Mister Call is right.
You have to understand a bit of the history. It used to be that you needed to pay a premium and do quite a bit of work to get to the kind of accuracy we are seeing with out-of-the-box offerings now. It used to be that. . .
1) Ammo was kind of hit-and-miss. Lot-to-lot consistency was not what it is now. It used to be if you found something that worked, you'd have to buy as much of that lot as you could. That's one of the reasons reloading became popular; it allowed you to build more consistent ammo.
2) Optics were not nearly as good. It used to be your scope would go off-kilter every whipstitch, and it would take a box or two of ammo every year to get it figured out.
3) Stocks would warp. Inletting was iffy.
4) Triggers could be downright abominable.
30 years ago, it was kind of axiomatic that a 4 MOA rifle was okay for deer hunting. It still probably is, but you can do a heck of a lot better with not as much cost or effort. Nowadays, if I bought a 4 MOA deer rifle brand new, I would demand my money back.
A Savage Axis has a street price of $250, give or take. In 1989, adjusting for income, that rifle would be worth $120. However, you could not get anything near a 2019 Savage Axis for $120. Instead, a Rem 700 cost about $350+. A $120 rifle (I bought one around then) would be more like a used Winchester 670 that looked it had been dragged behind a truck on a chain. It had been purchased new in the early 70's at K-Mart and traded between family members in rural KY before one of the brothers brought it North to a gun show to dump it. I was the dumpee. To get to where a new $120 gun would get you 1 MOA accuracy out of the box might be well back into the early 1960's. However a $120 rifle back then would be a $1200-1500 rifle now.
Last edited by shaman; 08/17/19.
