Imagine survival scenarios with an inexpensive, spartan firearm of minimal weight and bulk serving as a better choice than a fully featured, full-sized, conventional long gun. The ability to attach a suppressor, making the shooter harder to find, greatly adds to the appeal. This completely describes the Chiappa Big Badger Folding Rifle chambered in 350 Legend.

The Chiappa Firearms Big Badger is a simple, exposed hammer, break-open action with the barrel release lever positioned in front of the trigger guard. Opening the action simultaneously initiates partial extraction of the cartridge or fired casing for hand removal. The rebounding hammer strikes the firing pin only when depressing the trigger. A more reliable safety, a manually-operated hammer block, runs transverse through the receiver. When the hammer block safety is engaged, its round end protrudes from the right side of the receiver where it can be easily deactivated by the trigger finger if you are right-handed. The hammer must be manually cocked for each shot. The single-stage trigger on the test gun was remarkably good, breaking crisply between 3 and 3.25 pounds.

Chiappa Big Badger Folding Rifle Delivers Survival Platform

The receiver, barrel and wire buttstock are steel for strength and durability. The trigger guard, metal base of the butt, and forend are aluminum. The exterior finish appears to be a tough, satin finish, black paint.

The aluminum forend is just shy of 10 inches long, 1.2 inches tall and 1.14 inches wide with Picatinny rail on the top and bottom and M-Lok slots on the sides. The buttstock has a plastic comb with 0.50 inch of vertical adjustment. There is no provision for a front sling swivel, but the aluminum buttplate has a vertical slot where a sling can be threaded through and a hole at the toe where a traditional detachable sling swivel can be attached.

For suppressor mounting, the muzzle is threaded 5/8×24. The threads are protected with a knurled cap that extends past the end of the barrel to protect the crown from damage.

Red Dot Ready

Rather than a traditional scope, which would add considerable weight and bulk to a survival rifle whose main virtues are light weight and minimal bulk, I selected a small and weatherproof Meprolight MPO PRO F closed emitter reflex sight and mounted it with their RMR-to-Picatinny-rail low-profile adapter. Intended for a pistol, it weighs only 1.8 ounces and measures 1.14 inches wide by 1.84 inches long and stands 1.2 inches above the rail when mounted. It has three reticles to choose from: 3 MOA dot, 33 MOA open circle, and dot inside open circle. The dot and circle reticle offers the rifle marksman some aiming reference points to correlate with bullet drop at various ranges.

I did all my accuracy testing at 100 yards from a bench rest firing at a 12-inch bullseye. Federal .350 Legend 180-grain POWER SHOK, with its traditional copper jacketed lead bullet with a small exposed lead point to facilitate expansion, was the heaviest recoiling. But it was in no way painful, or even discomfiting, thanks to the rifle’s soft rubber buttpad and comb. The .350 Legend has earned a reputation for .30-30 performance without the sting many us recall from the steel buttplates of those 7-pound Winchester 94 lever-action carbines. The Big Badger weighs just over 5.5 pounds and still has less felt recoil. Average velocity of the POWER SHOK load was 2,057 feet-per-second (fps). Groups averaged 5.08 inches, usually with four shots grouped well and a single errant shot opening up the spread.

Knockdown Power

Winchester’s Deer Season XP load used a 150-grain lead bullet with a small expansion cavity completely concealed inside a copper jacket slightly star-crimped at the nose around a pointy polymer tip intended to streamline the projectile and initiate rapid expansion once it hits the target. It had slightly less energy and noticeably less recoil than the Federal 180-grain load. It also showed a point of impact 5 inches higher. Average group size was 5.01 inches, and average velocity was 2,220 fps.

The Hornady 350 Legend Subsonic has a long, boattailed, 250-grain SUBX bullet with a lead core with a fairly large and deep hollow point capped with a flat red elastomer plug to initiate rapid expansion in tissue. This bullet doesn’t enlarge into an elegant petaled blossom, but it does flatten and squish the lead core outward for a small increase in diameter and better terminal performance down to 900-fps velocity. That’s very important because the average velocity was only 956 fps. Expansion or no expansion, it’s still a 250-grain bullet with .45 Colt-level energy, which makes it fine for personal defense as long as you take into account bullet drop. At 100 yards, the point of impact for this load was 38.5 inches below the 150-grain Winchester load and 33.5 inches below the 180-grain Federal load!

For more information on the Big Badger, as well as its .22 caliber little brother the Little Badger, visit www.chiappafirearms.com.

Chiappa Big Badger Folding Rifle Specs

• Manufacturer: Manek, Turkey
• Caliber: .350 Legend (Also available as a .30-30 rifle and .410 shotgun)
• Action: Single-Shot Break-Open (folding), manually cocked exposed hammer
• Barrel: 20 inches, 1:16 twist, 1/2 x 28 threaded muzzle with protective cap
• Capacity: 1
• Trigger: 3-3.25-Pound Pull, Single Stage
• Stock: Steel wire buttstock with rubber buttplate pad and  adjustable comb, aluminum forend with Picatinny rail top and bottom and M-Lok slots on the sides
• Sights: None
• Safety: Hammer half-cock notch and manual hammer block safety
• Length: 35 inches unfolded, 20.5 inches folded
• Material: Steel receiver, barrel and buttstock, aluminum forend
• Weight: 5 pounds, 8 ounces empty, without optics
• Finish: Black
• MSRP: $354.07

Performance: Chiappa Big Badger Folding Rifle in .350 Legend