more information on the B14R go to Bergara’s website. For more information on the Athlon Optics ARES ETR UHD check out their website.

Thanks to Bergara for sending in this rifle and Athlon Optics for sending in their scope.

Nicholas Chen

SME on night vision and thermal related subjects.