Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report!  This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and its many guns, gear, ammunition, shooting sports, and history! This week we’re diving back into rifles and specifically one I’ve been wanting to check out for a while – the Bergara B14R. The Bergara B14R is a full-size rimfire trainer rifle meant to emulate the Remington 700 almost exactly. While this isn’t a new concept for rifles – rimfire trainer rifles go back as far as WWII – the B14R from Bergara offers the serious rimfire shooter a compelling case for a modern precision rifle trainer and today I’ll show you why.

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• The Rimfire Report: How to Properly Play with Your Kitty Kat (Clone)
• The Rimfire Report: The KelTec P17 Gets the Red Dot Treatment

The Rimfire Report: Bergara’s Full-Size Rimfire Trainer – The B14R

Features, Specs, Price, and Value

The B14R exhibits a sleek and familiar profile, resembling a shorter centerfire rifle rather than a typical rimfire variant like the similar but entirely different Bergara BMR – which is both much lighter, much smaller, and less expensive. Built on the same B14 action as the Bergara HMR, it shares the Remington 700 footprint, allowing for easy compatibility with a wide range of aftermarket components including most Remington 700 stocks and chassis. The rifle is equipped with an 18-inch, heavy-contour barrel made from 4140 Chromoly steel 1:16 twist barrel, which is one of the two best twist rates for 40-grain 22LR ammunition. The barrel also has a 1/2×28 threaded muzzle to accommodate your preferred brake or suppressor.

One of the standout features of the Bergara B14R is its stock, which is shared with the short-action, centerfire HMR rifles. Made from molded polymer with an embedded aluminum mini-chassis system, the stock offers enhanced rigidity and a solid platform to shoot from. It boasts an adjustable cheekpiece that locks securely in place, providing ample height adjustment for different scopes and faces, and the length of pull can be adjusted using the included spacer system. The spacers that came with the B14R featured enough adjustment from 14.5″ at the longest to 12.25″ at the shortest meaning this could possibly be converted for use as a very heavy youth rifle, or just a smaller framed shooter. The rifle has a hefty starting weight of 9.2 pounds and is compatible with B14R 22LR 10-round AICS pattern magazines – which should theoretically also work with virtually any Remington 700 pattern stock or Chassis

When it comes to the price and value proposition, the Bergara B-14R has some pretty horrifying sticker shock for a 22LR – it has a street price of about $1,000 and an MSRP of $1,229 in the realm of precision rimfire rifles. Compared to other rifles designed for the same purpose, the B-14R offers a ton of flexibility and adaptability, but won’t be worth that price in my opinion if it’s not accurate.

Traditionally, obtaining a .22LR trainer with similar capabilities meant investing in a premium bolt action rimfire rifle that could cost nearly $2,000 for just the barreled action alone. However, the B-14R breaks that mold by providing a more accessible alternative that comes complete with stock, all at half the price. Furthermore, its compatibility with the substantial aftermarket for the Remington 700 platform allows shooters to create a .22 clone of their existing centerfire rifles or build a match rifle replica using the stock, trigger, and accessories of their choice. In terms of value for money, the Bergara B-14R stands out as an expensive option, but one that provides a lot of value for someone who is heavily invested in precision shooting and would value a lower-cost training alternative.

Range Trip – Reliability and Accuracy

Bolt action rifles are in general, more accurate than their semi-automatic counterparts. The B14R is no exception to this. I kitted the B14R out with a Leupold Mark 5 HD 5-25xs56mm scope and did some rudimentary accuracy testing with it. I was able to test out CCI Standard Velocity, CCI Quiet, CCI Mini-Mags, Aguila Super Extra, and just for fun with the suppressor, some CCI CBs. Aside from the CBs, all of the ammunition used had 40-grain projectile weights which is the optimal weight for the B14R’s twist rate.

I experienced no failures to fire or extract from the rifle aside from when we experimented with CCI CB 22 Shorts. I think it goes without saying that extraction/feeding malfunctions with that ammo shouldn’t come as a surprise. That being said, across all ammunition types, we did not see a single failure to fire out of our ammo.

I decided to go with 10-round groups for this series of accuracy testing. Most PRS shooters (rimfire or otherwise) are going to be shooting more than 10 rounds during a single stage, so I figure 10 rounds should be enough to establish at the very least a trend.

CCI Standard 40 grain

With the ammunition that I had on me that day, the best out of the bunch was CCI’s 40-grain standard velocity, my go-to ammunition for Rimfire PRS matches. At 50 yards, and with some light wind, I was able to achieve groups about 1″ in size which is the equivalent of 2 MOA at 100 yards – not an uncommon distance for Rimfire PRS shooters.

