Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Pack Rifle

Has anyone ever owned/used/seen one of these? For putting a grouse or rabbit into the pot relatively silently it looks interesting at the cost of only 15 ounces.

https://www.packrifle.com

Cool idea, not sure I'd buy one though. I suppose I'd probably just get a 10/22 takedown and live with the extra weight.

Way to gimmicky for me. Give me a Chiappa Badger and i will save the remaining $225 for ammo and a gill net.

There is nothing "gimicky" about the weight savings. It looks like a well made and well thought out product for its intended use.

People who actually backpack long distances in the high country need to save every ounce and
only an idiot would carry 2-3 pounds more of rifle weight if they did not have to.

That weight is better used carrying water,food and ammo:)

Kinda reminds me of the FI Broncos that Garcia imported back in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Not something that I'd buy, but my mountaineering days are limited to riding the up the mountain on a chairlift or gondola and riding down on a mountain bike.

I've always thought it would be interesting if NAA would work up a pack rifle like that but using their five shot revolver action.
A sliding wire stock would be nice but a separate stock would be OK too.
It would weigh a little more, but still...

A WMR cylinder would be really nice.too

Of course absolutely no gimmicks there especially when only a fuggin idiot would turn his rifle into a fishing pole.

To Krupp -

Someone posts on a community forum about an unusual product to see if anyone has heard of it. Which is exactly the kind of thing the forum is for.
You immediatly mock the post, then double down by passive/aggressively calling him an idiot.
You should stand tall and apologize. Lets see if you do.

It's not my cup of tea, but... I could see a rolling block like the cheap early Stevens boys rifles. No forearm, wire stock, a bicycle rifle of old. Velo-dog ala modern rimfire.

My pack rifle is a Rossi 59 carbine.

I agree, turning your rifle into a fishing pole isn't beyond stupid.

Obviously, some folks don't know how to shoot fish.
Why someone would backpack a 22 rifle is beyond me anyway.

Now a fishing pole, that's something I would backpack ...

Regardless, somebody put a lot of work into this and I hope it pays off for them.

Well, one of the old tenents of saving weight is to try to make gear do double duty.

Like making your trekking poles also as a rifle mono pod or cross sticks and as shelter poles and vice versa. Or making your poncho do double duty as a shelter tarp.
Yeah ,I do all those things.:)

The fishing rod conversion looked a little wonky to me because it only saves the weight of the handle/reel seat of the rod.

As to packing a 22 rifle into the high country , in a group camp scenario a 15oz rifle and a box of fifty 22LR cartridges probably is about as weight/permance efficient as reduced smal game loads for a centerfire. Especially if the weight is amortized over a group.

So, I can see the utility in the rifle.

Its also kind of cool in that it sort if looks like the takedown rifle the hitman villan used in the "Day of the Condor"...

But I digress..

I apologize if any of you have hurt feelings. I said it was gimmicky nothing more nothing less and offered my choice. Then it goes down the rabbit hole with weight savings and lack of field experience. Plenty of tools in the tool box. Knowledge weighs nothing.

600 bucks for that, no thanks will keep my Remington Nylon 66

I'd like to play with one to see how it shot, or rather how well I was able to shoot with it. Unless I could beat my results with a .22 handgun, something like those UL .22/45s would have more utility for me, especially for social occasions that might arise on the trail.

Didn't think about the Day of the Jackal connection, but it's a good one.

I'll explain why it caught my eye and I became curious about it.

Every year I bow hunt for moose in my home state of Alaska. I use one of my company's recurve bows. Lots of grizzlies are around so I'm also carrying a very large revolver on the belt of my backpack. Every day I leave camp with a recurve bow in my hand and about 25-30# of gear in my backpack (extra clothing, water, spotting scope & tripod, food, game bags, knives, saws, cameras, trekking poles, light-weight block & tackle, etc). With some regularity I run across either a spruce grouse or occasionally a ruffed grouse. Sometimes a snowshoe hare. It's nice to add one of those to the larder as an alternative to freeze-dried food during a 14-day hunt. In addition to all the other stuff I'm already carrying I own and carry a S&W 317 with Crimson Trace laser grip for potting the occasional grouse. I'm reasonably good with it out to 10-15 yards. What I don't like about it is the fact that it's pretty loud, even with CCI CB ammo. Since we're often in close proximity to a bull it's in my best interest to have a very small/indistinct sound footprint. However, as everyone knows that same load in a longer barrel is much quieter. I'm not hunting out of a car or off of a 4-wheeler. The nearest road is well over 100 miles away. We fly into our hunting location in SuperCubs where weight and bulk are both extremely limited and extremely expensive. I'm already carrying all (and more) than I want to carry each day when I leave camp, so the notion of adding a few more pounds in the form of a "normal" 22LR rifle is completely unappealing. The reason I'm walking through the woods is to hunt moose quietly, not to hunt birds or rabbits with a 22. For that there are plenty of good options.

The intended purpose of this little rifle, if I understand it properly, might fit perfectly in with my potential use - a very light-weight way to pot the occasional grouse or rabbit quietly. No one ever said this little thing was intended to be used as the primary hunting rifle on a 22LR hunting trip. Certainly the website says that's definitely not what it's intended purpose is. Everyone who says they'd rather hunt with their favorite 22LR rifle is missing the point.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting bit of kit and wondered if anyone had any first-hand experience with one.

To Krupp,

I need to apologize to you also - I think that I took your post the wrong way, and spoke out without cause.
When I read your post, it seemed to me that you were mocking someone simply for posting a question about a product that you found to be pointless, and I decided to say something about it.
But I think that it can be tough to understand what someone really means on a typed forum like this. Text has no "tone" to it.
Going back to look at your posts, I can see that they could just as easily been good natured.

I'm sorry if I called you out wrongly Krupp.

Kragman

B,

You seem to miss the entire point of the rifle. Its not designed as a general purpose gun.

The gun is also not $600 dollars- read the website again.

It weighs about 1/4 of what a nylon 66 weighs and takes down for packing.
As I said before - any intelligent backpacker would likely rather carry 1.5 pounds of rifle AND 50 rounds of 22 ammo rather than carry 4 pounds of just rifle.

FWIW at the price of a mint Nylon 66 -a Ruger 10/22 stainless takedown makes the Nylon 66 look like a bad joke for real backpacking ..

That's OK I try to force my point to try to sound old and wise and just end up sounding like a wiseass. I just don't want people spending their money on junk. I know it is not my money or my choice and maybe it is a good product but I think it is too fragile and specialized to survive the boonies.


Brad