This is The New LWRCI 350 Legend AR-15

Full Review of a Straight-Wall Hunting AR-Type Rifle

January 14, 2025 By Patrick Sweeney

Straight-wall rifle cartridges for hunting are hot. AR-15s are hot. So, why not combine the two? Well, for a long time that meant really hard thumpers like the 450 Bushmaster, and that’s no fun (if you don’t like recoil). The 350 Legend makes the experience more fun. LWRCI now offers their DI (direct impingement) series with their IC (Individual Carbine) upper, and the full package is handy, reliable, accurate, and meets the regs for the DNR in locales where straight-wall cartridges are needed to hunt more restricted game, like deer.

lwrc port view — The LWRCI .350 Legend looks like just another AR-15, albeit a really classy one. (Photo Provided by Author.)

The upper is their IC Monoforge upper, which is a forged upper receiver, but one with a forward extension on it, one that allows LWRCI to bolt on their free-float handguard. The handguard fits over the extension of the upper receiver and then is secured with eight stout bolts. The result is a slim package, but one that is bridge-girder strong. The top is a pic rail that extends full length, and the handguard has M-LOK slots at the 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions—plenty of room for optics, slings, and whatever.

lwrc left side view — On the left side, you can see the ambi controls, which is not what your average AR-15 has. (Photo Provided by Author.)

Inside is a cold-hammer-forged barrel in 350 Legend, instead of the expected 5.56 or .300 Blackout. The barrel is 16.1-inches long, and has been Ni-Corr treated, as well as the gas block getting the same tough surface treatment. The barrel is threaded at the muzzle (9/16x24), so you have all the options for flash hiders, muzzle brakes or suppressors. The carrier has several features that stand out. First, it isn’t the usual 1950s alloy, but a modern alloy usually found in racecars. Then, it is plated with a slick, easy to clean and corrosion-resistant nickel boron plating, so your life is easier. Then, there’s the gas system. LWRCI made their bones with piston driven ARs. To use a piston, the AR carrier needs a thrust shoulder on the top. So LWRCI made that an integral part of the carrier, not a bolted-on addition.

lwrc 350 Legend marking — The upper is clearly marked as to the caliber it is chambered in. Good to have, because we all have multiple ARs, right? (Photo Provided by Author.)

Well, to make a DI carrier, they bore out the thrust shoulder, and screw in a gas tube spigot. That spigot is then cross pinned to keep it in place. This does two things. First, the problem of gas leakage in the carrier/key interface is now gone. Far too many AR-15s still leave the factory with a gas key not tight, nor not staked. The LWRCI needs no staking, it is built in. And second, if your gas key spigot gets worn, or damaged in use (you know, dropping things) you can drive out the pin, unscrew the spigot, screw in a replacement, and drive the pin back in. This is the sort of thing that the government if they had actually been upgrading the M16/M4 all this time, would have adopted. (Don’t get me started.) The carrier gets machined with flats on it, to give crud more clearance and stay out of the way. Inside, the bolt is (of course) shot-peened, pressure-tested, and given a tough black surface treatment. The carrier is moved to charge the rifle or clear it by the LWRCI ambi charging handle.

lwrc Ambi Mag Release — The ambi control on the left side is the magazine release, seen here just below the standard bolt catch. Also, note the trigger guard: plenty of room for a gloved trigger finger here. (Photo Provided by Author.)

The lower is also forged, but LWRCI machines it to be an ambi lower. The selector has levers on both sides, as also the magazine catch and bolt catch. Lefties will have no problems with this rifle, and if you aren’t accustomed to all-ambi controls, then the regular ones are right where you expect them to be and work as normal. The lower on this rifle was marked “5.56mm NATO” but the upper bore the caliber marking of “350 Legend.” Of the two, the caliber marking is more prominent, so should you happen to have otherwise identical LWRCI rifles in the rack, the caliber marking on the upper should catch your eye and tell the tale.

Inside the lower, LWRCI installed a standard-appearing fire control set, a single-stage hammer and trigger, but one with a nickel-boron coating. Despite being USGI appearing parts, the trigger pull was much better than that. While it wasn’t quite up to what a High Power shooter might want, it is as good as or even better than a lot of deer-blind rifles you’d see in hunting season. I had no problems with it and were this to stay here I would most likely not change it, it is plenty good enough.

lwrc Ambi controls — Here you can see the ambi controls. There’s the selector lever, the standard magazine release, and an added bolt release just below the case deflector. (Photo Provided by Author.)

The stock is the LWRCI compact adjustable stock. It slides back and forth like your standard M4gery, but the top is angled to provide a better check weld, and the buttplate is more compact. In this instance, it would be less likely to get hung up on a hunting jacket or blaze orange vest than a bigger buttplate might. It rides on a six-position mil-spec diameter buffer tube, and inside LWRCI has installed an H2 buffer and mil-spec carbine spring.

lwrc barel nut and rail — The LWRCI Monoforge upper has an extra portion on the upper receiver, and the free-float handguard bolts to the receiver, and not merely clamping around the barrel nut. (Photo Provided by Author.)

