BROWNING BUCKMARK CAMPER UFX

It's a fondly remembered image for some; the look of unwavering focus mingling with excitement on a young boys face, his hands firmly wrapped around the familiar shape a .22 Browning Buck Mark pistol pointed squarely at a fence post-borne soup can. After a moment's pause, his index finger whitens under the pressure of a well-worn trigger, and with a slight pop the slide bounces to the rear in time with the soup can's sudden decision to take flight upon the strike of a 40-grain projectile. A dad, crouched behind, clamps a hand on his ecstatic son's shoulder and says "good job... now, that bottle over there."

Yes, it's a nice image, that one... and one that rattled around my brain each and every time I picked up the Browning Buck Mark you see lathered upon these pages. Because while I certainly lament the rules placed upon the ownership and use of such firearms as AR-15s and their similarly prejudged restricted brethren, never have those rules chafed quite so painfully as they have when this little pistol found its way into my hand. Nothing has ever begged to be shot at all manner of fun and ageless reactive targets such as soup cans and beer bottles like this thing.

But perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves. First created in 1985 to supersede the popular Challenger pistol which was by then a 23-year old design (although having gone through three iterations of its own), the Buck Mark borrowed heavily from the popular and diminutive Belgian-made Challenger's design, but updated some key components of the design and saw the production moved back to Browning's Utah-based manufacturing facility.

The Design

Being far more evolutionary in design rather than a complete reinvention of the rimfire pistol, there isn't too much groundbreaking technology to discuss in the Buck Mark's alloy frame. However, it does have a few things worth taking into account. The first is the fixed top strap, or sight base, that is positioned atop the slide. Connecting the barrel to the rear of the frame via a lug that is typically obscured by the slide, this has been a feature of Browning's rimfire pistols since the original Challenger, and allows the rear sight to be fastened securely to the pistol's frame rather than the reciprocating slide. That means the sights remain unaffected by the slide's travel, and more importantly, allows all manner of sights to be installed on the Buck Mark without adding weight to the reciprocating mass of the blowback system. To this end Browning offers two models of the Buck Mark pistol already outfitted with a full-length mounting rail in place of the standard sight base (the URX model available in two lengths), and one with an abbreviated rail and a scope already fitted (the Hunter).

Because the sight rail atop the action prevents the familiar overhand grasp most are accustomed to using to bring a semi-automatic pistol into battery, the latest generation of Buck Marks feature a heavily sculpted slide with scalloped and serrated portions to increase the thumb and forefinger's purchase. Furthermore, a pair of relatively large ears or lugs have been added to the rear of the slide, making it even easier to those with minimal grip strength, such as children and adults small of stature. But besides these concessions to the human form, the Browning's action is almost archaic in its simplicity; the completely flat leading face of the slide simply forces rounds out of the magazine and into the chamber, and the exposed extractor on the right hand side removes them.

The grip size echoes that of much larger handguns, and is often cited as one of the most appreciated assets of the Buck Mark, especially when compared to the smaller grips of its perennial competitor, the Ruger Mark III and 22/45. The angle, as well, is much closer to that found in full-size conventional centre-fire handguns, and makes the Buck Mark quite a comfortable fit for most. And then there's the trigger. Definitely one of the best .22 triggers out there, the Buck Mark's crisp single action trigger is an absolute delicacy... but more on that later.

The Fit & Finish

Let's get something out of the way right off the bat: the Buck Mark, in its more basic forms and from most retailers, will set you back no more than $400. That makes it one of the cheapest rimfire pistols on the market,  which is impressive when you consider that it's entirely American-made from actual metal, and backed by one of the firearms industry's most historic brands.

And so, it should come as less than surprising that the Buck Mark isn't quite what most would call an heirloom firearm. Sure, they're certainly perfectly serviceable and as we will discuss later, shoot extremely well... but the quality of manufacture is just that: perfectly serviceable. The best part is the frame; made of 7075 aluminium and excised from a large lump of similar material precisely and cleanly, its matte black surface is crisp and free of tool marks. From the trigger guard to the backstrap, it all feels stellar, and the finish is the perfect combination of gritty and smooth. It manages to feel tacky in to the hand (in a good, friction-inducing way!) without looking overly rough. Interestingly, Browning refers to the finish as a "matte blued finish," although traditional bluing salts will erode most non-ferrous metals (as does the acid required to parkerize steel), leading us to conclude that it must actually be some form of anodizing. In any case, it looks good and feels better. And after our testing, the only noticeable wear was between the frame and slide, where the anodized black finish wore in places to expose the aluminium alloy beneath.

