Last year Nathan with HuDisCo offered on 24hourcampfire to build a custom rifle for the two winners of a writing contest. The rifle would be built at cost for the parts that I chose. I submitted my essay and was one of the two chosen winners.
I spoke to Nathan at length on the phone about what I wanted for the build and what my intended end use would be, all around hunting rifle. What I mean by that is a rifle that will work well for just about anything though may not be perfect for any one thing. My goal is to narrow the herd of rifles in my safe so to speak significantly with this rifle. Nathan offered some friendly suggestions without being pushy and was easy to speak with.
I ended up going with the following:
Defiance action, 7mm Remington Magnum
McMillian Remington Classic in a mcswirly color pattern
Bartlein Barrel, No 3 contour, 24" and fluted, 5R rifling, 9 twist
Timney trigger
Cerakoted in graphite black color
Once I received the rifle I added a Leupold VX3 4-14X40 in Talley LW rings.
The rifle is not a lightweight nor is it heavy in my opinion. I don't have a great scale but it is a pleasure to carry compared to the Ruger M77 in a laminated stock I carried up a lot of mountains.
I have run four different factory loads through the rifle so far and it has shot them all extremely well by my standards. That is it has put them all under 1" for 3 shot 100 yard groups. I have run Accubond, Accubond LR, TTSX's and a Winchester PP's for a total of around 100 rounds at this point. So far the rifle likes the 168gr Nosler Accubond LR's the most and that is what I am going to continue using those.
Any fault in the build surely lies with me as it was built exactly as I specified. I have been unable to find a flaw in Nathan's work in any way.
The only thing thing about this process that was less then advertised was the time it took to get it. HDC opened a new retail store while I was waiting for my rifle and some time was lost due to that. In no way am I complaining about this however as I was kept up to date during the process and I understand a new and small business will have some growing pains.
I wanted to wait to post this until I had a chance to shoot the rifle a little and get some blood on it. At this point that has been accomplished.
The bottom line is I would use HDC again and would recommend them to a friend in the market.
