So Shaman, what you're saying is that you had better than a 4 MOA rifle; you just couldn't shoot better than 4 MOA.
In the case of the 742, it was a solid 4 MOA rifle. I put several scopes on it over the years. Only one of them rattled, and only a little bit. I killed a bunch of deer with it, but they were all fairly close. By 2001, I was reloading, and my 165 grain handloads were considerably better than minute-of-pie-plate at 100 yards. That year, I shot a buck and a doe. My stand was on a fairly steep hill, and both deer showed up on the uphill side. I was shooting straight out at less than 15 yards and both deer managed to run towards the ladder before succumbing. This is an ideal situation for a 4 MOA rifle to shine. Why mess with perfection?
The WIN 670 was a 1-2 MOA rifle in disguise. If you're in the situation I found myself, it's a little like trying to watch a porn channel without the decoder box. All the parts are there, they're just scattered on the screen. Nothing is like it is in the magazines. Changing factory loads never did anything but move the pattern around on the paper. What made that rifle shine was a beginning load of H4895 under Hornady 165 IL SP's. I've since found that 150 grain Rem Corelokt PSP's work just as well. That's what my son shoots. However, I bought the rifle in 1989 and didn't start reloading until 2000. There was more than a decade there where that rifle shot nothing but groundhogs.
The difference between this rifle and the Rem 742 in actual practice was that instead of climbing a tree and shooting them at 15 yards, I could now sit in my blind and enjoy the luxury of waiting until that exact moment when they approach closest to that one magical place in the pasture 150 yards out with a little fold in the landscape. This is where I can drop them, roll the truck up, and load them in the back without lifting them up to the tailgate.