Speaking of the slide, if the frame is the best-made part of the Buck Mark, the slide's probably the worst. Manufactured from a casting that is then sparingly machined, the raw cast finish remains exposed on the slide serrations (which are cast-in rather than cut) and along the scalloped portion at the top of the slide. And while that's perfectly acceptable in and of itself, we noticed a few occlusions in the cast portion in the scalloped portion, which were felt as sort of wavy spots for lack of a better term. But the worst part by far were the machining marks that remained on the inside of the slide. In short, they looked like they'd been left by a 5-year old with a bastard file. But hey, at least they have zero effect on function and aren't readily apparent.

Which brings us to the barrel. Now, normally we wouldn't bother mentioning the construction of a gun's barrel unless it was somewhat unique, as the best measure of a barrel's quality is typically understood to be its accuracy. However, in the case of the Buck Mark we need to make an exception. While taking a close look at the gun in preparation for this article, we noticed that the barrel's roll marks looked like they'd been painted over. At the muzzle end, our suspicions were confirmed, as there was visible chipping of the paint surrounding the crown. This warranted further investigation and while we weren't prepared to try and nick the finish to find out more, we did discover that the barrel and slide were both quite magnetic; an uncommon trait for stainless steel. So what does the "stainless" in our Buck Mark's nomenclature denote? Well, the best answer we could come up with is that perhaps the barrel itself is made of stainless steel and is then surrounded by a mild steel sleeve (similiar to the steel barrel/aluminium sleeve construction of the Buck Mark Lite models), or is made of some grade of 400-series stainless steel; a very high grade of stainless that's also very expensive.

In terms of the quality of the Buck Mark's various other components, well, they're much of the same. The slide release and safety, for example, are nice enough little rectangles of steel that are, upon closer inspection, glued onto the levers they actuate. The trigger, finished in that recognizable shade of Browning gold, has nice serrations on either side to increase grip but also bears quite a few machine marks on the middle of the blade. The rear sight base is a plastic casting to which the steel (and very adjustable) rear sight is bolted.

Function

By now perhaps you're getting the impression that best thing to be said about the Buck Mark is it's price tag. However,  any debate about its quality seems moot after the first salvo leaves it's barrel, because when it comes to throwing lead this little pistol gets top marks. And there are two major assets that contribute to that sentiment: the grip, and the trigger.

In regards to the latter, it's probably safe to say that in the realm of high-value rimfire pistols, the Buck Mark is without equal. As you can deduce from our new spec sheet at the conclusion of this article, the trigger is both acceptably light and very consistent, averaging 4 pounds, 12.48 ounces over our tests with a standard deviation of 2.38 ounces between pulls, mostly due to the overly heavy first pull we tested followed by the second lighter pull. Barring those two outliers, each successive pull was almost within an ounce of one another, and that was with a gun that was nearly brand new with almost no break-in. As the pieces lap together with successive firings they should get even better. But the weight was only part of the Buck Mark's impressive trigger performance; the second component was the crisp nature of its break. Moving across a tenth of an inch in total, it broke almost a third of the way through its travel, leaving just seven hundredths of an inch of trigger travel to account for the disengagement of the sear and any overtravel. Add the two together and you get a trigger that moved cleanly through its motion, and worked consistently and predictably each and every time. And when it came time to reset the trigger after a shot, that too was accomplished smoothly and incredibly lightly, but with a very positive and audible click to reinforce the moment the sear re-engaged the hammer.

The grip, by comparison, is much simpler. It simply fits the average Canadian male hand well, in our experience. Quite large compared to many rimfire pistol grips and of a similar profile as that of a Browning Hi-Power (fittingly), it fills the hand very well and provides a large enough grip surface that most will be able to accurately mimic the grip they use on a full-size centrefire handgun. This makes it a great training tool, and allows one to more effectively practice with it, if they're looking to learn skills that can later be applied to centrefire handguns. Also, even though they may look about as unconventional as a grip panel possibly can, the hybrid plastic/rubberized grips on our Camper UFX model had a great texture to them that was almost Hogue-like with its heavily pebbled surface.

