I have had 3 bushmaster ar's and i must say they have good customer service, but everyone that i have bought has had to go back for either a barrel replacement or to get sighted in.  Has anyone else had these problems?  they always take care of me, but it just gets old.  My newest one is going back sometime this week because i cannot get the grouping tight enough.  its a 16" and i would think i could place a 1 to 2 inch group from there.  I have had alot of guns and am a pretty damn good shot.  the ar was sighted in scope only so i could see the holes at 100 yards with a 32 power.  The first 2 shots where almost touching the 3 was about 6 inches left, the 4th was about 8 inches down, and the last was somewhere in the same area.  I just got back from hunting today and with my 30.06 i hit a twig about 2 inches around at 446 yards.  on my second shot.  Now i know it was luck but the other shots were within a few inches.  I just dont understand what it is with the bushi or are all AR's needed to be send back to get checked out?

thanks Mark

Did I read your post correctly that you have a 32 power scope on a 16" bushmaster? Man thats a lot of magnification.

lol, yes its my hunting scope and i just threw it on my bushi so i could see the groups without moving.  but since i had these problems before i just wanted to make sure everything was ok. now im not using top grade ammo, so i dont expect the best but it should be good.

I'd make sure the scope and its mounts are solid on the rifle first. Its impossible to get a good zero if something is loose with the scope or its mounts.

yep everything is solid

Sort of on topic, sort of off. Some time back, I set up a new Savage bolt action with a Leupold scope. Everyting was solid, I was happy. Me and a friend went out to shoot. Without knowing what the heck it was I needed to do, I was shooting some mil surplus ammo to see what I could crank out. Groups were pathetic. I was felling pretty freaking useless. About at the end of the day, my friend said, here, just try some of these handloads in it and see what happens. Well, groups shrunk to sub moa.

What kind of ammo were you shooting? After my expreience, I learned not to *generally* expect much from surplus ammo when shooting for groups.

I have a Bushy 16 also!   And have the same problems,using a 4x scope at only about 30 paces or about 100 feet using a small cal rifle target,hit right on then off i/4 inch,then right on again!  I am thinking the 16 inch is a carbine!  And that it is not for tack driving or range shooting!

Maybe it is made for hitting COM at that range,and not the small bull that I am trying to force it into! Much like asking my M1 carbine to do what my M1 Grande will do.

 So maybe I need a twenty inch upper to get the  AR/15 full experience at this range!

 I'm still hiting the bull and it would be the same at longer range,just not what I expected from a carbine of such muzell veloc!

   Bob