Mr. Gundoc7: Thank you for your post and input about your .300 wm. It sounds like our .300s are just about identical from a weight standpoint and frankly I didn't think it problematic to carry that much weight on my goat hunt. I'm rather used to rather physical work so an ultra lite weight rifle is not what I think best for me. I'm certainly vulnerable to excitement at the point of the shot, especially in a far away place, and then when climbing mountains in Alaska it gets your heart pumping. I did however try to somewhat minimize weight on my rifle. As I mentioned, I did go with Talley aluminum mts-rings and then used an ultralight homemade (by my wife) sling of nylon webbing that worked fine. I thought about switching to aluminum bottom metal but decided against it. I always prefer steel to aluminum but kind of violated that by going with the Talleys. I'm not going to change a thing on my elk hunt this fall; same rifle-same set-up. Recently I was looking over the D'Arcy Echols blog where he described building two identical .300s for a married couple that went to Asia on one of those sheep/ibex hunts. He said those 2 rifles weighed almost exactly 10 lbs. which he felt was just about perfect for that type of hunt. After reading that I thought to myself that I must be a wimp carrying only a 9 lb. rifle !!
Thanks again gundoc.
