Thanks for the input Bender,
I'm up to the teeth with custom .22 and 6mm centerfire varminters. I have a custom .22 Kilbourn Hornet that shoots like a .222 and have had a number of hot .22s like the .22 cheeta, .22-243, .223s and .22-250 and a .22 swift. All are too hot for their own good and expensive to shoot. When the gophers are inside 300 yards these new rimfire .17s work great and are cheap to shoot...when the sod poodles are out past 300 and the winds are up nothing beats a good 6mm ...when the wind is down I use my .17 Rem out at 300...the dog is red mist before he hears the rifle.
I like the new copper clad varmint bullets in the rimfire .17s they are efficient and accurate gopher getters that extend the rimfires effective kill range to 200-270 yards and they are more accurate than the .22RFmag ( I have had the best .22mags made and used them over the past 30 yrs and I have yet to find one as accurate as these new .17 rim fires are out of the box)
I just like the idea of taking one gun for a days shooting in the early spring when the shots vary in range but are all under 300yrds. In the past it was a pain carrying 2 rim fires and 2 centerfires to cover all the ranges ( I used to use an Anschutz .22RF match for close work, a Ruger .22RFMag for 100-120yrd, a .22K-Hornet for 150-200 and a Sako 6PPC for the long stuff). This was pretty expensive shooting and with the volume of shooting we did I spent a lot of spare time reloading.
Now my .17 hornady rim fire is good for out to 250 and the mach.17 is cheap and good for the short work....if I hit a real infestation I just fall back on the old favorites: a couple of custom accurized ruger 10/22s with a whack of 50rnd clips and sand bad them on the box rail and just blast away with a couple of bricks of super X HPs at 50-80 yrds, clean out a couple of holes then move on to the next holes...I love this short range bulk shooting but you only find an infestation like this ones a year...then it's back to skittish gophers and the longer shots in fields that have been shot over.
The Sako quad seemed like a simple solution to cover short to moderate range gopher work....just wished it was a self loader with more mag capacity.