Now, the standard LWRCI IC-DI comes in your basic black Type III hard-coat anodizing, and lacking sights. The one sent here was done up in Flat Dark Earth, which is a modest bump up in price and one of the four Cerakote colors you can select, applied in-house. It also came standard with an angled foregrip, a barrier stop, handguard plates and a bolt-on pic rail for the handguard. The pistol grip is the LWRCI Ultra combat Grip, which has an interesting non-slip texture. The grip has a storage section, to hold a spare battery for your optic and sight adjustment tool and allen wrench. Ahead of that, LWRCI installs their Advanced Trigger Guard, which is large enough for gloves (always useful when hunting) and sturdy enough to protect the trigger against impacts.

It also came with a DuraMag (Dura-Mag.com) magazine made for the .350 cartridge and marked as-such, something you’ll want. The included magazine holds five rounds, which is just fine. “But an AR is supposed to hold 30 rounds.” Well, your 5.56 is. Since the whole point of the 350 Legend is to hunt with it in locations where a bottlenecked cartridge can’t be used, I don’t see the five-shots-only magazine being a problem. If you do, then get yourself some thirties.

lrwc forward grip — The angled hand grip comes standard, and the rail covers were installed when the LWRCI arrived here. (Photo Provided by Author.)

It did not come with sights. However, LWRCI shoved an optic into the package sent here, a Hawke riflescope. The Hawke riflescope was one of their Endurance 30WA, in the 2.5-10X with illuminated reticle. It’s a lot of optic for only $580 list price. Some might argue that 10X is a bit much for deer hunting, but that top end does two things for you: it lets you get the zero dialed in precisely at the range, and in the blind, it lets you zoom in and see just what kind of antlers your prospective buck has on him. I did all the accuracy work at the 10X end. I grabbed a Geissele 30mm mount off of the shelf, and quickly had the scope mounted. Once at the range, it was easy to get it zeroed, and I then did the usual work: chronographing loads, then testing for accuracy. The recoil is mild (especially compared to other straight-walled cartridges) and the accuracy was really good.

lwrc take down view — Disassembly of the LWRCI IC-DI is like any other AR-15: simple and straightforward. (Photo Provided by Author.)

Now, the 350 Legend has come in for a bit of complaining. (Shooters complaining? Imagine that.) The idea was simple: make a hunting cartridge that met DNR regs but didn’t knock you out of the blind. So, you get a 175- to 180-grain bullet at 2,200 fps. No, it isn’t a .35 Whelen (not that many deer hunters even know what that one is) but it is a step up from the .35 Remington. The book specs on the .35 Remington lists it at 2,100 fps, but I’ve owned a .35 Remington. It never, with any load, ever delivered 180-grain bullets at 2,100 fps. (The Hornady LEVERevolution might do that now.) And even if it did, and the 350 Legend is “only” as good as the .35 Remington, then what’s the problem? You can’t hunt in the straight-wall areas with a .35 Rem, and as far as I know, no whitetail has ever complained about the “paltry” specs of the .35 Rem. Is it a long-range cartridge, like a 6.5 Creedmoor? No, but, again, you can’t hunt in the straight-wall areas with a 6.5 Creedmoor.

lwrc accuracy — As with all rifles, use the ammunition that works 100% (it all did, once broken-in) and shoots most accurately. Not an easy choice with this rifle. (Photo Provided by Author.)

Combine the accuracy of the LWRCI and the clarity of the Hawke optics, and from a blind you’re in like Flynn within 100 yards. If you practice and check your zero at 150, then the far side of a clearing means you get a deer that year. If you just have to reach to 200 yards, then zero your rifle a few inches high at 100, and then check the drops at 150 and 200 just to be absolutely sure.

To see just what was up with the .350 Legend at the other end, I took some of the extra Hornady Whitetail 170-grain ammo on hand and shot it into some Clear Ballistics clear gel blocks. I backed one block with another, and for good reason. Rifle soft-point bullets tend to do a lot of penetrating, and the .350 was no exception. The Hornady 170-grain Interlock bullets expanded and all penetrated to the back of the first block, a couple were in-between the first and second, and I’d have lost them if not for the second block. So, no worries about it “not being enough for deer” as I heard one too-clever wag comment. Long range? No. At normal deer-hunting ranges it’s a bruiser on the other end, but not your end.

lwrc target board with ammo — Accuracy was good across the board with the various .350 Legend ammo options. (Photo Provided by Author.)

In the initial testing, I had a few rounds not fully close with the first round out of the magazine. After a bit of chronograph work, that went away, and I can only surmise that it was some combo of the magazine getting the feed lips coating burnished, and the various parts breaking-in. I’m not in the habit of “breaking in” a test gun, I let the process of testing do that. Plus, this time I didn’t have an unlimited supply of ammunition. The .350 Legend is still new enough that supplies, even for us gun writers, are not inexhaustible. So, I couldn’t spend an afternoon just plinking at the 100-yard gongs, getting the rifle ready for testing. Take that as a lesson, don’t depend on a brand-new rifle, with few rounds through it, on Opening Day. Do your part.