Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Kimber Hunter vs Montana

Sooner or later I knew someone would bring up the polymer trigger guard. Lols. It's main purpose is to prevent accidental discharge and many pistols use polymer trigger guards with polymer frames with no issues.

I remember long ago certain traditionalist gun writers would naysay alloy trigger guards and bottom metal as if alloy was inferior and somehow prone to breakage.

Sweet pair there!

I would agree with that.

I have no idea about how the materials compare, but the integral trigger guard of a Ruger American Rimfire I bought was broken in shipping by our pals at UPS, so it can happen. The box wasn’t breached, but the bolt was loose and bouncing around inside. A lot of early alloy guards were painted and looked like it, plus the paint wore pretty quickly. Machined aluminum like Howa uses is plenty strong and the anodizing or cerakoting looks good.

My son has a Hunter in 6.5 and likes it very well. I shot it and it was pretty lively on the bench, not unpleasant, just what you’d expect from a light rifle. The magazine works perfectly and fits flush. I think they’re good rifles at a good price.

If your budget is tight, get the Hunter and spend the money you save on better optics. Unless you really need to lighten it, I’d think a bit before pulling the filler out of the stock. It’s there to make it quieter, and maybe to strengthen it a bit in places.

I wonder how the recoil with the Hunter would compare to a Tikka superlite in the same caliber. The Kimber stock shape seems pretty well designed and the pad looks pretty good as well.

I don't own either rifle but I looked at the Hunter one time at a Cabela's store. Big turn off for me was the detachable mag and the fact that the trigger guard is molded together with the stock. Bump the trigger guard hard enough to break it and you'll be buying a complete new stock. The detachable mag thing is a personal preference. I like the internal, BDL style, mags. No detachable mag to misplace.

I think its safe to say that the Ruger doesn't compare.

Exactly. Try to break the trigger guard. I did exactly that with a bunch of first articles from the molds when the molds were still in Taiwan and prior to them shipping to the US for final working and texturing. I used the worst case scenario of swinging a complete rifle (without scope) like a baseball bat against the corner of a gunsafe with a direct impact on the trigger guard and had to make multiple high velocity hits in order to break the stock. The trigger guard is very strong and the only way it'll break under even the toughest use is if there was a problem with the molding process for that stock e.g. temperature, flow, cold shut, etc. Tens of thousands of 84M and 84L Hunter rifles have been sold but none returned for a broken trigger guard ... not before May 2020 when I left Kimber.

By the way, those stocks that I tested were left outside for most of the day in 10F weather prior to testing to reduce the ability of the trigger guard to deform under load.

Good deal. They just went up a notch or two.

I have a $1,600 Sako S20 and a $1,200 Tikka T3 TAC and both have plastic/nylon trigger guards. No one seems to worry about those breaking.

Good deal on a .243 Win. MONTANA



https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...84-montana-243-win-.cfm?gun_id=101595887

I’ve handled this very gun in the store. I figured it’s an older one because it isn’t threaded and their website shows them all with threaded barrels. Cabelas will ship it to your closest store for a fee if you want to check it out. I can get more photos of it if you want anything specific to look at.

They have a Kimber 8400 300WSM Classic as well that got traded in with that .243 - I want to get a good magnum rifle but I know nothing about these. I’m considering the Kimber 300WSM or the Sako A7 in 300WM. There’s also a 30-378 Sako 995 for $600 but I doubt I can find any Retumbo to load for that one.

I’ve owned mutiple Montana’s and have always thought the stock on them is amazing. I recently picked up a Hunter in 308 for $649 out the door. I bedded the lug and took it to the range and it shot .5” groups almost immediately. I then considered getting a Montana stock for it but have since change my mind. This little hunter stock is extremely light (I removed the gel in it) yet very strong with hardly any flex in it, nothing like a Ruger American where you can roll the forend around the barrel by hand. The Hunter handles great. I put a paint job on it and am plenty happy with it.

The Hunter's honeycomb forend is the reason it's so stiff. MCMXI did a great job!

Yes he did an excellent job on these stocks, for the money nothing else compares 👍 but Kimbers managers puzzle me with their decisions like killing the Hunter model chambered in .223 Rem, offering that rifle chambered in .223 Rem is a no-brainer, it would sell as fast as they could build them, its almost like they dont give a rats arse if they sell a rifle or not, I would not be surprised if they quit building rifles ....like they quit building their excellent model 82 .22 rimfire...Hb

Kimber has a long history, lots of changes.

www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2018/2/22/the-kimber-rifle-story/

I agree on the Hunter .223. I have a Montana .223 and as mentioned by others at least three times in previous posts it's also the last rifle I'd sell. Great calling gun, accurate and fun to shoot.

I also think molded trigger guards are fine. My Beretta A400 semi autos have them...no issues.

It’s sold now along with the 300 wsm I went back for

Thanks! Kimber tried three times to get an industrial patent on the honeycomb forend but it was rejected each time because it was "obvious". It turns out the honeycomb is a molder's dream in that it causes the glass fibers to orient in a "completely random" arrangement as opposed to being aligned in the same direction which is what typically happens during the flow phase in most injection molded stocks. The random arrangement of the fibers makes the forend much stiffer in all directions, not just in a few. I will not pretend that I knew that when I came up with it, I was simply thinking of bees and ways to increase rigidity while not adding weight. Sometimes you get lucky.

I think it's interesting to learn about some other aspects of the stock that might not be obvious. For example, the pillars have line contact with the receiver and are the same length front and rear which necessitated designing new action screws. You might wonder why the stocks are made this way and the truth is that the molding vendor requested this because they didn't want their operators to have to place different pillars in the correct locations in the mold. They asked for an idiot proof design and so one pillar was designed that requires no specific indexing, orientation or location. This is an example of where a decision was made simply to help the vendor.