There's some areas of the state that are generally pretty dry and a blued rifle will work fine. There are also areas of the state that are very wet and they do not work particularly well. A man could hunt only one or the other of those types of places and reach the conclusion blued rifles worked great or sucked. Either way, he'd be only half right and should get out more. For me, hunting the ABCs, stainless is a no brainer. Anyone who makes statements that guys using stainless are "just lazy about the care of their guns" has likely never spent any quality time in this corner of the world.
As a quick example lets take a typical fall goat hunt: You spend the entire day hiking through a mix of snow and rain, sit glassing in the weather for hours, or stalking, killing, cutting and packing meat. Every night you crawl into your small tent and burrow into a sleeping bag after wolfing down a mountain house. The only dry thing you own at the point is your sleeping bag and your night-night clothes. Your rifle is soaked generally. So much so that when you get home the rounds in the magazine will have a bit of corrosion where the water pooled between the contact points of the cartridges. Regardless, that rifle is good friend. You've chosen a rugged design and it's been proven on many hunts. This is brown bear country, so you make sure to place the soaking wet rifle in the same way beside you each night and even practice indexing it from where you lay in order to build some muscle memory about where it is, so that should you need it in the middle of the wee hours you'll have a better chance. Each time you roll over that rifle in the middle of the night it's a comfort to know it's there. If you hunt like this you're not lazy. Instead you're just living the life of a wilderness hunter, and you've got some well earned perspective.
