Some how i believe he would still like the 270 or maybe the 280. He and ackley were good friends ,though. He might have eventually wound up with a 280 ackley. I believe that this new generation of bullets, guns and scopes would keep him interested tho. He used the 7mm rem mag a good bit when it first came out and was not impressed. He said that the 7 mag was deadly on elk with the 150 grain core-lok. But he said that it didn't do any thing that his 270 couldn't do just as well. The 270 would be better in the field for him, because his rifle would hold more ammo than the 7 mag. He said also that it would have to be a pound or 2 heavier with a longer barrel also..he also said that recoil was higher too. I think the last gun that he was building was a 280 before he passed. I believe that with the 280 his thought was that it would shoot heavier bullets like his 30/06, without the drawbacks, of a magnum.
He also did not like variable power scopes, but i remember him talking about varmit hunting. He wished he had a higher power scope because he had several misses. He said with more power the better you see. I'm not so shure tho that he would like variable power scopes still..
The problem with variable scopes in JOC day was reliability, today's variable scopes do not suffer that problem. With that fact in mind I think Jack O'Conner would embrace variable scopes with todays reliability
