a few years ago I had a chance to handle and then shoot the 1950 made M70 in .375 H&H owned and used on the south end of Kodiak Island for 40 years by Morris Talifson, the famed brown bear guide. 40 years with both a spring and fall season on one of the harshest hunting environments on earth. The rifle fed rounds unbelieveably smooth.
On another occasion I had a lengthly conversation with one of the most celebrated hi-power shooters in the country, Middleton Tompkins. He used pre-64 M70 actions on his hi-power rifles for many, many years and won 6 national titles as I remember. I asked him how many rounds he thought he'd put thru one of his actions: he kind of chuckled and said "oh, probably close to 50,000." I asked did he ever had an action part break. He said just one extractor collar.
Kind of hard to find any better testimonials than those 2 about the ruggedness of those old M70s.
