Don't know why more people aren't buying CZ rifles, if they care about quality and accuracy.
Scheels in Billings can't keep CZ rifles in stock. They never come back with warranty issues and they usually outshoot the Kimber and Cooper rifles. One Scheels salesman owns CZ , Cooper, and Kimber and admits the CZ is a tiny bit more accurate than either, for half the price. In the rimfires, they say CZ is just as accurate as Anschutz for half the price. One Cabelas salesman owns 4 CZ rifles and loves them and is looking to buy more. Both my CZ centerfire rifles are nail drivers and easily print 1/2" groups with decent ammo. None have been modified, strictly out of the box. My CZ 452 is WAY more accurate than my Ruger 10/22, and will outshoot most Ruger 77/22 rifles for about $200 lower cost.
CZ 527 and CZ 550 rifles will come with the Single Set trigger and need no further work for match grade performance. Even when fired normally, the trigger is better than say a Ruger M77, being lighter with no creep. The triggers break like a glass rod....just what you want. The chambers and bores are hammer forged at the same time on the same mendrel and are absolutely concentric. This is why you see very little variation among CZ rifles. A separate machining operation that MUST be done very precisely is eliminated and is performed only when building a new mandrel, which is rarely done only after a thousand or more barrels are forged, and then done with extreme care.
As for factory rifles not being able to shoot 1 MOA out of the box, somebody has been buying junk rifles and/or using junk ammo if that is their experiences. Even my brother-in-law's Ruger M77 MkII in .22-250 shot a 0.25" group and a 0.3" group when I tested 16 different handload combination. It is absolutely box stock and does NOT have a trigger as nice as any CZ rifle I have shot. 6 of the 15 groups I shot were 1 MOA or less and I was shooting on a windy day or more of them would have been 1MOA or less.
Most people are ignorant when it comes to cleaning guns and the first thing I do is clean the bore with something like JB or Remington 40-X before I test for groups. My brother-in-law's M77 bore was the color of a shiny new penny before I cleaned it, and after polishing the barrel with 40-X is shined like a silver mirror and it developed no further copper fouling as I shot a string of over 50 shots for the ammo test groups.
I also properly torqued his loose stock screws and the scope was properly mounted after the "professional" mount job at Shipton's was discovered to have not seated the front scope ring properly.
If I can get a bunch of sub MOA groups out of a light barrelled, plastic stocked Ruger M77 with cheesy heavy trigger, you can just imagine what my CZ 527 .223 Kevlar Varmint with Single Set trigger of about a pound weight and heavy target grade barrel is capable of, not to mention the one in .204 Ruger. A CZ 527 that can't print groups that are covered with a dime at 100 yards is either a defective rifle (not likely), has the wrong ammo, or more likely has somebody pulling the trigger that knows diddly squat about making a rifle perform to full potential. If you can't get a box stock CZ varmint rifle to print 1/2" groups, you need to question yourself before you question the rifle. CZ dealer after CZ dealer tells me they NEVER have warranty issues with CZ rifles and every one has turned out to be a nail driver. The hardest thing is finding CZ rifles in stock to look at, as they are becoming legendary for accuracy up here in Montana where accuracy counts.
I also have a metric FAL semiautomatic in .308 that prints 0.9 MOA groups at 200 yards (average of 5 groups, one group was under 0.5 MOA), and it's box stock Springfield Armory with a heavy trigger except for the addition of a Limbsaver X-Ring deresonator, which I paid $10 at Ft. Thompson in Little Rock, Arkansas. The dealer says he sells out of them on a regular basis. Those things work if you get them in the right spot, but a CZ rifle needs them like an Eskimo needs ice cubes.
Savage rifles I examined did not seem to be of the same level of precision of a CZ rifle. CZ should be compared to Sako, Anschutz and such as far as mechanical precision is concerned. They are tighter than a Kimber that I examined. My precision tool and die maker friend agreed. The new FN manufactured Winchester Model 70 and Browning X-Bolt are barking on CZ's heels as far as precision build, and that's about the only other two I would consider in the CZ price range. Remingston, Ruger, Tikka and Savage just feel sloppy by comparison.
. If you have the money to spend, they are pretty hard to beat. They're not as pricey as a "true" custom either.
