Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Stainless Steel Rifles?

Ya wanna look at it or hunt with it?

Wood and blue have a beauty I like, yet I way prefer stainless for most of my hunting. East of the coast range predator hunting in cold winters, blue and wood is what I use with no thought to wet. But hunting blacktails or Roosevelts in places like Vancouver Island or the Olympic Peninsula, it is stainless for me.

Yes, stainless will rust, and will rust pretty fast, but nothing like blued steel. I have field tested those comments.

I have a custom rifle in swirly walnut and smooooth blue barrel. It is a shame what that thing looks like now after years of backpack hunts for a week or so in rain and snow, and how beat up it is and needing a refinish. It is retired from such hunts and stainless synthetic has replaced it. We hunt for days on end in the rain and if camping the rifles stay outside overnights. Except in freeze/thaw cycles when it takes some internal drying to keep the trigger/action functioning, I'm not gonna dry and wipe and do much waterproofing etc. till I get home or maybe even till the end of the season. Stainless give more margin is all.

Now days my favorite rifles are the Kimber Montana. I recently bought 2 CZ 455s in synthetic and stainless. And searched out a Winchester Classic stainless synthetic in 375 H&H.

In 1991, before stainless was common, I had my M77 25-06 Tefloned and bedded in a Brown Precision stock.

I had a walnut, blued action, stainless barrel 22-250. It is now Cerakoted desert tan in a brown spiderweb tan Wildcat stock. My 17 Fireball is a Remington Model 7 Predator. Camo painted metal and a fairly stiff Tupperware stock.

My shotguns are synthetic stocked. 50% of my handguns are stainless, mostly rubber gripped.

My preference is stainless synthetic.

I could be swayed to blued walnut if someone were to buy me a Heym Martini, or a new Maurer 98, or Rigby, or a Holland and Holkand. 😉

Listening to this lot it's a miracle the west was ever settled or that our soldiers ever survived the two world wars with their blue steel wood stocked rifles. Course they didn't use their guns as hard a ya'll do.

Bottom line...they both need to be maintained and either one will last you a lifetime if you do.

I switched to all stainless rifles a decade ago, the blued ones stay at home looking pretty.

I don’t care how they do it out west.

I have both but like the blued.

Right? Still can't figure why we've moved away from prop planes for warfare, celestial navigation or fallen for Polio vaccines.

I like SS simply because it is more utilitarian.

Blue and walnut are far prettier to my eye.

+1 for stainless and wood.

I love the look. I love the reduced maintenance requirements.

We hunt some really [bleep] weather with rain and snow a given, and though I always hated the looks of the stainless and plastic guns, but after hunting with them I'm sold, there is nothing like the deep silver blueing on an old Browning or Sako , but for hunting I will take the ugly rifle everytime.

When you use/need a gun to feed yourself, keep yourself from getting slow roasted by native American Redskins, or survive a World War, you don't worry about the gun getting scratched or a little rusty. I have a 22 rifle that was used hard by my Granddaddy, my Dad, and his brothers from the 1940's to the 1970's. Granddaddy carried it everyday on his tractor or in a vehicle in case he ran across a snake or something else that needed shooting. To them it was a tool, no different than a hammer or an axe. By the time I got it, it had no finish on the barrel or stock, the bolt was broken off and replaced with a screw, and half the butt plate was broken off. However, it still shot as well as a new one. Dad wanted to fix it up and we did. It got new parts, reblued, and I refinished the stock. Sometimes I think we should have left it alone.

Good morning guys!
I guess it is really a individual thing! For myself, deer hunting in fir/spruce thick brush in snow with a wood/blued color case M-93 or M-94 carbine in 38-55 or even a 30-30 is hard to beat!! On the other hand, as much as I like nice walnut and blued rifles, I find use for stainless synthetic rifles for moose. Especially with the need to canoe across lakes and all the rain we get during moose season in October...

[align:left][/align]I wouldn't have anything but stainless, given a choice and wood is for guitars and campfires.

A can of Krylon only costs a few bucks....

Both.

Stainless and blue: Check



Cerakote: Check (actually GunKote)

I like um both. I have both. They both work just fine. Depending on how I plan to use it determines the one I take.

I like stainless especially M70 stainless.

.338-06


.30-06


.270

And I love this SS/Walnut stuff: M70 custom - .358 STA.. NIB.

I have three stainless bolt actions with synthetic stocks and three blued walnut stocked rifles in the same chambering.

Stainless and composite stock. I’ll never buy another blued firearm.