To me the dog turd of the bunch is the 223WSSM, was a bad design from the get-go
Yep, the neck was too short and the shoulder angle too shallow. Thus it directed hot gas in front of the case mouth, right where it would do the most damage to the throat. They also gave the barrels a 1-10 twist, when the obvious trend even then was toward faster twists. (They even asked a bunch of gun writers about the twist, most of whom advised faster.)Then Winchester promoted the .223 WSSM as the ultimate prairie dog round, when it fried throats VERY quickly in hot barrels.
However, I never had any problem with WSSMs feeding in the special short actions made for them, whether Browning or Winchester. In fact, I have a stainless/synthetic Model 70, the so-called controlled/push-feed model which basically copied the M1 Garand system. It works really slickly.
Bought it at a local gun store used, very cheaply, on the condition that I NEVER bring it back again for trade, or whatever. They even allowed me to look at the bore with my Hawkeye, and it didn't look too bad.
But it turned out the rifle wouldn't group ANYTHING under about 3", so I sent it to Charlie Sisk for a rebarrel. He put on a faster-twist Lilja, and it shoots great. But he also noted that the barrel and action threads were so mis-matched that while unscrewing the factory barrel, it essentially came off within half a turn--which was probably the major cause of the poor accuracy. Hard to get a rifle to shoot when the barrel's essentially rattling around in the front of the action.
It shoots GREAT with the new barrel, but I am not about to use it on prairie dogs. Instead it's one of probably too many .224 rifles used for larger varmints and smaller big game.
