Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Who has a 7 mag?

I bought my first centerfire rifle, a 30-06, back in 1967. It kept my freezer full of deer, elk, and antelope meat for about 10 years until I moved to Montana and my new hunting partner gave my a .30 Gibbs case. I carried that case around in my pocket for a few months, and I liked the looks of it so much that I had my .30-06 re-chambered to .30 Gibbs.

For the next 20 some years that .30 Gibbs that rifle kept my freezers full of deer, elk, and antelope meat, along with a couple of Shiras moose and an Alaskan Caribou. Almost every day I still look at the mounts of many of those animals on my walls and re-live the great memories of those hunts.

My friend that gave me the .30 Gibbs case hunted with a 7 mm Rem mag, and for many years I thought that I should get one, but when I looked at the ballistics of the 7 mm RM, .30-06, and .30 Gibbs, they were so close that I couldn't justify me getting a 7 RM.

Then in 2000 I got invited to go on a hunt in South Africa with some friends. At the time I was going through a very nasty divorce and I couldn't use any of my guns, so I borrowed a 7 RM from one of the guys that I went to Africa with and used it on that hunt. That rifle was a Rem 700 ADL that my friend had in his pawn shop, and I later bought it from him.

In 2004 I used that rifle on a hunt in Canada's Northwest Territories and it put a Musk ox and a Caribou in the B&C record book for me. After that hunt I decided that I liked Rem 700 BDL model better, my pawn shop friend had a stainless model 700 in 7 RM, so I "traded up" with him.

I then used my "new" 7 mm RM on a variety of hunts, including another Canadian caribou hunt, this time in Quebec in 2017, the last year that Quebec allowed non-residents to hunt caribou. I again lucked out and shot the highest scoring Quebec-Labrador caribou that anyone regestered with B&C that year.

In the past few years I bought a couple of Weatherby Vanguard rifles in their Griptonite stocks. I really like the feel of those stocks and for years I wished that my Remington 700 BDL 7 mm RM was in one of those stocks. Then earlier this summer I saw an ad on line for a long action Weatherby Griptonite stock, so I bought it.

The dimensions and action screws of Rem 700s and Weatherby Vanguards are not the same, but with some cutting, grinding, drilling, and epoxy, I now have my 7 mm RM in a Wby Griptonite stock. I also glass and pillar bedded the action, lengthened the LOP 1/4", free floated the barrel, switched the sling swivels to flush mounted QD ones, fit a Houge recoil pad on it, and painted it black with white spider web. On top I have a Leupold VX 3i 4.5-14x40 CDS with side focus scope. It's my new favorite foul weather rifle.