Yondering ,
Thank you for your prompt reply . I'm inquiring a few things . Would the majority of coyote hunters abandon it and build a new one - OR - do a lot of fellows shoot rigs close to that weight . I need to give you all some facts . We only have about 100 acres to hunt , but there is 170 acres behind our farm where a lot of deer / turkeys and everything else live and come out to our place to eat , no one hunts it . . Next to us is 130 acres mixed wood and fields that the owner hunts for deer . Now the kicker , it's all in Southern New Jersey and the only time we can use rifles is from January 1st to March 15th and we can only have 3 rounds TOTAL in the rifle -it must not be larger than .25 cal and no projos over 80 grains . I think that most coyote hunters everywhere else have more walking to do and hunt over thousands of acres in the West , South West , Mid West and the South .
Now you know my fix , whats your thoughts .
Soup
I don't shoot/hunt nearly as many coyotes as some of the guys here. With that said, IMO that rifle would work fine for me in your application, but I'd probably get tired of packing it around eventually. Seems like what you've got has the scales tipped a bit more towards "precision shooting" than hunting, although that's not necessarily bad and depends on your preferences. Might as well hunt with it some though, your limits and abilities are probably different than mine.
For my own preference, the ARs I've built intentionally as walking around rifles end up in the 6-7 lb range complete; those vary from 9" and 12.5" barreled short guns (pistol and SBR territory) to 20" light rifles. My son and I hunted this fall with the short guns (he's 11 so a small AR is the perfect size), and I'm leaning more and more to that direction for a handy woods gun; while wandering the woods with my 12.5" SBR (and using it on deer) I came to the realization that I didn't need or miss the extra length of a full size rifle. That is a pretty unconventional point of view though, so you may or may not want my input.
My main point is that maybe with the acreage you have available to hunt and what doesn't sound like many long shots, you might be served just as well or better with a smaller overall package than your current rifle.
As I mentioned above though, if you do decide that one is too heavy and prefer to lighten it up or build a lighter gun, options are plentiful. At the extreme end, you can get one of these rifles under 4 lb with iron sights, call it 5 lb scoped. That'll be expensive and time consuming, but 7 lb scoped is pretty easy and a noticeable difference compared to what you've got. The ARs I've built intentionally as walking around rifles are all in the 6-7 lb range complete; those vary from 9" and 12" barreled short guns (pistol and SBR territory) to 20" light rifles.
