Judman;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the day was a good one for you and yours.
Thanks for sharing the photo of the new rifle, it brings back a lot of pleasant memories for me as my long time hunting partner used one in .25-06 for years.
His was the one I played with most, but I also brought a trigger back to life on a .30-06 B78 and did some minor tuning.
On buddy's, it'd shoot pretty well with the stock fore end on, but he wanted to see if we could make it dance and let me loose on it.
What I found was that by shimming the fore end so it wasn't touching the barrel or front of the receiver it shot markedly better and more consistently with most loads. Instead of modifying the original, I made a new fore end from 3 layers of laminated Black Walnut and bedded it onto the fore end hanger so it didn't touch anything other than the hanger.
I set the trigger as light as I was able to, then we found a trigger shoe in my stock, modified it to fit and to us, even though of course the scale said there was no difference, the shoe made the trigger feel just a tad lighter.
Anyways, many roads to Mecca and all that Jud, but his took a bunch of coyotes and some local mulie bucks including the biggest one I've ever personally been in on, a wide old 3x4 that went an honest 30" inside.
Hahaha - he actually shot that thing the day before my wife and my 5th anniversary, we didn't get the whole buck out in the first trip and my wife said the next morning, "Well I might as well go with you guys and bring my pack too, no point spending our anniversary apart!"
Buddy still talks about that Jud - and it's our 39th coming up this fall so she's still putting up with my hunting antics.
Good luck with that Browning, I'm sure you'll like it.
Dwayne
