I just went over to the dark side...

Ya, I did pay too much, but it was right there, and I was in decision mode.

The front heavy balance is something I actually like, it helps my offhand shooting.

But the ribbed hockey puck that masquerades as a recoil pad on the Ruger canoe paddle has to go. That thing really beat me up, I still can feel my shoulder bruise 2 days later and I only shot 10 rounds to sight in the Zeiss 3-9 Conquest that I put on it. I think with a Limbsaver or something similar it will be much more pleasant to shoot.

It seems accurate from the little bit of testing I've done so far. It is interesting that the throat is very short, 180 Hornady spire points have to be seated so the cannelure is just barely peeking over the case mouth, and that puts the bullet against the lands. It can't take quite as much powder as my Sako, so I'll probably need to develop something specific for this rifle. Should be fun.
 
I don't care to much what a gun looks like as long as the weight, ergonomics and trigger feels right. To many people buy guns on how pretty they look but I prefer to buy them because they are a good "tool" that whoever designed it gave it some thought first. I notice how many of the funky looking guns quickly end up in the EE. Some guns are works of art and I appreciate those for what they are-art.
 
I think that you now have a rifle that will get used and abused, which is far more practical than one that you only take out and stare at on occasion. You did ok. We probably all have done something similar along the way.
 
Actually all my rifles get used, no matter how fancy. None get abused, I hope. It's just that I didn't have something appropriate for extreme wet/rough wilderness trips where the rifle would not get proper maintenance. I'm not scared to take a gun with fine figured walnut and engraved steel out in the weather, I just give it some TLC when I get back to camp and all is good.

On a backpack trip in mountains, or a canoe trip in the north, the opportunity for proper daily maintenance is a rarity, and my Ruger should keep on hunting regardless of the attention it gets. So I se this as a specialty tool, not my new regular hunting rifle.

Wood and blued steel can actually be quite forgiving. The following picture is me, after I found my rifle in a creek after it spent a night on the mountain. I was hunting mountain caribou in the Yukon, and after a hard day of riding, climbing, and glassing, my guide and I decided to take a "shortcut" down a valley leading more directly to camp than the route we had taken to climb up. You guessed it... the walls of the little valley closed in as it got darker, the willows and alders got thicker and thicker until they only allowed us to pick our way by leading the horses on foot, squeezing through the brush and over the rocks of a small stream. The only possible walking path was right in the water. Somewhere during the descent, a branch snagged my ( rather plain ) Rem. 700 classic .35 Whelen, pulling it out of the scabbard. It was pretty distressing when we reached the shores of the lake that camp was on and I realized that my rifle was missing and that there was no chance of going back to look for it in the dark.
The next morning we climbed the mountain again, retraced our steps, and walked back down that hellhole of a creek. About half way down we found my rifle resting peacefully, half submerged with the barrel on a rock and the stock and Zeiss Conquest completely underwater. We climbed back up. I changed the ammunition in the magazine, wiped the lenses and tried a test shot. Still on zero. We soon spotted a nice group of caribou, made a long stalk, and I shot a good bull. Back at camp, the rifle was wiped down with an oily rag, and there were no issues with bedding, stock finish, rust, or accuracy. It's quite amazing what you can get away with when the stock and barrel channel is properly sealed and the blueing is coated with a good synthetic oil!
So not only stainless/plastic rifles are rugged, but I concede that they are More rugged!

conditions that we hunted in...
064_64.jpg


Do I look happy that I found it?
021_21.jpg


And it still worked!
yukoncaribou.jpg
 
Longwalker, I can understand your relief at finding that rifle unharmed after you lost it from your saddle scabbard. And if it had gone bouncing the wrong way down a rocky slope, it might have been wrecked. But I don't quite understand why you find it at all remarkable that it suffered no damage from taking a bath for a few hours in some nice clean freshwater. That was an excellent test of the scope's waterproofing, but the rifle?

When the NWMP first came West, they were armed with Snider cavalry carbines. They switched a few years later to 1876 Winchesters. In the meantime, one of the early constables lost his Snider the same way you lost your Remington, when it slipped from its saddle scabbard while he was crossing an icy river near dusk in late fall. He was unable to locate it and had to report it lost. However, next spring after breakup, he searched the river ford again and managed to locate the rifle. After a quick cleaning, it fired perfectly. No damage at all either to the wood stock or the carbon steel barrel and action from spending a winter under the ice.