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CCI Quiet 40 grain

CCI Quiet netted about a 2.5″ wide group at 50 yards, however, the point of impact also shifted about 2.5″ down from the point of aim. To adjust for this, I had to use the 8 MOA holdover on the Leupold Mark 5, and a little more than twice that to make hits at a piece of rectangular steel Hop and I set up at about 125 yards. The CCI Standard Velocity was already pretty quiet coming out of the B14R and my trusty Tion Inc Dragoon 450B, but the CCI Quiet makes it barely noticeable that you’ve even fired. Might be useful for the PRS shooter who owns land, and also needs to do some pest control while they get in their positional shooting practice.

CCI Mini-Mag and Aguila Super Extra 40 grain

I’m grouping these two types of ammunition together because they not only share similar performance, they are grouped fairly identically with the point of impact shifting up (about 1″) at the same 50-yard distance. The only major difference I can deduce from the groups I shot that day was that the Aguila Super Extra tended to string more horizontally and the Mini Mags tended to string a bit more vertically. We were still able to hit the same rectangular steel target at 125-yards with boring consistency, but I have to speculate that both of these supersonic 22LR offerings might suffer at greater distances as the bullets travel through the transonic barrier and start to veer off path – subsonic ammunitions do not suffer from this same issue but are also limited by larger holdovers and decreased range.

• CCI Mini-Mag 40-grain
• Aguila Super Extra 40 gr

CCI CB 22 Short 29 grain

Aside from pest control, this ammunition selection has no other practical application than fun. CCI CB 22 Shorts feature no powder with the projectile being propelled solely by the priming material in the case. This makes them incredibly quiet and ideal for quiet casual plinking or pest removal duties. While supersonic ammunition is still a threat to your hearing, CCI CB 22s make virtually no noise and thus I think I can safely declare that out of this specific setup not only is this ammunition type super fun, but it’s also hearing safe.

Impacts tended to land about 5-6″ below the point of aim at 50 yards with the 10-round group featuring about 2-3″ of stringing vertically. Reliable impacts could still be made out to our 125-yard steel target, but the holdover was 28-MOA which meant that the optic’s magnification had to be dialed pretty far back to make a consistent hold. The short rounds fed and extracted from the rifle just fine as long as you cycled the bolt slowly.

Match Ammo – Coming Soon

I’m currently in the (expensive) process of gathering up a variety of match ammunition to see if the B14R fares any better in the accuracy department when paired with this costly ammo. As I discussed in my review of the Ruger Precision Rimfire, a lot of the time match ammunition can net you some incredible groups, but often rivals centerfire ammunition in terms of cost which may not be worth it to some people or even competitors.

However, since the B14R is meant to be a trainer for a full-size centerfire rifle, I think pairing it with match ammunition might just be an assumed part of the cost for a potential buyer, so shortly down the road we’ll not only be using it with a bunch of match rimfire ammunition, we’ll also be further upgrading it with a new dedicated PRS chassis, as well as a better bipod, to see how far we can take the Rimfire PRS trainer concept.

Closing thoughts. Worth the Cost?

As of right now, I think I’m still on the fence about the B14R. The rifle is accurate, and reliable, and does the job of simulating the weight, and the manual of arms of a full-size rifle. While I think it would be better if Bergara offered a couple of different styles of chassis/stock from the factory, the included one is serviceable if not biased a bit towards a more hunting-oriented audience – which is fine considering a full-sized rimfire trainer for a hunting rifle is a near parallel concept to one for a PRS shoot.

While it’s really cool that it fits into virtually any Remington 700 chassis, the $1,000 asking price really only sounds good to me if you’re planning on using the included Bergara Chassis. The included stock/chassis that the B14R comes with is great, but lacks a lot of the typical attachments and features that one gunning for a top spot in a PRS or Rimfire PRS match would typically want on it. Bergara does sell a barreled action for $680 on Brownells, which might be a great starting point for some people who are looking for a solid Rimfire PRS trainer rifle, but already know what type of stock/chassis they want to run. This is likely the route I’d take.

Soon we’ll be reviewing the B14R in further detail combining it with one of the newest PRS-style stocks on the market, and also pairing it with some of the best match 22LR ammunition available on the market to see just how good the B14R can get. If you’ve had any experience with the B14R, please feel free to share it down in the comments below. As always, thanks for stopping by to read The Rimfire Report and we’ll see you all next week.

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