Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Most durable SA modern bolt gun

I’ll fudge a little. For strength a weatherby Mark V.
For accuracy. Remington 700 or Kleinguenther k-15. ( lock time )
Hasbeen

I'd vote for Ruger. I have a stainless synthetic Hawkeye in.308 that fills the bill. I have several earlier Rem 700's that have served me well, but for durability in a factory rifle I would pick Ruger.

Remingtons fail in the field? In what way exactly? I know their triggers suck.

I'll hazard a guess that for a guide in the Yukon, failure to fire would be the 1st and biggest 700 Headache. It's not really the fault of the rifle, it's the fault of the owner for not cleaning the gunk outta the bolt and trigger occasionally. That said, unless you have a 700 bolt disassembly tool, they're a pain in the rear to clean, so, nobody does it. The bolt stop can also get gunked-up and get hung up in the down position, causing the bolt to come out while cycling it. Not a big deal to folks who are familiar with the rifle but it'd unhinge some folks who aren't.

If I were a guide, I'd have a M700 bolt disassembly tool in camp. If your client can't give you an acceptable answer to "When was the last time you had your firing pin out and cleaned the bolt"?, then it gets done here and now.

I had a "That's never happened before" with a M70 floor plate accidental opening fall of '18. I'm sneaking on an elk I'd shot, dropped, and he popped back to his feet then laid back down. Rifle is on bi-pods and as I get to where I want to shoot again, he gets back on his feet and starts to run off again. I hit him a 2nd time, doesn't phase him. Go to run another round home only to realize that the floor plate had popped open and scattered my "belly-rounds" at my feet. Now he's not going very fast having 2 extra holes, and the country is open so it's no biggie to nab a cartridge @ my feet, run it home and the 3rd one anchored him for good. Which reminds me, I still need to use a file on the floor plate and get a little better engagement from the latch.........

I wonder why the lowly Mossberg MVP series gets no love here? Daughter got one for a pickup rifle during calving time a few years ago, it has had a very rough childhood, living in the pickup for 4 or 5 years. She is not much on maintenance, I think it gets a squirt of Break free once a year, whether it needs it or not. She likes the big magazine for the running shots.

Weatherby does not make a true short action MK V; the 6 lug for , like, a 7mm-08 is a long action with a block. That being said; i have one in 7mm-08 and it is an excellent action and lighter than most people realize.
If my terminology is incorrect ;somebody may explain it better.

There was a thread that was basically like this in a rifle section just a few months ago. Tikkas voted on several times& with some confirming harsh condition photos from Mackay.

I voted the MKII Ruger & I'm not known as big 77 fan. But have been fiddling with one some & do like them better than the tanger. I pushed the idea of the Scout & I like the platform. But the controlled round feeding seems to be a hindrance in some cases. The Scout uses the AICS mag & if that's lost, Ya can't just drop a round in the chamber & use it single shot as the extractor won't go over the rim. It seems that with out a mag, I'd have fish a shell under the extractor on the bolt & feed it that way. A con IMO.

A thought on Rem bolt handles. Never seen one fail in person so not sure of the time of failure or how long it lasted. Have seen rifle bolt handles of many brands get kicked, stomped, & beat on due to stupid loads or dirty chambers. Did most 700 bolt failures happen when new or soon after? If so, I have an idea of the cause & it seems it only happened during a certain time frame. Whatever the cause, it seems that the bad ones were fixed & the problem solved afterward.
Or, did this problem persist over a period of time??

Oh, & the walker triggers? Until I accidentally kill the wife's cat or worse, I'll stand by the trigger. Yes I've seen some quirky ones, ones that some jackass had been messing with adjustments & didn't have a clue what they were doing. Or, another jackass that didn't know how to clean a rifle, much less lubricate it.. To touchy if things like that make it dangerous, fix it to keep jackasses from screwing it up??? Make it like some Ruger triggers I 've seen, make the trigger where it takes all the effort a jackass has to make it go off. About 8-9# is about par for the course. Not exaggerating. Trigger pulls that my gauge couldn't read. So just weight the rifle & scope combo & then see if ya can pick up the gun with the trigger. Now that's a safe trigger. Hard to vote unreasonable stuff like that.

