After taking photos of the Micor Leader 50 bullpup for a couple of years, I finally got around to shooting it. Since Charles St.George, the designer, didn’t have a scope with it, I mounted a 2.5x Konus shotgun scope kindly provided to me by Primary Arms for use on a kid’s .22 rifle. At under $60, that scope isn’t the kind of robust optic normally picked for 50BMG, but at least it had long eye relief.
So I sat down behind the improvised bench, wadded a jacket over my shoulder to reduce the recoil and fired the first round. What a let-down — there was no recoil! I went to all that effort to protect my shoulder, only to discover that the kick was less than that of an AR10 in .308 and closer to .243. I took all subsequent shots with less trepidation but with a scarf around my lower face — the air movement from the muzzle brake was felt all the way up my sinuses. Fortunately, Charles is going to design his muzzle brake to replace the stock Armalite design. We found a way to reduce the air flow to the shooter considerably.
The scope held up just fine to the twenty five or so rounds we fired. I think it speaks volumes to the low recoil of the lightweight (17lbs) 50BMG rifle.
The gun now uses a standard Barrett magazine. I am really looking forward to the production version coming early summer. I didn’t do video, but some was taken last week showing a quick mag dump. Another, better quality video, shows more test firing.