Speaking of ergonomics, that is one area in which the Buck Mark could see a little improvement. As a left-handed person that is equally adept (or not) at shooting handguns with either hand, shooting the Buck Mark with my naturally dominant hand was quite awkward, as  the slide and magazine release are set up strictly for right-handed operation only. Also, even shooting right-handed, the magazine release proved just a hair too far forward and a wee bit too stiff for most. Thankfully, there's an aftermarket release button that replaces the stock checkered piece for a larger pad and thus makes it a bit easier to push, because the stock one simply grinds your thumb away after a while. And if you plan to use the Buck Mark to teach shooting technique to any shooters with smaller hands, be aware that trying to reach for and depress that magazine release can cause some to forget about the muzzle's direction, just as a head's up.

And of course, being a semi-automatic rimfire pistol that's essentially been in development for decades, it functions well. With a well polished feed ramp, a chamber that's free of burrs and sharp edges, and a very nice magazine that doesn't tear the crap out of your thumbs when loading (you simply have to love rimfire magazines with a follower button!) nor put undue pressure on the loaded rounds with an overly strong follower spring, Browning's obviously tried to minimize the amount of work the action has to do, and in the case of at least our tester it's paid off. Cycling pretty much all the bulk ammo we could throw at it, we didn't experience a single problem and again, that's without any real break-in time. Even CCI standard velocity, the slowest ammunition we sampled, shot with 100% reliability.

Which brings us to the pistol's accuracy. Sadly, this being something of a blustery winter and our test range being outdoors, our results were hampered by some pretty stiff winds on the range day. In fact, even shooting at target as close as 25 yards showed a grouping that grew with each gust, so they're pretty much moot. But, when the wind did occasionally die down we were able to put at least enough lead downrange to say that from that distance it's probably mechanically capable of putting 5 rounds into 1" or slightly better. In fact, the limiting factor on a particularly dark and grey day in Vancouver seemed to be the sights, rather than the gun's mechanical design. While the rear notch itself is nice, super-adjustable and serrated to reduce the glare, the front is a big, dark post that is large enough to obscure many smallbore targets at distance. But really, unless you've opted for one of the target models of Buck Mark, most Buck Marks will be put to better use in the pursuit of either mild pistol training or simple fun, and in either case replacing the sights with either a high-visibility irons or a rail and optic is not difficult.

Take-Down and Cleaning

Everyone knows that one of the necessary evils of rimfire ownership is the strong relationship with your gun cleaning kit they enforce. The combination of messy ammunition and semi-automatic actions that rely on as little friction as possible to cycle means they demand more cleaning than any other firearm. And while semi-automatic rimfire rifles are typically quite easy to clean, pistols are another matter entirely; anyone that's ever owned a Ruger Mark III can certainly attest to that fact. Due to the small size of the round and the compactness of the guns themselves, rimfire pistols are usually packed with tiny parts that bounce out at inopportune times and require perfect alignment prior to assembly, and demand more disassembly in order to clean everything properly since it's all so close to the breech and thus the source of the dirt.

And the Buck Mark isn't exempted from this tradition. Although better than the Ruger line of pistols it competes with in terms of take down and ease of cleaning, the Buck Mark still requires some screws be turned in order to proper clean the action, as the rear sight base must be removed in order to take the slide off. Also, since the rear sight base is screwed into a vertical post in the frame that rises up inside the rear of the slide, cleaning the barrel from breech to muzzle is only possible with a flexible tool such as a Boresnake, or via removal of the barrel which requires yet another style of driver.

Conclusion

As outlined in the beginning of this article, the Buck Mark is a gun that just begs to be shot, and shot for fun. Even long after this review was finished, trekking out into the woods for a little snowshoeing or skiing always made us wish we could have packed the little Browning along for no reason other than the fun of plinking a few targets along the way. It's mild recoil characteristics, satisfying ergonomics, and ability to shoot relatively quiet standard-velocity ammunition just make matters worse, since try as we might, that it is illegal to do so remained the only reason we could possibly fathom as to why we shouldn't bring it along. It's not like it's overly large, requires bulky ammunition as well, or is obtrusively loud. In fact, that it throws the mockery that is our gun laws into its owners face at every turn and is sure to frustrate anyone who's forced to leave it in a safe when they'd love to pack it along on the family camping trip may be the single biggest problem with the Buck Mark, because it sure doesn't have many other issues.