Fat man and little boy: a .50 caliber kick with .22 fun

Guns Magazine, Nov, 2004 by Dave Anderson

These are great days for big-bore fans. Bolt guns in .458 Lott, .475 revolvers, .50-cal. AR-15s, .450 Marlins ... whoa there, old hoss. Back up. Did you say 50-caliber AR-15s?

You bet. Alexander Arms makes rifles based on the AR-15 design. What sets the company apart is its choice of calibers. Seeing the market already saturated with ARs in .223, Alexander Arms looked for a caliber niche, and found it with the .50 Beowulf.

Alexander Arms put together a special package to demonstrate the versatility of the AR. It combines an Alexander Arms lower with two quickly interchangeable, vastly different upper assemblies. Both uppers are flat-topped with Picatinny rails providing plenty of sight options. The components, along with three magazines, are packaged in a padded, high quality BlackHawk carrying case.

One upper is an accurate, dependable .22 LR manufactured by DPMS. It will handle any chore a .22 rifle is needed for from plinking to pest control or small-game hunting. As a survival tool, a good .22 rifle is hard to beat, except for self-defense or hunting big game.

That's where the second upper assembly takes over. It is chambered for the moose-stomping, grizzly-whomping .50 Beowulf. It fires big, heavy, 50-caliber bullets--eight of them I as fast as the trigger can be polled.

Ballistically, the .50 Beowulf is similar to the .450 Marlin or a heavily-loaded .45-70. Any grizzly that takes eight of those big slugs and still reaches the shooter has earned his dinner. The complete package with both oppers is a bit heavy for a backpacker, but stored in a bush plane, canoe, boat, trailer, or backcountry campsite it would make a superb survival tool.

It took time for the AR-15 design to earn acceptance. The civilian-legal semiauto AR-15 was available in the 1960s but achieved no great popularity. Its cartridge was too light for big game hunting. It wasn't nearly accurate enough for varmint or target shooting, its sights were terrible, it didn't adapt readily to scope use, and it cost half again as much as a Remington 700 or Winchester 70.

But the demands of American shooters and the ingenuity of American gunmakers have wrought a transformation. The ugly duckling has been transformed into ... well, maybe not a beautiful swan, but a pretty good looking duck. An accurate, reliable, versatile and (now) powerful, butt-kicking duck.

All components of the test rifle are finished in DuraCoat in a desert "Mirageflage" pattern, similar to the design of current Marine Corps uniforms. I'm a little conflicted about the wisdom of camouflaging a survival rifle. On one occasion I set it against some rocks for a photo, and if it hadn't been for the scope standing out I might not have found it.

I fitted the DPMS .22 LR upper with a Zeiss 3-9x40 Conquest scope, which is a very fine sight. Quality of materials and workmanship of the DPMS unit is outstanding. The rifle proved completely reliable during the shooting of 800 rounds without a cleaning.

Accuracy for five-shot, 50-yard groups was typically under an inch, down to a half inch with some ammunition types. I have bolt action spotters and heavy match-barreled autos that will do better, but for a light semiauto I consider this good accuracy.

Removing the DPMS and replacing it with the .50 Beowulf upper takes about 20 seconds. I fitted it with the superb Leupold CQ/T 1-3X sight. At its lowest setting this sight provides amazingly fast acquisition, at 3X it provides all the precision needed. The reticle can be illuminated for low-light use, but the scope itself is not battery dependent.

Shooting the .50 Beowulf is a blast. Just the reaction of other shooters at the range is enough to justify the cartridge's existence. Instead of the high-pitched crack of a .223, there's a deep-throated "ka-Boom!" followed by a reverberating clang as the steel target rocks. Take lots of ammo, because everyone is going to want a shot.

Despite the seven-pound weight the gas-operated design and muzzle brake keep recoil down. Most shooters described it as similar to a 12-gauge shotgun.

Bill Alexander notes, "The brake is manufactured from 4140 steel and is a traditional pepper pot design having five rows of six holes arranged in a spiral pattern. The low operating pressure of the gun is not conducive to the operation of a brake, so the internal design was calculated using super sonic compressible flow dynamics. Hence the divergent design of the internal passage which acts to accelerate the available gas before it hits the ports." So speaks the mechanical engineer.

Alexander Arms provided ammunition loaded with jacketed flat and hollowpoint bullets, both types weighing 334 grains. Ten feet from the muzzle the JFP ammunition averaged 1,909 fps, the JHP rounds clocked 1.924 (average of 20 rounds), from a 16-inch barrel with 1-19-inch twist.

Five-shot groups at 100 yards typically ran from 2 1/2 to three inches. Occasionally throe shots would cloverleaf, but then two others would open up the group. That brings me to my one criticism of the rifle its trigger pull. Ten pulls with a Lyman electronic gauge averaged eight pounds, nine ounces, with both creep and overtravel present.