Once upon a time there was several gun companies out there that would produce fine target rifles in .22LR. Stevens was one of those. Mainly known for its excellent single shot rifles, they also made the 416 target rifle. You can still run across there as training rifles for the military.
As all target rifles of the era, they came with iron targets sights and the barrel was drilled and tapped for target blocks for the mounting of target scopes like the 20X Unertl mounted on this one.
When you are attempting to shoot small groups with a target rifle from the bench a 20X is nice. Even better when it’s a Unertl.
As you can see, the 416 comes with a target style stock for position shooting. The forearms has a rail for hand rests and sling swivels with several positions available. We aren’t concerned with that today. My eyes and arthritis have ended my sling shooting and iron sight precision shooting forever I’m afraid.
For this test at 50 yards I used a variety of match ammo. Some vintage Winchester and a box of modern Eley.
I suffered mightily in the heat and humidity for these groups a couple days ago. I managed to sneak in some pretty good 5 shot groups. Some other ones not so good. Trying to beat an oncoming thunderstorm and the wind really challenged might holds.
All groups are 5 round strings. You can see from their locations how the wind would change. 50 yards is a long ass way for .22s when you are shooting for groups in a pretty stiff wind. I intended to move out to 100 and see what happens but the wind got worse and I thought a storm was coming ( It blew over). I intend to do a part 2 in a few days. We will see what it has at 100 yards then.
Scattered Shots 
Well, despite you being a pitiful wreck of a man and all, that’s some damn fine shooting.
My .22 is a CZ452 American with a nice Leupold scope. I use it for hunting rabbits and foxes, so I’ve always been happy with minute-of-rabbit accuracy using cheap CCI bulk ammo. Having seen this though, I’m gonna buy a few boxes of match ammo and see what it can do.
I’m 63, and my eyes aren’t great either, but I had some custom shooting glassses made, and I can still shoot Master grade PPC scores with iron sights when I wear them. Having them made involved taking up a shooting stance and pointing my revolver right into the face of the optometrist, while he looked back at me across the sights and made marks where my pupils aligned with the sights on the lenses. I declared that gun clear with him 3 times before we did this, and it still made my arsehole pucker pointing the gun into his eye while he did that.
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I have to get some new glasses. I haven’t been to the eye doc or gotten new glasses since 2011 and its really becoming an issue the last couple years. I have to get off my ass and get it done. Thank God John Unertl made glass that can even make some one with shit eyes be able to see
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Looking forward to Part 2. One of those was on my list for a while, but had a hard time finding a really nice one and eventually moved on to other obsessions.
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Get a Winchester Model 52 instead
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Good advice, and have 52 B, C and D already.
Stevens guns made before they were cheapened out used to be of interest, but I repented of it.
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Is it just the lighting and the photo or is that a really nice blue job? It looks like you could dive in.
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its a damn fine blue job
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