Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Tikka owners, quick question...

I got a spare mag for $29.00, thanks to a heads up from a campfire member here. The plastic mag in my Steyr SSG is 40 years old and works fine, but I bought a new one this year for $20.00.

This is probably the best endorsement of a Tikka.... I remember seeing an expensive Colt/Sauer rifle and stock that blew into five or six separate pieces after the same test.

Well, regrettably, I have a couple of philosophies that I espouse. They are, respectively: 1) The Law of the Seven P's: Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance, and 2) Two is One, and One is None. Consequently, I will be obtaining two spare mags for my Tikka. I'm not interested in my rifle going down because of a lost or broken mag. I'll sleep better at night knowing I have a few spares. Redundancey when it comes to important stuff (pistols, flashlights, knives, condoms) is not a vice.

I cocurr and bought two five shot mags for mine. I consider every hunting rifle a single shot, and having five extra rounds to shoot singly is better than three. By the way the five shot and three shot mags were the same price...go figure
Randy

when i bought my tikka t3 270 know one i hunt with owned one,2 yrs later half of them have bought tikka's. they were tired of getting dusted at the range. i love my plastic stock and magazine.

killed 2 bear with mine this yr so far.

srwshooter,
Dude, I kinda with you wouldn't say stuff like that. I'm loitering with the idea of picking up a .270 Winnie to match my .30-06, esp. since there are lefties on Gunbroker at a good price. Comments like you just made do nothing to shore up my already shaky self-control.

I like rifles that put the bullet where the scope says they should go. I therefore I have rifles that say Tikka and Savage in my gunsafe. There are a more than a few of both marks. There is one with a big R but..... gotta own a Rem in 30-06, it would be unpatriotic not to.

Well on a semi whim I brought home a T3 wood stock in 7mm-08 yesterday.

I scoped it with a new extra Leupold VXIII 3.5x10x40 that I had laying around.

I sat there and played with it off and on for the last day and I can say it's just not my cup of tea. It may shoot 0.010" groups but I couldn't see ever hunting with it.

I don't think I could ever get used to the funky mag and maybe it's just me I found it near impossible to have a mag in it and load one on top without putting the mag in, loading one in the chamber and then pulling the mag out and sticking another one back in...which seems really clunky. Especially considering how loud it is to put in and out of the rifle. Seems like a lot of work just to get the rifle fully loaded.

But to be completly honest this is the first and only rifle I've ever owned outside of a 10/22 or something similar with a detachable mag out of the 30ish or so I currently own....so possibly I'm not giving it a fair shake - it's just so foreign to operate and backwards from everything else I own I don't know if I could ever get used to it. In fact on my last 2 rifles I had them built with a total blind magazine without a floorplate. So I guess I'm in the 1% group on this one.

The plastic doesn't bother me. The quality on the rifle certainly seems better than the average low end rifle nowdays that's for sure.

I just don't think I could could ever get used to it enough to be comfortable to hunt with. Maybe if it was my only big game rifle then I could.

I think I'm going to box it up and maybe give it to a gift to someone who needs a semi youth rifle locally or stick it on the forums here NIB.

Exactly. Just told a poster that.

what am I missing here? Fill the mag, go hunting, pull the bolt back when I am in place, then push it forward to chamber a round? I'm sorry but putting a single round through the ejection port, I am a hunter. What's the point you are trying to make?

I read a lot of reports of how hard it is to load this gun through the port etc.

Now that I have one, I have no idea what the problem is. If you can load an 870, you can load a Tikka. You also don't have to pull the mag if you are shooting one at a time off the bench. Just drop one through the port, and close the bolt.

I guess if you shoot once a day at a trophy or something it's not a problem.

I have a state collection permit for research and have shot more deer in a day than some people will shoot in a lifetime, some anyway.

I like the ability to load up fully quickly. Pulling the mag out and loading it full takes quite a bit of time actually and is fidgity.

Again if you load up your 3 rounds (which is all that mine holds) that leaves 1 shot in the chamber and 2 in the mag. Once you shoot those 3 rounds you have to pull the mag and load it up again just for 3 shots. Seems clunky to me.

I can load a true blind box in 1/3 the time and have less probability of dropping something.

Like I said if you load up at daylight and sit there till dark and might shoot once at a deer then it's probably just fine. I would rather be able to load up full, shoot once and be able to top off.

I'm also guessing it's easier to load thru the port the longer the cartridge. With a short action cartridge I found it near impossible without a jam from the bolt with the cartridge jumping out of the mag. With a longer cartridge I'm guessing you could pull the bolt nearly back and shove in a round.

Tikka 5 shot magazines

Follow the link to nearly double your Tikka ammo capacity (yeah, it only add two rounds, but "nearly doubling" sounds so much better!).

Seriously, you load a round, into the chamber like any other gun, then slap in the mag. I do not understand why this is hard? And there is no way you can reload an internal mag faster than just sticking in a new loaded mag. If that were the case, military guns would not have separate mags.

I traded it off today so it doesn't matter. Seemed entirely too clunky for a hunting rifle. Seems like a great near miss.

I'm glad it works for a lot of people but life's too short to dick with clunky stuff. There's a reason nearly everyone else does it another way.

BTW yes it's true military rifles use a magazine to speed reload. That also doesn't apply to a sporting rifle unless you carry extra magazines. It's still faster to reload a blind magazine with 3 rounds than to pull the clip and load them one at a time and then put the magazine back. Not that speed matters. Just clunky in my opinion.

In the need of a second shot with a Tikka...or research havesting in your case (what the hell that ever is) a spare magazine with 3 or 5 rds in makes fast work of reloading...I would have to say nearly all hunters that use a detach/drop mag rifle have a spare mag in their pocket while hunting...

Wow, people with "Collection permits" are the coolest! But not their barrels, which after blasting away are the hottest!

A lot of fuss over nothing if you ask me. I went to the range yesterday and shot hornady 308 win 150 grain factory ammo at 100 yards. The gun is a drill and outshoots any 308 I had previously by a large margin and there were a few former 308 including a custom 308 on a 700 action. It's going to be hard to replace this one so I guess I keep it until he fails to fire or function. I really need to get another one in 243.

...of which none of this means squat to the average big game hunter, unless you plan to enter the "who can load your rifle the fastest" competition. Alot of fuss about nothing is correct.

My Ruger 338 only holds three in the mag, so I manually put one in the chamber. A couple years ago, I shot three times at an elk, and he disappeared over an edge. I knew I hit him, but thought I better reload quickly before running down there, just in case.

I had to stop, dig through my pockets, and load more shells. It would have been faster to just slap in another mag on the go.