I've had some interesting things happen recently that I thought I'd pass along. Last year I put a williams wgrs peep on my marlin 336 SC. It turned out that the rifle shot too high even with the peep sight adjusted all the way down. I ended up putting on a williams shorty 3/8 ramp with a .375 bead to make it shoot.

Fast forward to this winter--I had the stock off to refinish it, and when I got out to shoot again, low-and-behold the rifle now shoots 6 inches too low. I'm more than a bit surprised at how sensitive the gun is to any change in stuff like screw pressure from the fore end cap, and having the mag tube removed and replaced. Could drive a guy crazy, except I've got a bunch of different ramps and beads handy. I've had other rifles change POI when the stock was removed, but never to that extent.

I went ahead and changed the ramp to a slightly lower model and kept the same bead, so we'll see how It shoots next time out. I didn't bother to adjust the peep, since I knew from my previous experience that I'd need a different ramp/bead.

Anyone else have this happen? I remember a lot of questions on MT about a rifle shooting way too high or too low, and now I'm beginning to understand. :confused:

6 inches at what distance? You should have way more adjustment than that in a WGRS. Mine will go a couple or three feet at 100 yards.

Not just Marlins, Winchesters will do it as well. Had a 38-55 that was working the fore end cap's cross screw through the steel tenon on the barrel (discovered after the fact). When it finally ovaled the hole and broke free, the group dropped 18 inches. Evidently, that's how much "up" pressure that screw was giving.

The lucky side-light to this is that even 18" low, the group was much better. When the cross screw problem got fixed, fixed it with the end cap exerting much less pressure, and the groups stayed better.

When you count it up, there are a lot of things pinned, dovetailed, banded, or pushing on a tube-mag. lever gun's barrel...most of them on the bottom.

imashooter2, I was shooting at 50 yards. It's possible that I would have had enough adjustment in the wgrs, but I want the peep somewhere in the middle of the adjustment range if possible, though I'm not sure where it will end up with the new front sight combination.

ribbonstone, I figured there was a lot going on. The mag tube went back on pretty tight, so I knew there was a lot of downward pull. Its interesting that its so different than it was before.

Must be some way to loosen up the tight fit between the barrel and the mag tube to relieve some of that pressure eh? Might improve accuracy, though I doubt my eyes will allow me to shoot much better...