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Or known to reliably go "bang!". Love the look of those carbines though. I have a 760 and can't wait for the 7600's to come back (they are listed on Midway USA) but it looks like they are going to be pricey. It's going to be interesting to see what they choose to chamber in for the platform….maybe we see a 6mm renaissance?
This is what has been needed. When I was on Midway the 7600's were listed around 1200 but no mention of specs….I didn't know if the prices were a reflection of start up costs/tooling or improvements to the model. Sounds like a little of both which I am more than OK with. Can't wait to see what cartridges and barrel lengths are offered and if they offer laminate stocks.
We still have my dad's first year of manufacturing 760. Ridiculously accurate pump rifle in .30-06. That thing has killed hundreds of deer and hogs and is every bit the rifle today it was when it was new.
The 760's and 7600's are both excellent. The 742 I have heard had some reliability issues. Plus they are just aesthetically pleasing guns. I would have much rather seen Savage bring a pump rifle to market or bring back a modern lever than a straight pull bolt or even just improve the rough cycling with the new 110's. Richard Mann did a best rifles of 2022 and the Magpul 110 was on there with the pro of being accurate and the con of….you guess it, roughly cycling (read not chambering rounds quickly or efficiently). Begs the question. Why build a brand new bolt rifle meant for quick action when you can't figure out how to fix those same issues on a gun you've been making forever?
Thick woods reality…our shots are so close that a 308 with 150 grains is really more than adequate. Last deer I got was maybe 35-40 yards and the 308 150 grain Core-Lokt went double lung and exited. The deer weighed 185 dressed so definitely not small. He may have gone 10 steps before piling up.
The 338 Marlin is another winner in the relatively mild recoiling 338 arena. It was designed specifically for the Marlin lever actions with the idea in mind of matching as closely as possible 30-06 ballistics out to four or five hundred yards.
We had a 742 in .243 that was a wonderful rifle until one day the bolt track went south and the bolt ended up at a really bad angle in a horrible bind. It was a 72-74 era model and the gun smith said they'd gotten really cheap in their stampings of the receivers for a few years and that was happening to a lot of them.
It is interesting that as inaccurate as the normal 742 was, the 760 was a tack driver. A friend of mine inherited a 760 in .270 from a good friend. When he got it, it showed years of wear on the outside. When we went out to shoot it just to see what it would do we were amazed that it shot less that 1 MOA with a beezlebob (el cheapo) scope on it. With a shooter like that he refurbished it, had it re blued in a high gloss finish and refinished the stock to better than factory new and put a Vortex 4 x 16 x 44 scope on it. It is a sub MOA , 0.70 shooter with Federal Premium 130 gr Nosler Partitions and similar. Many a magnificent bucks have fell prey both before and after the the refurbishment.
Completely different operating systems. The 742 was a DI semi auto and the lugs had a tendency not to lock up all the way before the next shot was fired especially when rapid firing.
I have owned any number of 742 and 7400's over the years, none of which no matter how much you tinkered would not shoot under 2 MOA. Most were closer to 3 MOA. To me rapid fire would be 10 rounds accurately fired in 50 to 70 seconds, not the normal firing you hear at your local gun club which is doing nothing but turning gunpowder into noise and hoping that all of the bullets hit the backstop. The 742/7400's were semi automatic firearms, not machine guns.
The rate of fire is dicretcly proportional to how fast you pull the trigger no matter how many rounds you are firing.
