Bear Creek Arsenal Barrel Review

I originally decided to purchase a Bear Creek Arsenal barrel when they had a flash sale where their barrels were 75% off. I was completely stunned and bought it with hardly thinking about it. They advertise a 1 MOA accuracy guarantee. What could go wrong with a $25 rifle barrel? You are probably thinking the worst at this point, but I tried it out and now you all can hear what a real experience is with one of these budget friendly barrels before you pull the trigger on one.

First Impressions

I received the barrel roughly a year and a half prior to writing this, so things are a bit hazy on the original unboxing, but it did ship and arrive promptly. The packaging was adequate, and the barrel arrived in good condition. The muzzle threads were capped, and the markings on the barrel indicate that I got what I ordered.

I ordered a 16” heavy profile melanite coated barrel chambered in .223 Wylde with a 1:7 twist and a mid-length gas system. The bore looked to be in good condition. The crown was not rounded at all, but that didn’t concern me as I’d be protecting the crown with a muzzle device anyways. The M4 feed ramps were not the cleanest I had ever seen, but these seemed serviceable. There was a small amount of carbon fouling, telling me that the barrel had been test fired.

The Install

Since I bought the barrel on a whim, I had to decide what I wanted to do with it. My initial plan was to build something that might be capable of medium range coyote hunting, but I didn’t want to dump a ton of money into a rifle that built around the cheapest barrel I had ever heard of. PSA receiver set, an MFT stock, mil spec trigger and BCG, a budget friendly muzzle brake, and the handguard from my friends at STNGR completed the build. I put a piece of glass on that was sent to me for a review from Monstrum Tactical.

First Shots

My first trip to the range was meant to zero the rifle and see what kind of groups I could get at 300 yards. I brought some budget Federal, Winchester white box, 62 grain green tips, and some Hornady 75 grain match ammo to run the rifle through its paces and see if there was an ammo it preferred.

The rifle ran flawlessly with no malfunctions that I can remember. Something I was slightly surprised by after seeing the less than perfectly machined feed ramps.

I originally tried to zero with the budget ammo at 100 yards and had no problem getting on paper. But that’s where the good news ended on my first day. I’m not a PRS champion by any means, but I am an above average shooter with some training under my belt. I could not get the rifle to shoot a group smaller than 5 inches that day. I ended up shooting about 50-75 rounds before I packed it up out of frustration. I did decide to take some shots at the 300-yard target since I took the time to walk down there and hang it up. Out of 5 rounds I did manage to get one round on the 12” wide target at that range. A disappointing day when I planned on testing the tracking on turrets of the scope too.

View post on imgur.com

Further Testing

After that experience, I realized that this barrel wasn’t going to help take coyotes at anything over 100 yards, and even that would be questionable. I swapped out the optic for a budget friendly low powered variable optic thinking it would be a fun plinking gun.

View post on imgur.com

To my surprise, things improved over time. I believe that either the barrel needed to get some copper equilibrium built up because the groups have tightened over time. After about 100 rounds and a very minimal cleaning regime I have been able to attain groups that are slightly better than 3 MOA at 100 yards with range ammo; mostly with Winchester white box 55 grain ammo.

While I am not ready to strap some long range optics on this upper, I do think that this would be a strong contender for a home defense rifle, a rifle for fun on the range and training, or even a budget build to try out 3-gun competitions.

Final Thoughts

The BCA barrels have very mixed reviews online, but most forums only have reports of first shots prior to any angry rant followed by infinite silence from the original poster. After about 700 rounds, I do think there is value in a Bear Creek Arsenal barrel, but you should know what you’re getting yourself into and have realistic expectations. I have not attempted to take BCA up on their 1 MOA promise, but I’m satisfied with the final product now that the barrel has been broken in.