Okie: What did Finn say about the Scout rifle? I know he was a friend of Clifton.
Aagaard and Cooper admired one another, and Aagaard felt that Cooper was an original thinker who found new solutions to problems by approaching them from new angles. I have no idea about Aagaard's relationship with Clifton except that it was based on respect for his skills as a riflemaker.
I believe that Aagaard was more impressed with the Scout concept than with its execution. In that letter he pointed out that when Cooper built a Scout rifle for his daughter Lindy, it was a pseudo-scout in 30-06 on a 1903 action. And while he kept the Scout rifle that Mr. Clifton sent him, he continued to use short rifles (usually military surplus 98 Mausers with low-powered conventional scopes in Weaver rings/bases and B&C stocks) in 308 and 30-06. I think that if he were alive today, he'd prefer a modern variable with a good 1x low end, I think that he’d consider the Scout a good idea whose time had come and gone because it had been overtaken by newer developments that achieve the same goal with less hassle and expense.
I also think that he'd still be using a milsurp 98 in 30-06 with a steel-tube Weaver 2.5x scope for 99% of his personal hunting. It might be in a McMillan stock, but otherwise it would be identical to the rifles he built in the 1970's.
Okie John
