Reporting on the outdoors occasionally forces you to be more aware of this important fact: no sport, especially if it spurs you to greater participation, is inexpensive.

You might argue certain sports - like hiking, for example isn’t expensive. But if you’re interested in high-level participation and performance, even the sport of walking comes at a cost.

A very short internet search (best hiking gear) produced a variety of $100 socks, $1,000+ boots and a myriad of shorts, pants, shirts and rain gear that could quickly have you outfitted to be technically comfortable, but nearly $2,500 poorer during your walkabout.

If you’re an aficionado of any sport, you’ll be paying to play.

Shooting is one of those sports where you are will absolutely be paying. The instant you move from airguns into .22 rimfire the meter starts to run. It moves exponentially faster if you move up the caliber ladder.

Shooting sport costs rise quickly when realize that like any skill, getting better as a shooter requires practice. As affordable and rewarding as dry fire can be, it’s not teaching you how to manage recoil, maintain follow through or even accomplish rapid-fire magazine changes.

To learn to shoot means countless repetitions of actual shooting in order to reach your best personal performance levels. Dry fire will help, but it is simply not enough. And the dirty little secret is that those sorts of high-motor skills are perishable -to stay good, you have to keep practicing.

Unfortunately, those countless repetitions have to be performed with single-use ammunition.

Unlike Daisy air rifles and pistols of my long-past youth, you can’t catch powder-powered ammo in cardboard boxes and re-use it.

Ammunition is as all elective offices should be: “one and done.”

Yes, you can reload ammunition. But only the cases. You don’t get the powder, primer or projectile back in any usable form.

And if you’re talking ammo, size matters. The bigger the caliber, the higher the cost.

Economics 101 says increasing size (caliber in this case) increases raw material needs, creates more weight, requires bigger, stronger (and heavier) containers, and, yes, higher shipping costs. Notice a pattern?

I have enjoyed every opportunity I’ve ever had to shoot long-distance rifles. I’ve made the challenging one-mile shot. I readily admit that long distance shooting is awesome.

But I’ve never been tempted to try my hand at long distance shooting competitions. Realizing you’re essentially throwing $5 bills at a target -every time you shoot -takes a lot of the fun out of the game. Hit-or miss- the cost is the same.

There’s no reluctance about asking manufacturers for big-bore ammunition for testing. But I can’t bring myself to ask for several hundred rounds because I want to try and shoot a competition.

“Borrowing” one manufacturer’s expensive rifle, another’s awesome optics (gotta have a spotting scope, too), and all the assorted support gear isn’t all that difficult.

But ammunition isn’t ever coming back in “lightly used” condition. One-and-done, remember?

When the ammo shortages hit, my testing and training practices changed- quickly. All round counts dropped; some calibers stopped altogether. Not because I wanted to shoot less; because I simply wasn’t going to risk not having ammunition.

Specialty ammunition evaporated first. Then the “common calibers” - to the point I told gun makers I wouldn’t be testing their heavy-caliber rifles if they didn’t supply the test ammo.

Heavy calibers quickly stopped coming. But that was no help for a rifle already sitting here -sans ammo for testing.

Finally, I reached out to 21st Tec about returning their Bellator rifle. That’s when I was reminded that one of the major attractions of their rifles was: multi-caliber capabilities.

Sure, the gorgeous rifle languishing in the safe was a .338 Lapua Magnum, but it could easily be converted to .308 Winchester.

It’s not hard to see the economic realities in ammunition. Bigger isn’t always better; but it is always more costly. The .338 Lapua Magnum (left) is significantly larger than the .308 Winchester.

That’s how/why an unfired.338 Lapua Magnum waiting for an unlikely ammo windfall was scheduled for an immediate conversion into .308 Winchester. I had .308 ammo.

If I’m not visiting a shooting facility, the majority of my testing is done with handguns or handgun caliber carbines -on indoor ranges. No range within reasonable round-trip distance allows anything heavier than .308, and then at limiting distances.

That having been said, firing .308 would at least allow me to test the rifle’s internals and get a general performance/handling impression. But my limited distances couldn’t hope to give an honest accuracy test -this is a long-distance rifle. But, with the caliber conversion, I could look at the overall quality and functions while simultaneously testing the ease-of-conversion and clarity of the instructions provided. That wasn’t actually part of my original plan.

I can report, without question, two facts: 1) the change between calibers was not challenging. You don’t need to do anything except follow 21st Tec’s detailed instructions and remember to torque down the last two nuts. Everything else is beyond simple. And, 2) the gun is very well made, tightly assembled, and packaged to be out-of-the-box useful.

The caliber changeover was simple. I separated the rifle upper from the lower (above), then removed the magazine adapter and bolt handle (directly below) and swapped the bolt carrier group (second below), then reversed the process and torqued down the bolts (third below). Once I added a scope (final) it was ready-to-shoot. Easy-peasy work -despite my j reluctance to attempt anything resembling “gun smithing.”

 

 

After accomplishing the simple caliber change, it was a simple thing to mount a scope, get a basic zero and shoot.

The rifle performed as expected. The brand-new trigger had a great “wall,” a clean break and the bolt cycled far easier than I’d imagined. Limited experience on left-hand bolts was overcome by spending some time cycling rounds through the gun. The repetition, as is normally the case, made it easier to operate when I did shoot. Cycling the rifle and recovering onto the target was quick and easy.

This was no form of “rigorous” testing, but the “barely bore sighted” gun easily shot cloverleaf groups. Accuracy wasn’t impacted by swapping parts and/or changing calibers. That seems important for a gun with a multi-caliber capability. And the heft and solid construction made it obvious the Belator is a gun designed to be used by very serious shooters.

Caliber swaps really can be done in the field without an armorer. I made the changes on a folding table with no tools other than what came with the Bellator. If I can do it, experienced shooters won’t have any issues, either.

Even without running .338 Lapua through the gun, I don’t doubt the value -even with a $5,000 MSRP (.338 Lapua or 300 Norma Magnum). If you kick in an additional $800 , you can get a .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor conversion kit that includes a barrel assembly, mag well and bolt carrier group.

Even with both calibers, that’s very competitively priced when compared with other comparable precision LE/military focused rifles in the “heavy” variety.

Even “downsized” to .308, 21st Tec’s Bellator exceeds my needs for “long-distance” shooting.

And the up-or down-caliber capabilities and pricing puts it in the budgets of most law enforcement agencies.

It’s a great gun, but definitely not designed for casual shooting.

It’s purpose-built, and if first impressions count, fully mission-capable.

We’ll keep you posted.

— Jim Shepherd