Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Best factory rifle for the money

They say actions speak louder than words. If you look in my safe you will see I've voted with my money for Ruger more than anything else - by a wide margin. Very happy with all of them.

I do float the barrels but I've done that to my Savage and Remington rifles as well. The triggers on the M77's have been polished (another task I do myself) but other than that they are all stock. Many of the newer Hawkeyes I've looked at have pretty decent triggers from the factory. Worst case they are easily touched up by a 'smith or replaced.

Note that my rifles are for hunting, not winning awards for aesthetics. You won't find any fancy, custom walnut on my rifles. In fact, one of my favorite stocks is the Ruger semi-skeletonized "boat paddle" and I currently have three, having replaced two wooden (one walnut and one laminate) stocks with them. (The last one cost me $50 delivered, used, and had 'smith installed sling studs to replace the factory swivels.) They are nearly indestructible and the actions I have mounted in them shoot great. Bedding the actions has never been required in any of my Rugers - the angled front screw seems to do just what it was designed to do.

Overall I'm a big fan of the Mauser action and think the CRF Ruger MKII's and Hawkeyes are the best high production, commercial instantiation of that design. Have you ever heard of a Ruger claw extractor or fixed blade ejector breaking or the one-piece bolt and handle coming apart?

Over half my rifles were purchased �gently used� and they shoot as well as the ones I bought factory new. There are many very good used rifles on the market now due to the economy and by looking around you can save yourself a lot of coin that could go to glass. My favorite rifle is my Ruger M77 .257 Roberts, picked up at a gun show for $400 with a Leupold M8 4x scope in the rings. It had been the red-headed step child in someone�s safe for 15 years or so and shot so little there were no scratches in the bluing under the slide safety � something I �fixed� the first couple trips to the range. Last weekend I saw a very nice stainless/synthetic MKII in .300WM for $500, used but in excellent condition, at a gun show where I�ve bought two other Rugers from the same dealer. Fortunately I already have a .300 Win Mag or I would have been parting with some Benjamins.

There is also a lot of good used glass available. There was a time when I thought I would never own Leupold glass but now over half my scopes are previously owned Leupold products. For new I�ve been buying new Burris Fullfield II�s with Ballistic Plex reticles - $160 on eBay for a 3-9x and $260-$275 for a 4.5-14x AO. They may not be the greatest scopes around, but I have a bunch of them and have had no problems.

Just before elk season last year I took my .300WM and one of my .30-06 rifles to the range for a final check, which included shooting clay pigeons on the 600-yard berm. I nailed a pigeon with both rifles using a combined total of 5 shots. Both rifles were Ruger MKIIs, one purchased new and one used, and both were topped with Burris FF-II�s with Ballistic Plex reticles. And, come to think of it, both in �boat paddle� stocks. The stainless .30-06 cost more because I had paid more for the rifle, it had a more expensive scope (4.514xAO) and I had purchased a �boat paddle� stock to replace the laminate stock it came with. All told the .30-06 came in at $790, well under your $1K budget.