what makes the perfect varmint rifle

[Kiwishooter]

Originally Posted by Clint E

I have found that the answer to your question is to own one of everything . It just makes life more enjoyable.

I just so agree with this answer ......Kiwi

[foxhunter]

everyone here has had a valid point. especially about owning one of everything.

a friend once told me the perfect hunting rifle is all about the packaging. for years i hunted vermin with a pair or remington model 7's. one in 222 rem and the other in a 17 remington. i liked the size of the rifle package, short and fast swinging. then i went to sako l461's, smaller action with a 21-22 inch barrel. Great package when you mount a leupold 2.5-8 on it.

that's one package, the other is a remington 700 varminter or a sako 75 (6ppc) in any one of the varmint caliber from 222 to 243. mount a good 24 power leupold with a 1/8 minute dot and head to the prairie dog towns, again it's the package.

like someone said the older i get the lighter i like my rifles.

[gopher]

I'm lucky to have several choices from 17 to 6mm. But I seperate varmints from predators when it come to rifles.
For sage rats, p dogs, rockchucks (varmints) I now like smaller calibers...esp 17 hmr and hornet and the teriffic 20's.
For predators like coyotes I like 20 or 22 cal.
If I had to pick only one for all, it would either be a 20 VT or20 Practical/204 on a light short action with medium weight barrel. I like have a repeater option but shoot single most of the time. Howa Mini or CZ 527 type action, 20" barrels or so. Oh and I only shoot supressed now
JMHO

[Danny]

What makes the perfect Varmint Rifle? To start, NOT havng some heinous *THING* on the bolt that looks similar to this, IF you are doing it on a bolt gun. To be honest, that holds true for any bolt gun.

https://tinyurl.com/3js62e4a

[JDHasty]

Originally Posted by Danny

What makes the perfect Varmint Rifle? To start, NOT havng some heinous *THING* on the bolt that looks similar to this, IF you are doing it on a bolt gun. To be honest, that holds true for any bolt gun.

https://tinyurl.com/3js62e4a

True that! Boy did I set off a sh*tstorm on another site with this comment as well.

As things have "progressed" in the shooting world things like scopes have gone from the sublime to the flat out ridiculous and in these days it is not at all out of the norm to see rifle/scope combinations that are more cartoonish than in any classical sense aesthetically pleasing. It's that way in a lot of other areas as well. Most anyone who has enough on the ball to be out in public unescorted has the ability to recognize size and cost but way too many lack any sense of style whatsoever and attempt to make up for that with size. It takes a certain amount of refinement to appreciate how proportionality fits into overall aesthetics and some don't have it and many try and make up for it with grossly exaggerated features on their rifles. The best analogy I have heard is when a friend at the local cub commented that the resident "bigger must be better" guy's wife is now sporting a pair of bolt on's a Holstein would be proud of on her 120lb frame, so it comes as no surprise to him that he would show up with what looks quite similar in size to the Celestron refractor astronomical telescope I bought for my kids mounted to a 10/22.

The hell of it is, exaggerated features are almost always way past the point of diminishing returns. I have sacrificed overall weight (portability) and some degree of aesthetics on my CZ 527 Americans by mounting 5-20x50 Nitrex TR-2 scopes on them. I traded a bit of portability and a better balanced look for the ability see my target well enough to place shots very accurately on rock chucks, prairie dogs and sage rats at longer distances. In doing so I still end up with a fairly proportional looking rifle that still retains a classical look. I have seen others with 34mm tube scopes that overwhelm the rifle they are mounted on and are anything but portable. Not only have the aesthetics been totally thrown out the window, the energy (feng shui) is all wrong, and they only very rarely contribute anything to usability outside of perhaps under very limited conditions. Practically no one believes them attractive. In the process they end up with what is more or less the Winchester Mansion of shooting irons. They didn't achieve the desired result (getting positive attention) from anyone other than the like minded, so instead of rethinking the bigger is better motive, they double down and keep going.

[foxhunter]

in my younger days i shot boat loads of coyotes, fox and p-dogs. nearly every coyote or fox was shot on 4x, i was a Leupold man back then. most were shot in the middle of the chest with an occasional double lunger and quite a few Texas heart shots. so if i had one of those monster scopes mounted on my rifle it would still be set on 4x.
there are those who really like a challenge, so set your scope on 20x and shoot at a running coyote with it.
aesthetically pleasing, that's the words i was looking for.

