Great Rifle with a fantastic trigger. Like new in case.

North Scottsdale Pawn 
10812 N Scottsdale rd 
Scottsdale, AZ 85254

Bergara rifles have really become a big hit here in the United States with a lineup of rifles that have been shown to shoot very well and are built with excellent quality. While the popularity of their rifles has taken off recently, the history of the company is much longer. Bergara Barrels has been building high quality barrels for many decades at their factory in Bergara, Spain. Their barrels are known for their high quality and are used by many custom rifle builders from around the world. But we are not here to talk about their barrels, we are here to take a look at their rifles. Bergara has a standard line of rifles known as the B-14 which are very nice factory produced rifles that are built at their factory in Spain. Above the B-14 they have their high end Premier Series of rifles that are actually built here in the USA by a very unique team of rifle builders that are all former Military or DOD. If the Premier series is still not good enough for you, then they also offer a full Custom build service as well. For this review, we had the opportunity to perform a full evaluation on one of their Premier series rifles, known as the LRP chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. Thanks to a loyal Sniper Central reader for making this review possible.

The LRP we had for review is a few years old and Bergara has changed a few items, which we will mention as we go through the review. Normally, when doing a rifle review we do not mention the actual case that the rifle comes in. Most factory rifles simply ship in a cardboard box. But as you go up in price, sometimes a hard case is used, such as with Steyr and others. When you go to the very high end custom built rifles, typically they will ship in something like a Pelican 1750 with cutout foam just for the rifle. In this case, we have a factory rifle, but built in their custom shop and it ships in a case that is not custom cut like a Pelican, but is rigid and custom made for the rifle, and it is nice. There are straps to hold the rifle in place, and a large enough scope area to fit a wide variety of scope options. Its may not be a Pelican or Storm case, but it is still very nice.

Included with the rifle is a small instruction manual and a test target, which we assume was fired at 100 yards, to verify accuracy. The LRP is available in several different chamberings, but our test rifle was chambered in the popular, and capable, 6.5 Creedmoor which means it has a bit longer barrel than the .308, but a bit shorter barrel than the 6mm Creedmoor. Everything else on the LRP is the same between the different cartridges.

The Premier LRP comes from the Bergara custom shop located here in the USA and is a chassis style of rifle. Chassis systems have become increasingly more common and it seems every rifle builder now has one. The chassis on the LRP is made by XLR Industries and is aluminum and built in conjunction with Bergara. The buttplate has a large rubber recoil pad to help manage the recoil and it is mounted on a buttplate that is adjustable for length of pull. The skeleton style buttstock area has a flush cup receiver as well as a rail mounting area on the bottom where a mono-pod was mounted on this test rifle.

The cheekpad is a hard curved Kydex piece that wraps over the top and is somewhat plain in design and appearance. It also has some soft rubber attached to it to provide comfort and a good gripping surface for your cheek. It works well in wet or sweaty conditions, though it is soft and appears like it may take a beating with normal tactical use. It is adjustable for height and can be tilted forward, or back to minor extent. The buttplate extension and cheekrest are mounted to a MSR style buffer tube assembly that does not fold. It is a straight forward design without much fancy stuff and seems to just simply work.

 

Like most all of the modern chassis system setups, the LRP utilizes an AR style pistol grip. In this case it is a contoured hard rubber grip with some aggressive texturing and a mild palm swell that fills the hand nicely. It is more than likely one of the common grips like a MOE or ERGO from a known manufacturers, but we were unable to determine which one.  The aluminum XLR chassis appears somewhat boxy with lots of straight lines, but it is well made, rigid, and seems durable. The trigger guard is also blocky and rectangular but is large enough to use with gloved hands with plenty of room to spare. The bottom of the trigger guard has a lightening hole cut into it to help remove an ounce or two of weight

Bergara indicates that the current versions of the LRP utilize the excellent TriggerTech triggers, but our test rifle here had a Timney, also an excellent trigger, with a straight and wide trigger shoe.  With the pistol grip, the hand is perfectly placed for excellent trigger control and the straight shoe helps even further. The trigger was set at an average pull weight of 2 pounds 13 ounces (2.81 lbs / 1.28 kg) according to our trigger scale, and broke very cleanly. At the front of the trigger guard a small magazine release lever protrudes down for easy access with the trigger finger. The AICS style magazines drop freely even when empty. The current LRP rifles ship with a 5-round Magpul PMAG, but this one had an offbrand steel AICS 10-round magazine.

The action on the LRP rifle is one of Bergara’s own Premier short actions. This action is built on the Remington 700 footprint, which makes it easier for parts selection such as the stock and trigger. But the action itself has several of its own unique design features and is made here in the USA. The rear tang of the action is the same as a Remington 700 action and as you would expect, the safety is the same as well since it uses Remington triggers. That safety is the traditional two position safety located on the right hand side of the tang. Forward for fire, rear to put it on safe.

On the left hand side of the action there is a bolt release lever that requires a hefty amount of pressure to push it in and then pull the bolt out of the rear of the action. The action has the same rounded profile as a Remington action but on the left hand side there is a flat area up near the top where they put the company name. The ejection port is closed on top, unlike on a Remington, and this helps create a stiffer action and should help contribute to better accuracy, but it is a bit more difficult to access the chamber area with fingers to remove brass or to single feed.