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***TomG*** · 12-06-2014, 12:33 AM

My son asked if I could help him build a rifle for long range shooting. Not one to miss an opportunity to spend time with him, I suggested that we each pick up an inexpensive rifle and see who could build the more accurate one. We checked a few gun shops to see what was available and decided on the new Browning A-Bolt III because Browning was offering a $100 rebate on them until the end of the month. I chose a 300 Winchester Mag and he got a 7mm Remington Mag. The plan was to start with a bare bones rifle and either do a trigger job on them or just add a match grade trigger, a nice scope, a wooden stock (over the supplied polymer one) and depending on how they shoot out of the box, maybe a match grade barrel. The rifles listed for $599 and they were on sale for $499, but when we checked out, they rang up for $399. Apparently they were on some sort of Cyber week unadvertised sale, so we got them for $299 with the factory rebate.

When we got home and had time to check them out, we were pleased to find that they are much better quality than expected. The rifle is fairly light but has a nice heavy bolt that only rotates 60º for lots of scope clearance. The trigger is probably going to be fine as is with a pull of under 3 pounds and it has zero creep. I may try to lighten mine up a bit more, but I see no reason to do anything more. We'll have to get them to the range and see how the barrels are but looking at the reviews, they should shoot under 1 MOA right out of the box with factory ammo. That's an 8" pattern at 800 yards, which is where we eventually want to be shooting (competing) against each other. There is a large gun show coming up later in the month, so we'll check out the most expensive part of the project and see what scopes are out there. It should be a fun project.

Tom

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