Kronos Semi-Automatic Rifle
European Design With Bar Roots
Before the emergence of numerous AR-platform hunting rifles in serious large-game calibers, the universe for semi-auto hunters was pretty small. In the post-WWII era, three sporting semi-autos from Remington, Browning and — much later Benelli — found commercial success. However, sales always lagged far behind traditional bolt actions, which were considerably less expensive and considered to be generally more reliable and accurate.
By 2015, Remington had discontinued their Woodmaster, which was not on par with the others and may have tarnished the reputation of the whole breed of traditional, non-military based semi-auto sporting rifles.
The Pietta Kronos Rifle, an Italian .30-06 semi-auto ready for the range or deer woods out of the box.
Bring On Another
The Kronos, designed and built by F.LLI. Pietta, is mechanically similar to the excellent BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) but with unique features of its own. Alessandro Pietta explained, “It looks like a BAR, but it’s better. My brother Alberto led the Kronos project. He designed it after studying all the other semi-auto rifles on the market, taking his inspiration from what he saw as their better qualities.”
Like the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), the Kronos operates with a short-stroke gas piston transferring energy to a heavy link riding on a central guide rod below the barrel. The link is connected to the bolt carrier by dual bars to balance the force for a smoother and more consistent action. The rotating bolt head locks into a steel barrel extension, and both rifles are similar to common shotguns such as the Remington 870 where the bolt lock-up happens in the barrel rather than the receiver. This allows the receiver to be made of a lighter material. In the case of the Kronos, it’s a piece of billet-machined aluminum alloy.
The Kronos Rifle uses a three-lugged rotation bolt head like those in Pietta shotguns.
Advantages
The Italian import comes in .308 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield so it can take most of the world’s large game and has traditional sporting rifle lines for those who don’t want their hunting trips to go tactical. Practically speaking, like all gas-operated rifles, its main advantage is softer recoil and faster follow-up shots. The recoil attenuation alone helps make you a better marksman. Painful recoil induces involuntarily flinch — why take a beating from your hi-powered rifle if you don’t have to?
Unlike the BAR, the Kronos gas system is not designed to be readily adjusted by the user. The Kronos system is factory regulated by Pietta based on their testing with major brands of ammunition to find the gas piston size to handle the widest range of loads reliably. Technically, the Kronos gas system can be adjusted by the somewhat complex installation of a smaller gas piston but most shooters would never need to do so.
The push button safety, bolt hold-open and magazine release are clustered around the trigger guard.
Tale Of The Tape
The Kronos is light (7.4 lbs.) and fast handling at 42″ with the 20″ barrel. It comes with adjustable, high visibility, three dot (green and orange) fiber optic sights. The sight radius is a little short but the sight picture is extremely easy to pick up, especially in dim light. Out of the box the rifle is ready for the woods, with quick detachable sling swivels, a thick, soft, recoil absorbing, micro-gel foam, buttpad and a four-round detachable magazine. They make a nine-round magazine too if you’re expecting trouble.
The stocks are varnished walnut, checkered and sculpted to improve your grip. The exaggerated sweep and bottom swell of the pistol grip are especially good for people with big hands, helping you hang onto the rifle in rapid fire. For purposes of customizing the stock fit to the shooter, it comes with two extra plastic stock shims to raise or lower the height of the comb. Not included, but also available, are optional buttpads to adjust the length of pull.
Workmanship is excellent. This is no surprise in light of the excellent quality of Pietta’s historic replica firearms of the American Civil War and Old West eras. The Kronos is a blend of old school and modern materials: 4140 steel, blued barrel with hammer-forged rifling, fiberglass reinforced techno-polymer for the barrel half rib, trigger guard and magazine base, aluminum alloy receiver and classy walnut stocks.
The short-stroke gas system of the Pietta is very similar to the Browning BAR.
Keep ’er Clean
Like all gas piston guns, you want to keep lubricants away from the piston itself so they don’t gum up the cylinder. Some ammo burns dirtier than others but field stripping the gas system is an easy process similar to dismounting a pump-shotgun barrel. You unscrew the front sling-swivel base and the front handguard slides right off, exposing the whole system to your solvent-soaked toothbrush.
Convenient drilled and tapped holes on the receiver allowed mounting of a perfect
deer hunting scope, the Vortex Diamondback 1.75 to 5X.
Scope It Up
Many American hunters will want to mount a scope so Pietta facilitates the process with seven tapped and plugged holes on the receiver. Brownells.com had the correct Weaver bases (part # 48470), that are the same ones used on the Browning BAR. I hate to test a rifle without a scope, possibly making it look bad because of my crappy old-man eyesight. Therefore, I installed a nice Vortex Diamondback 1.75 to 5X power scope. This is not one of their premium models but at a price point less than $250, it’s a lot of optic for the money. I believe a powerful semi-auto doesn’t need a scope more than 5X because you want a broad field of view to keep your target in the glass for a quick follow-up shot.
One of Frank’s best groups recorded with an SME target camera system. The trigger isn’t great,
but for a semi-auto hunter, it’s workable.
Ammo Test
Some hunting ammunition bench rest testing at 100 yards showed this rifle and marksman capable of delivering five-shot groups better than 2.5 MOA — more than precise enough for typical hunting.
The most accurate load was Black Hills Ammunition Company’s Black Hills Gold 178-gr. ELD-X bullet delivering a 1.81″ group at an average of 2,471 feet per second. Hornady’s 150-gr. Super Performance GMAX bullet’s best group was 2.12″ and a scorching 2,893 feet per second velocity, 50 feet per second faster than some old military 150-gr. FMJ ball ammo I used to sight in. The heavy-hitting Winchester 190-gr. Long Range AccuBond Big Game bullets shot about 3″ groups with an average velocity of 2,554 feet per second. Each of these diverse loads ran through the rifle without flaw.
Ain’t ’Merican — the sculpted rear sight and overall lines definitely show European design influence.
The checkered forend improves grip for rapid fire.
One Shortcoming
Overall, I give the Kronos high marks as a versatile and powerful semi-auto hunter with one significant critique. In fairness, this is not meant to be a target rifle but you will find the Krono’s trigger-pull excessive. The one I test measured at 8.25 lbs. and was a little gritty at the start, making it feel rather like a two-stage trigger. After a day of shooting, the gritty quality disappeared leaving a decent, but still heavy and overly long trigger-pull. At the bench, I felt the trigger was holding the gun back from delivering the full measure of its accuracy potential.
However, for me, this trigger isn’t a deal breaker in a .30-06 semi-auto rifle.
I spent a day shooting this rifle and was no worse for the wear afterward. In addition, when I switched from bench shooting bullseye targets at 100 yards to fun, off-hand, rapid-fire drills on gallon water jugs set out from 50 to 100 yards, I never noticed the heavy pull. I suspect I probably wouldn’t notice it over my heavily beating heart on the opening day of deer season either. MSRP: $1,394