Most factory rifles can be made even better. I've been using a Remington 700 Classic for 41 years and have never had a problem. I bought an old 721 a while back with a broken extractor. I'll machine the bolt for a Sako style. That would be a good mod to do on any 700. If oil is present inside the trigger assembly in cold weather you might have problems. the pre 64 model 70 trigger is simple and easy to clean. I never cared for the tang safety on the Rugers. Just too much linkage. Weahterby. Excellent. We've got allot of fine choices to pick from!

Hello back to you,
This has been absolutely, the easiest winter we've had in the last thirty years. I don't think we have ever had a year where, at some point, we didn't have at least ten inches of snow on the ground. This year, we might have had five and it didn't stay. 23F right now, so a little cooler but still, not bad.
I have, indeed, seen a lot of used and abused rifles of various types but the bolt actions which stood up to the abuse better than any others were the Mausers; followed closely by the Lee Enfields. Of course, neither of these are "modern" actions. They are just stone reliable.
One thing which has always impressed me though, is how well, in spite of their complexity, the Winchester Model 94's continue to function in spite of neglect and downright abuse.
I know one fellow ,up in Barriere, who has probably killed more cougars than most others will ever see. His cougar rifle was a Winchester 94, 30-30. It had probably never been cleaned, the barrel was rusty and bulged near the muzzle and the rear sight elevator was a matchstick. This thing rode in the back of his Bronco with the hound stepping all over it and, as far as I know, only got taken out when there was a cat to be killed. But it always worked. Another one I saw was at a ranch south of Calgary. This one, a 25-35, was leaned up in the corner of the corral and spent most of the time right there, rain or shine. It was there to shoot any marauding coyote and I would have bet money the coyotes were pretty safe but they were not! They were usually at 100 yds or less but he accounted for quite a few.
One customer of mine flat loved Mausers. He liked them because parts were interchangeable, regardless of where they were built, and he could replace a firing pin with no tools. He admitted he has never broken a firing pin but if he ever did, he was ready! He hunted on horseback all the time a spent a lot of time in some remote camps. He had a kit with parts he thought he might need someday and always carried it in a saddlebag. He never used anything but the cleaning stuff in that kit.
I have another customer who hunts all over the world and he likes his Remington 700's. He has missed out on a big ram when larch needles in the trigger caused the rifle to fail to fire. He has had ejection issues. He broke a handle off. He still likes them. He told me of one incident which was a bit of a cautionary tale.
He was carrying a rifle which I had built for him; built, of course on a Remington 700 action (though that had no influence on the story). It had a Brown Precision stock which I had put on and painted. Like any gunsmith making a semi-custom rifle, I inletted the bolt handle nicel into the stock with, maybe, 1/32 inch clearance all around. He was hiking into a basin when he saw, coming toward him a good sized grizzly. He was carrying the rifle with an empty chamber and rushed to chamber a round. Now, he was using those rubber scope covers which were attached to a rubber band and he flipped this off as he went to chamber the round. The damn rubber band got trapped under the bolt handle and wedged into the nicely inletted slot when he tried to close the bolt. He couldn't close the bolt and, since he had tried mightily, had it wedged in well enough that he couldn't open it either. The bear was just ambling toward him. The breeze was blowing down the hill so the bear had no scent of him but he figured it would have to see him pretty soon. I he struggled with the stuck bolt a little more and finally, with the bear less than 20 feet away, he just stepped uphill, off the trail and stood there. The bear went right on by, in no hurry, until he caught scent, whereupon, he jumped down over the hill and could be heard, still running, for quite some time. There were a few lessons here: Don't panic, stay calm, stay away from rubber bands, and, if you build rifles, maybe a little more gap can't hurt. I don't have rubber bands on any of my own rifles so I should be OK. GD

I hunt some pretty rough terrain(young oak thickets laced with multiflora rose and blackberries, ravines, and the like, in all sorts of weather) and use a Ruger Hawkeye AW in .308 for that. It takes a beating and suffers not at all, from what I can tell. If I had to pick one to walk away with for the rest of my days, it would likely get the nod.

The rifle is deadly with a 150 CT ballistic tip, which works great for anything around here. Got plenty of those, buddy got a big box of them from an Olin plant he was installing cranes in, said one of the guys told him they had an overrun on some bullets and did he want some. He brought them home and gave them to me because he knew I loaded, and he didn’t. Been using them for years, got enough to hunt and shoot with for the rest of my life, barring a war or similar heavy use.