Bear Creek Arsenal 300 Blackout Barrel

In the spring of 2017 I started thinking about the fall deer season here in New York, A nice AR-15 in a 30 caliber was part of my thoughts. After doing some research the 300 Blackout kept coming up as basically a 30-30 rounds for the AR platform, which was suited perfectly for white tail hunting here in New York.  After doing some research into barrels, and chatting with a few shooters at the range, I settled on the budget minded Bear Creak Arsenal heavy profile 16″ barrel chambered in 300 Blackout, pistol length gas system(Link to barrel). I payed $78.20 shipped (on sale), perfect for those of us that are budget restricted.

The barrel arrived about a week later. The finish was your standard run of the mill parkerizing. The machining was smooth with no tool chatter or sharp edges. The muzzle end is threaded 5/8-24 for your standard 30 cal muzzle device. The threads are clean and well finished. When threading on a few random muzzle devices they all threaded on cleanly with very little slop in the threads. Barrel extension is clean and correctly clocked and pinned. The 300 Blackout feed rams are a bit rough, I would have liked to seen a good polishing on these but i’ll touch on these again later. Chamber is well reamed and clean. Really for a $79 barrel I was pleasantly surprised by the fit and finish.

The install was clean and the barrel extension fit snub in the Aero upper that I installed this on. For sight in I used Sellier & Bellot 147gr Ammo feed from a standard 223/556 PMAG. I sighted in at 100 yards as most of the shots I would take would be around this range. After about 10 rounds I had it printing on target and in nice tight groups. i ran about 300 rounds thru it that weekend. There was no issues what so ever thru those rounds.  It prints just over 1″ groups and i attribute that to the shooter skill (hey i’m getting better). Now back to the 300 Blackout feed ramps, i was not happy with the finish on them, that said, there was no feeding issues with any round I fed it. I’ve run soft points, hollow-points, FMJ, and even some truncated rounds with zero issues. As such i have decided to leave them alone as they seem a non issue.

My conclusion is that for those of us in the market for a barrel in 300 Blackout that don’t mind not having the “best” and find a 1″ group at 100 yards, you can’t beat this barrel. Its not going to win any beauty contests but its not going to break the bank either. For those curious it(and I) did our job during the White tail season, and tagged a doe at 114 yards. 1 shot thru the lungs and heart, it ran about 10 yards and that’s where she stayed. Went in as a 30 cal hole and came out fully expanded at around 5/8″.