Friend of mine that works here with me put together a small caliber varminter for his wife.

It is a custom Contender Carbine by Match Grade Machine, and he had the barrel fluted in a Double Diamond flute pattern, and the flutes cerakoted in USMC Red...then had the stock cerakoted to match.

Only weighs around 7# scoped (Burris 4.5-14x).

Caliber is .17 Fireball....we're supposed to go out in a couple of weeks to give it a test drive.

I told him you definitely dint have to worry about laying it down somewhere and losing it.

It's a 'different strokes' kinda thing, I reckon. Hope the wife has better control of her gag reflex than I do.......grin

I would ordinarily be quick to criticize...


But as long as Im packing the McFlame...Im living in a glass house!






Go forth and slay stuff with the Red Rocket!

Only kinda woman worth havin aint it?

she loves the fireball.......its maybe a tad "colorful" for me.

i gotta couple of tubes with some assorted fluting, but nothing quite so wild in the color scheme....do have a .411x444 being built that will have the flutes dome in Burnt Bronze cerakote, should be here in a few weeks, thats about as wild as i care to go.

the barbwire rocks. but would suck in red.

You obviously have a thing for TCs...is it for all the regular reasons?

started doing some handgun hunting around 20 years ago, then gradually got into experimenting with more wildcat calibers in various sizes, in both carbine and pistol length barrels, so the TC's were a natural outlet for that.

They make a lot of sense for a lot of types of hunting. I never warmed up to them personally..but they have a proven track record for sure....

Are you one one of the guys on the Outdoor Channel?

Hey...I have a TC Icon bolt gun. Saw guys on TV with them and thought it looked OK.

Only problem is that it takes about five minutes to get the safety off......

That's because they suck in a rat patch. Or off sticks. Or a bench. Or most any type of volume shooting. The 'wife' will find that out soon enuff, when she takes the little furball to the PD town. But for the poor, broke phugger that can't afford a repeater, and takes a shot a year at a deer, they's the bees knees.

dat was mean.

Yup, they do suck off the bench, i cant consistently make 3 bullet holes touch every time at a hundred....often on my barrels i gotta slum it at around 1/2 MOA or thereabouts.

The various deer/hogs/dogs/etc around here havent noticed they suck though, they still seem to fall over when shot....

I would contemplate a new nickname.

"My wife wore the barrel out on her Red Rocket" could be easily misconstrued.



Dave

It ain't ALL about accuracy, to me. Sometimes I just don't want to fiddle-fugg with the time it takes to lose sight picture AND reload with a break action. But that just me. And red ain't my color.....

I used a Contender Carbine in .17 Mach2 .22 Hornet for gopher and prairie dog shooting for a couple years, but eventually grew really weary of opening, breaking and closing the action during 100's of rounds.

and here I thought I was the only one. But it didn't take me but one good long day in a dogtown. I could never have suffered like that for a 'couple YEARS', even if they are compact, easy to carry and accurate. There are accurate repeaters made every day.

My own T/C, a product of Iowa deer hunting regulations and my disquieted mind. I want late season where only a "handgun" or mzlelr are legal. I have long ago fallen out of love for the charcoal burners and juggling components, so..

Our "handguns" must fire straight-walled cartridges, and not be fire from the shoulder. There is no limit on barrel length. This one is a full bull (thank goodness) and 18". Went right to Horn's Leverevolution bullets for more BC and hope to have a lay-down 200-250 yard deer thumper. By Bullberry in Utah; good work.

I personally wouldn't consider a single shot for PDs or Gophs....but a hunting buddy just had a wazoo 22PPC built on a single shot action for PDs.....

After this last trip Im wondering where I can enlist the services of a couple loaders, and installing detachable high-cap mags...


To each his own.....

huntsman,

It was by no means the ONLY rifle I used on gophers and PD's during those two years. It was one of several I was experimenting with, since unless I'm just going out for an hour or so there are at least 4-5 rifles along, and perhaps a handgun or two.

And I only used it intermittently even then because I'd inexpensively acquired a couple of barrels chambered in cartridges that needed to be experimented with. After getting rid of them I bought real rifles chambered in those two rounds.

Ingwe, really like the McFlame.

A man of discriminating tastes....

Tom,

Actually, I like Ruger No. 1's for shooting abundant rodents quite a bit, especially my 1B .22 Hornet. If the shooting’s not hot and heavy, there’s no big hurry anyway, and when it is there's often not enough time to reload magazines, so I’m often single-loading rounds anyway. The 1B Hornet is far easier to single-load than any bolt gun. I have the ejector set so the empty barely pops out of the chamber, where it’s stopped by the tang safety button, and lies there in the little trough where I can grab it easily.
For walking around I wear a shirt with two chest pockets, and keep loaded rounds in one and empties in the other. When shooting from a vehicle, whether from inside or over the hood, I keep a 50 or 100-round box of ammo open so I can drop an empty in the space it was just plucked from, then grab another loaded round to slide into the chamber.
I don’t end up having to pick empties up off the ground or pickup floor (where they can get lost or stomped) and can keep shooting almost as fast as somebody working a bolt—but without having to load a magazine.

John, I think you would have made as good an accountant as a gun writer but probably wouldn't have had as much fun..

FryrepowrX: I usually don't go in for "gawdy" finished Rifles and pistols but this one is kind of pleasing for me to look at.
Please let us know how it shoots.
I have a factory stock Remington 700 VSF (Varmint, Synthetic Fluted) in 17 Remington Fireball - it has a Leupold 6x18 variable scope on it.
It shoots exceptionally well and is great fun to Varmint Hunt with.
The 17 Remington Fireball is an excellent and efficient Varminting caliber.
Thanks for the great pictures.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

JB: agreed, a #1 would be a choice if you were shooting a single shot. I do the two pockets thing like you, also do the 50 or 100 round box thing from the mobile rest.
I almost went with a #1-A last year when they made them in a deuce...


Kinda kicking myself that I didn't....

Apologize, not quite varmint armentarium. But a T/C, nevertheless.

That is pretty wild -- that and the bobwire flooting. Holy mackerel that's wretched p1mp excess -- but I love it.

Everyone needs at least one firearm that hurts to look at....

My wife's NULA .257 Roberts was unanimously voted the Ugliest Hunting Rifle at a gathering in a hotel bar in Glenrock, Wyoming a while back.

At first there was one hold-out, our young friend Casey Tillard, a local rancher, who thought Eileen would be offended. But when she told him she thought it was really ugly herself, Casey said, "Well, hell, then it gets my vote too!"

Would that be at the Higgins?

Yes indeed. Have spent quite a few evenings there.

You should have purchased that No. 1 deuce....

I know......but I figured if I started shooting gophs with a classy gun, Shrapnel would want to hang out with me.....

Especially if you put a Swarovski on it. Though I suspect he doesn't believe any sort of Ruger is classy.

I got the hots for a 1B in .22 Hornet after a farmer friend up on the Hiline let me shoot his 1b in .218 Bee all one afternoon. Almost bought that one from him (he was thinking of selling) but then somehow got rational about finding brass and bought the Hornet instead. With 40-grain plastic-tips at 3100 it's a 300-yard PD rifle if the wind isn't blowing too hard, and have killed them out past 400 on calmer days.

If a man is going to carry more than 1 round in the field they might as well be stored in a magazine.

In a thread featuring the Red Rocket, and the McFlame (we'll leave that bland black-grey thing out of this), I must say I've always liked that "Sun Flower" of yours too Scott.

I really need to get my Tube Gun experiment done. THEN you people will know the true meaning of ugly.