Thought I'd share...
When my wife got pregnant with our first, she bought me a standard Browning X-Bolt Hunter in .308Win. I loved it and the thought, and I think I'm ultimately a sentimental guy. But I could never get it to shoot well (~1.75-3moa).
So I had Pierce (how'd I get so lucky to have a renowned rifle builder so close to me?) put on a Bartlein in 6.5 Creedmoor. Now I know this goes without saying, but it shoots great now! I shot a respectable 0.38" group with it.
That barrel is finished at 19", and is my whitetail rifle. Of course, threaded. (If I'm polite enough to have a muffler on my car, ought I not to have one on my rifle as well?)
That got me thinking... I bought a WSM magazine and tested, and indeed a 6.5 PRC fits in one just fine (unmodified), even at a COAL of 2.950".
I had another Browning, this a LR stalker, that I'd considered just having the chamber reamed out. But a buddy wanted to buy it, so I let it go.
So what to do?
Well, Numrich sells Browning parts. No amount of personal responsibility or sending it directly to a gunsmith would convince Browning to sell me one (grrrr!). So I bought a complete WSM bolt assembly from Numrich. And a Proof .264" tube. And I already had a Brux cut-rifled .284" tube in the basement.
So I marched back up to Pierce. They bedded the action into my McMillan Game Scout, and chambered the Brux in 7SS and the Proof in 6.5PRC. They cerakoted it all, including the magnum bolt in hunter's orange (for safety so I don't interchange them), and threaded a bigger bolt handle onto the factory stem. They put in the mount for the Spartan bios and two flush cups on the left side.
And now I've got a triple switch barrel that will take me from the whitetail woods to the muley/pronghorn plains to the elk mountains!
And it's still the rifle my wife bought me that makes me think of my daughter every time I pick it up.
I'm a lucky guy! I put in for an elk tag in Wyoming this year, and I'll put in for mule deer in Colorado in a couple of days... we'll see if the luck holds?
When my wife got pregnant with our first, she bought me a standard Browning X-Bolt Hunter in .308Win. I loved it and the thought, and I think I'm ultimately a sentimental guy. But I could never get it to shoot well (~1.75-3moa).
So I had Pierce (how'd I get so lucky to have a renowned rifle builder so close to me?) put on a Bartlein in 6.5 Creedmoor. Now I know this goes without saying, but it shoots great now! I shot a respectable 0.38" group with it.
That barrel is finished at 19", and is my whitetail rifle. Of course, threaded. (If I'm polite enough to have a muffler on my car, ought I not to have one on my rifle as well?)
That got me thinking... I bought a WSM magazine and tested, and indeed a 6.5 PRC fits in one just fine (unmodified), even at a COAL of 2.950".
I had another Browning, this a LR stalker, that I'd considered just having the chamber reamed out. But a buddy wanted to buy it, so I let it go.
So what to do?
Well, Numrich sells Browning parts. No amount of personal responsibility or sending it directly to a gunsmith would convince Browning to sell me one (grrrr!). So I bought a complete WSM bolt assembly from Numrich. And a Proof .264" tube. And I already had a Brux cut-rifled .284" tube in the basement.
So I marched back up to Pierce. They bedded the action into my McMillan Game Scout, and chambered the Brux in 7SS and the Proof in 6.5PRC. They cerakoted it all, including the magnum bolt in hunter's orange (for safety so I don't interchange them), and threaded a bigger bolt handle onto the factory stem. They put in the mount for the Spartan bios and two flush cups on the left side.
And now I've got a triple switch barrel that will take me from the whitetail woods to the muley/pronghorn plains to the elk mountains!
And it's still the rifle my wife bought me that makes me think of my daughter every time I pick it up.
I'm a lucky guy! I put in for an elk tag in Wyoming this year, and I'll put in for mule deer in Colorado in a couple of days... we'll see if the luck holds?
