I've had five true custom rifles and a few more either rebarreled or modified to some extent. The first of the five customs is beautiful and stays at home because it is both too heavy and too pretty. One is exactly what I wanted and is both light and accurate. It shows the wear. Three others are gone since they didn't make the cut in accuracy or failed to meet requested specifications. A gunsmith told me the reason he made the length of pull 13.5 inches was that it was standard even though we'd agreed on 14 and a quarter inch. A friend with shorter arms got a heck of a deal after the gunsmith refused to replace the stock and only offered to put in spacers at an additional cost.
I've thought about this topic and concluded the only reason I ever wanted a custom rifle is because I could. Customs aren't necessarily better hunting tools and you lose your shirt on resale. My fascination with wildcats is over, too. There isn't much game hunting that can't be done with a 180 grain thirty caliber bullet at 2700 feet per second. Add a scope to the rifle, either variable or fixed, with no more than 7X magnification and make it shoot 1 1/2 inch three shot groups at 100 yards and I'm good to go. If the rifle costs less than five hundred dollars before the scope and is reliable, all the better.
