Originally Posted by TheLastLemming76
Originally Posted by jeffbird
Weak scopes riding in weak rings on a weak mounting point are not a positive to wish for.

Pic rails with Pic rings are a vast improvement for reliability and durability in keeping a scope in place. An integral Pic rail mount is even better. Wish more manufacturers would offer it, but it significantly increases the machining cost over the R700 round tube receiver. The integral Pic rail mount is one of the single best improvements in this design for a hard use and/or heavier recoiling rifle. As others said, it one less thing to go wrong.

I'm ready to buy and give it a try, if and when they turn them loose in the wild.

What is the advantage of a .338 Win Mag? The big .300's, Win Mag, PRC, and RUM fill the role for lighter bullets on one side and the bigger .338's best it on the other. A .338 RUM or Lapua runs off and leaves the .338 Win Mag in the rear view mirror.

You’re not wrong but on a classic wood stocked hunting rifle an integral pic rail is fugly and unnecessary.

Sure a .338 Lapua leaves a .338 Win Mag in the dirt but again for a hunting rifle very few ppl need that much gun or want that level of recoil. It’s overkill for nearly any non African dangerous game and is undersized for that. It’s neither fish nor fowl for most hunting applications. More of a specialized long range precision or sniping round.

Improved performance looks pretty good to me. Here is my nice wood deer rifle, a .308 built by Sterling Davenport, with a Pic rail, Pic rings, and a Nightforce.

Typical thornbrush where I hunt on the west side of South Texas. It is hot and harsh, but beautiful in its own way.


[Linked Image]

Same rifle, three shots.

[Linked Image from texashuntingforum.com]


Again, just responding to the comments that the omission of .338 Win Mag somehow leaves a hole in the line up. I just do not see what the .338 Win Mag brings to the table that is not otherwise filled by the big .300's or the bigger .338's. What is the advantage of a .338 Win Mag?

In a lighter weight .338 Lapua with a NF scope, I run the Barnes TTSX 225 gr @ 3050 in a 10# all up rifle with an APA brake and recoil is firm, but not bad. I've shot .30-06's that were worse. We have some larger bodied animals here, Nilgai and Oryx, that I worked up that load for, but I've used a .300 Win Mag with a 165 TTSX and it worked fine. Totally off on a tangent, Scimitar Horned Oryx is the finest meat I've ever eaten.


[Linked Image]