Maybe I'm biased, because my first rifles were milsurps - WW1 milsurps actually. My very first one was a Parks & Rec Ross. After the Ross rifle was withdrawn from frontline service in 1916, a lot of them had the wood "sporterized" and were then re-issued to the park wardens. My P&R Ross was over 70 years old when I bought it, had been to war, then spent years as a Park Service brush gun, then passed through who knows how many sportsmen's hands before I found it on the rack of a local antique store. The stock was scratched up and the metal bluing was grey, but the bore was pristine and the rifle still functioned perfectly.

I've tended to expect that level of durability from all my firearms ever since, and if they can't provide it, I rather consider that to be a design defect.

To be honest, I don't understand all these people on these threads who say they have rifles with synthetic stocks and stainless steel barrels to take hunting anytime they expect bad weather or rough terrain. Do they expect the other ones to melt or something?

If blued steel and wood weren't a tough and forgiving firearm combination, you wouldn't still see thousands of Lee Enfields out in the field more than 60 years after production ceased. I owned one myself that I bought from a guy who had taken his elk with it every year for 13 years, but was now getting too old to hunt; the Lee Enfield in question had Queen Victoria's crest on it, was at least 25 years older than that aged hunter, and was still going strong. For that matter, I understand the Canadian Rangers have been looking into finding a replacement rifle for the unit, only because they are starting to become concerned about keeping a reliable source of spare parts on hand for the unit's Longbranch-made rifles. Those rifles went North with the Rangers after coming home from European war service, have been carried on Arctic patrols and hunts for a further 60 years, and still work just fine. And not a speck of stainless steel or synthetics on any of them.
 
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As mentioned above, I too had a milsurp as my first centerfire rifle, a No.1 Mk III with
sporterized stock and issue iron sights. I carried that rifle though a lot of woods, both
wet and dry, and it never bothered the beasty. Lee Enfields and the like are supremely
reliable if properly cared for.

I have only one rifle in the collection now with some stainless on 'er, my .45 ACP
Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk 1. The barrel is polished chrome moly, not stainless.;)
watermark.php
 
SHELL SHUCKER said:
As mentioned above, I too had a milsurp as my first centerfire rifle, a No.1 Mk III with
sporterized stock and issue iron sights. I carried that rifle though a lot of woods, both
wet and dry, and it never bothered the beasty. Lee Enfields and the like are supremely
reliable if properly cared for.

I have only one rifle in the collection now with some stainless on 'er, my .45 ACP
Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk 1. The barrel is polished chrome moly, not stainless.;)
watermark.php
Click to expand...

Now that has to be the nicest looking "tactical pistol-calibre carbine" I've seen in a long time. Where and how did you acquire it?
 
screwtape said:
Now that has to be the nicest looking "tactical pistol-calibre carbine" I've seen in a long time. Where and how did you acquire it?
Click to expand...

Thanks,
I built this one up a couple of years back. The barrel and mag adaptor kit was from North Shore Barrels.
These kits come with a straight taper barrel so I contoured and polished it, as well as fitting the M1 Garand
National Match front sight on a Schultz & Larsen base. Finished by installing a Huber trigger and tweaking
up the wood.
Tons of fun to use on feral cats.
:D
 
Longwalker, you could do like my youngest son does. He has a couple of the canoe paddle Rugers (260 & 270) and looking for more. When they are out hunting, they wear the canoe paddle stocks, when they come home to get fondled and shot at the range they wear Ruger walnut stocks. Stainless & Walnut do go together very well.
 
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I have only two plastic and stainless guns (out of about 40 long guns) and one is a muzzleloader. I use the other more than any of the rest except a very nice Browning Medallion. The stainless gun is (gasp) a Savage special order chambered for the 280 Remington. In years past I hunted white tails in northwest Pennsylvania where the weather is usually abominable during the season and it just made sense to me. I always felt bad when the rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain was messing with my beautiful walnut/blues beauties.
 
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