[JDHasty]

I’m still kicking myself for practically giving away our Target Spots and Jr Targetspots.

[Gerald D.]

The hateful attitude of those big knob lovers was just ridiculous JD, comical really.

[SmokinJoe]

I run 4-12,6-18 and mostly 6.5-20x40 Leu EFR on my rifles and rarely ever use more than 12x, mostly more down around 6x. I have found that these scopes give me a good combination of performance and aesthetics.
As far as the big knobs, I'm not much of a fan, except on my CZ's. I did put the big knob extended bolt handles on those last year and to me they are a significant improvement.

[JDHasty]

I have given a fair bit of consideration and after considerable introspection have concluded that the degree to which my primary objection to the “current thing” is as with much of what we are seeing today, it is top down directed. Not that it has not always been the case, but to sit back and observe the degree to which this dynamic goes unrecognized and people are lapping it up motivates my hostility to what I see as a market dislocation. Market dislocations are circumstances in which markets, operating under stressful conditions, cease to place value derived organically from the consumer.

Yes, the consumer in the aggregate are driving the market, but what are consumers being influenced by? By the early 1990’s I had cancelled subscriptions to each and every forearms periodical except Rifle and Handloader magazine simply because of the “subliminal advertising,” that was not so subliminal to me, being slipped into each and every article therein. Concurrent with this, and as it rose to the ludicrous levels we see today, I also recognized that the larger manufactures were collectively driving the content and pushing the move to mass produced firearms. The hype while never sublime is beyond ridiculous today, and in the last thirty years has become more and more transparent.

I remember a time when I would look forward to the content in order to “improve my game” by learning how to make what I already owned perform better, or maybe look better. That and entertain myself reading about firearms. I also would take into consideration the name branded equipment mentioned and TRUSTED that the author was not simply pumping a brand. These days it impresses me that the motivation is to a) pump a brand or item and b) drive the market to mass produced items manufacturers can pump out for peanuts and sell at a large profit margin. Thus the lack of acknowledgment and appreciation of refinement, style and class in rifles marketed to the average Joe. They can’t, because there isn’t any. Not that I don’t have an appreciation for an AR15, I’ve been using and building them for decades. But although the engineering and execution leaves little to be desired performance wise… there is a difference in type, not degree, of my acknowledged appreciation of that vs my appreciation of a sporting rifle that exudes style and class and the best analogy I have of that would be the difference between the home furnishings produced and marketed by Henrydon or Thomasville vs those produced and marketed by IKEA. Both provide relatively the same functionality, but I wouldn’t have the latter in my home and the former provides me with a great deal of pleasure that goes beyond having something to place my clothing in or eat my meals off of.

I used to get the feel that there was an appreciation of the difference between catching a five lb rainbow on a dry fly and finding that a five lb rainbow was at the end of a set line. I used to know exactly where to dunk a worm in the Yellowstone River ten minutes from my grandfather’s house and in ten minutes or less haul out a four or five lb trout for dinner. Damned if there is any sense of fulfillment to be had in that. Compare that with going out for a days shooting sport and not having much, if any luck. But, I can still cherish the time spent and, for me anyway, handling and admiring my rifle when I am in the field with something that a great deal of effort was put into integrating form and function adds to my enjoyment.

The mass produced arms have a “military” look about them for a reason. When a country is at war there is no effort put into refinements that give a firearm class and style. It is all functionality and what I see is top down effort being made to sway people to lose an appreciation for what cannot be turned out using mass production methods.

How do I feel about chassis over a stock? You already know.

FWIW, our ARs shoot. They shoot damn well. They have a reputation for shooting extremely well if I put it together. And they keep doing so. There is no alchemy involved, there are no secrets. All I do is use top notch components and pay attention to detail. Nothing more. Nothing less. You can imagine the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth when I went on a local hunting forum and said that if a guy has enough smarts to follow directions and bake a cake from scratch they can put an AR15 together that lacks nothing the guys claiming to have some super secret process and superhuman ability. You need basic tools and a few specialized tools and gauges and the ability to follow directions on how to use them and that’s all you need. Yup, you can pay a guy a couple thousand to assemble a super battle worthy AR, and he will stake the fasteners so they don’t come loose come hell or high water, but the only other thing he will do is check tolerances by using the proper gauges and make sure parts used are compatible tolerance wise and tune the gas system by adjusting or substitution and has experience in that. But really, there isn’t much, if anything more that he could do even if he wanted to.