Glockster said:
A good friend of mine and full time gunsmith showed me a rifle he recently built for a customer. Oh I wish I had a pic of it. Sako stainless Magnum action, 30" heavy octagon barrel (fluted) with integral muzzle break, HS Presicion Tactical stock, adjustable cheek rest and adjustable LOP, wide foreend and Harris bipod, extended belly mag with 5 round capacity and some kind of Romainian 10x32x52mm tactical reticle scope.
And the calibre? .458 Lott .
Apparently the recoil was virtually non existant and with the 10x32 scope he should have no problem with those 600 yd head shots, the ballistics of a 458 not withstanding.
I like the .458 Lott cartridge "a lot" and it would quite easily bag any game animal in North America at short to medium ranges, but it really is intended as a relatively short range dangerous game rifle that absolutely shines on the Dark Continent.
This guy must have more money than sense...reminds of an incident a few years back. Had a guy that is probably related to the customer above drop off his brand new .416 Remington to my gunsmith friend to have a scope mounted and the rifle sighted in; which it was (I got to help!) The rifle was dead on, sighted in 2" high at 100 yards as per the customers request.
A week later the same guy comes back, complaining that the rifle wasn't properly sighted in and it wasn't even printing on paper! Of course, my buddie's first thought was that there was a problem with the rings or perhaps even the scope. However, everything checked out fine, and the customer was so informed.
He insisted that it be properly zeroed once again. (this was starting to get expensive with the price of factory .416 Remington ammo!) but what the hey, it was his dime?
Another trip to the range and the rifle's first three round group was clustered in a nice, tight, near MOA group, again dead center of the target and 2" high as the customer requested. Just to be sure, several additional rounds were fired with the same result. Obviously, there was no problem with the equipment...so it had to be "operator error."
Got the owner to make a trip to the range with us and had him demonstrate his shooting "technique." He seemed to know what he was doing. Settled into a decent position, controlled his breathing and settled himself into a decent cheekweld. One shot later we knew what the problem was!
...just to be sure we had him fire a couple more rounds, then stopped him...
Our suggestion was for him to try shooting with his eyes OPEN next time!
Also, he might want to refrain from hunching his entire body in anticipation of the recoil; while twisting his head away from the rifle in abject fear, ...and maybe, he might want to think about NOT jerking the trigger as hard as he could!
It turns out he had purchased the .416 Remington as a "Moose" rifle, since his "old" .338 Winchester Magnum had proven so ineffective during the previous hunting season!
...And we all KNOW just how ineffective the .338 Win Mag is on Moose right!
Despite our best efforts, the gentleman wouldn't even consider our suggestion that he look into purchasing something a little more manageable for him, such as the .308 Win or 7mm-08; which would work just fine on Moose. I don't know what became of him, but I do know that the Canadian Moose population need not fear!
