I've been on the fence about getting a lightweight rifle for some time, and only recently have I started looking at Kimber rifles. I've never spent more than $400 on a rifle before, so this could be a little painful for me - but I've been saving and have the budget to probably be able to afford a Kimber Montana if I can find one. I am thinking a short action caliber, most likely either 6.5 creed or 243.

It seems that the only difference between the Hunter and Montana is the stock - is that correct? I've read that the stock on the Hunter is very good as far as injection molded stocks go. But it seems like if I might ever want to upgrade the stock, I should just go with the Montana. I definitely like the looks of the Montana better, but if I painted the Hunter stock green or gray I could probably trick myself into thinking it's a Montana.

Do you think the Montana is worth the extra cost? I am willing to spend more if it's worth it.

I’ve never handled a Kimber Hunter . I do own a Montana and bought it for $850. It’s awesome. Hunters are Detachable mag while Montana’s are blind mag. I believe the barreled actions are identical plus the triggers.

My choice of the Hunter was based on my preference for a detachable magazine. I have both Hunter and Montana. Montana is a 270 Winchester and a great gun! Sure do like my 6.5 Creed Hunter best. Lighter, shorter, accurate keeper. I'll be selling the 270 Montana.

I have both. I have a few Montana's and I have a Hunter and a Montana in a Hunter stock.

The last rifle you'll be able to get away from me will be my Montana in .223

There is a major difference in the stocks IMO. The Montana stock is nothing like a Hunter stock and you'd not trick yourself into it. Do I think the Montana is worth the extra cost? To me, yeah. If you like detachable mags, then the Hunter is your gun.

Your Hunter is lighter?

I’m sure MCMXI will chime in. If there’s anything to know about Kimbers, he knows it.

The stocks are different obviously and the hunter does have a slightly narrower profile. The Montana also has a threaded barrel while the hunter does not.

It’s blind mag vs. detachable mag really. The hunter stocks are well made.

About it being lighter, the hunter stocks all have 8oz added to them. This can be removed with a few minutes of your time. Rug3 was also comparing his LA to his SA.

Check out ChrisAU’s hunter if you want to see how light you can go while keeping a budget.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/15527684/4


I have Hunters, Montanas, Adirondacks and MAs and many have been swapped into other stocks for various reasons.

If you remove the epoxy/silicone "plug" in the butt of the hunter you can make it lighter than the montana. I did this on mine and it cut 6oz off the weight of the hunter. I also switched the bolt handle to a titanium one which saved another ounce or 2 and shortened the barrel. It is definitely a fair bit lighter than the montana now but I think just removing the crap in the butt will put it on par or maybe even lighter than the montana.

There will be another 2oz of rubber in the wrist. Remove the end cap from the grip and remove it from there as well.

I have no experience with the Hunter, but I do love my Montanas. One in 7-08, the other in 257 Roberts. Both older, without threaded barrels. I've heard good things about the Hunter. It has the detachable magezine while the Montanas have the stiffer stock. Whichever appeals to you more is the one you should jump on.

Same here.

how i feel as well ...

I have heard good things about the .223. I am leaning towards the Montana pretty heavily - I'm worried I'll get a Hunter an immediately just wish it had a Montana stock on it.

Get a Montana

I like my Hunters a lot. The detachable magazine is very handy and much nicer than having to work each cartridge out by hand. I painted the stock on my 6.5 CM, and there’s a world of options available to do that. But I recently bought a dipped stock from MCMXI here on the Fire and have another stock at Stealth Coatings to be dipped right now. I think the Hunters are a great value for the money.

That’s my 7-08 with a TI Tac handle and SWFA 3x9, next to the new stock.

Realistically, your deciding on whether your money is worth a stock upgrade and a threaded barrel. Action, barrel and trigger are all the same and of very good quality.
I like the Montana stock, but hate the threaded muzzle protector. I like the detachable magazine.
So my choice was simple and I save several hundred bucks.....

I took the 7-08 out looking for a cow elk to thump this morning... mostly just saw the insides of a lotta low clouds.
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Is the trigger guard part of the stock? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? What happens if it breaks?

Keep on hunting - a broken trigger guard does not make the gun non-functional. When home from the hunt a little epoxy and spray paint and you are back in business.

drover

Having hunted with a Hunter for several years, now, it's far from fragile. If you do something that generates sufficient impact or force to break that trigger guard, you've almost certainly got bigger problems and your hunt is over, anyway.

Laffin 😅

There’s no way that trigger guard is going to break unless you have some really major accident. It’s plenty strong.
There’s a pic going around on the net of a guy holding his long action Montana in two pieces.......
He had an accident of some sort and the stock broke at the pistol grip...... stuff happens, but that trigger guard isn’t even on my radar.....

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.

+1 end user who appreciates your efforts MCMXI!

I have the 6.5 Creed Hunter & am loving it.

Did remove the gel & bed the recoil lug & first couple inches of barrel.
I also installed a 9” carbon fiber tube & Acraglas into the forearm, which in my case made it stiff enough that I couldn’t easily squeeze the forearm & barrel together with my relatively weak fist. Relocated the front sling swivel lug to the tip of the forearm while I was at it. Now the swivel lug never impacts my hand.

None of that diminishes the excellence of your design! Way less “tuning” work than any other polymer stock I’ve ever dealt with. I usually just throw ‘em out.
In fact, I expected to do just that when I bought this gun, but was very pleasantly surprised.

THANKS!

Love hearing the background on these things.
Thanks for taking the time to share!

Thanks again. I wonder how much of the movement was the barrel flexing and how much was the stock flexing. If you ever want to add rubber back it's a product called PT-FLEX 60. It took a while to find a solution that would add weight, damp vibration, couldn't shoot loose, couldn't be "easily" removed and didn't cost much. It adds $4 to $5 to the cost of the stock.

AlI I know for sure is the before & after;

Before, they could easily be squeezed together & after, they couldn’t.
The “couple inches out” of bedding did provide a platform which reduced the length available for either barrel or forearm to meet each other. Did eliminate some weird flyers.

Would you personally leave the PT-Flex in a Hunter stock?

It's hard to argue with empirical data.

I was never in favor of adding weight to the Hunter stock or doing anything to make the Hunter less than the Montana but I was in the minority. I wanted to dampen the stock if possible, but not necessarily at the expense of adding weight. That said, the dense rubber does reduce some flex in the stock under recoil, and when the vendor moved all of the rubber to the butt cavity a couple of years ago i.e. removed the "window" between the butt and wrist, it improved accuracy/precision by a few tenths at least. My explanation for this is that the wrist is already stiff due to wall thickness and geometry whereas the butt is nowhere near as stiff. So adding all 8oz of the rubber to the butt cavity increases the amount if support inside the butt and reduces stock flex under recoil. Personally I wouldn't remove the rubber because there are some advantages to it being there, and I'm not fanatical about the overall weight.

The reason why the vendor wanted to close up the window between the wrist and butt cavities is so that they could ultrasonically weld on the grip cap prior to adding the PT-FLEX 60. The grip cap on the Hunter was supposed to be a SHOT show thing only due to a very tight timeline but years later it's still there. I had nice domed shaped grip caps with logos modeled and quoted but never could get anyone to sign off on the upgrade.

Here are a couple of the 84M Hunter .223 Rem prototype magazines (3D printed parts) that worked well. They're shown with a 55gr Remington factory load and an 80gr A-MAX handload. The Hunter magazine parts are all nylon 6,6 and the insert would have been made from the same material. If someone had access to a 3D printer it wouldn't be impossible to build a Hunter in .223 Rem. It was frustrating to know that it would have been "cheap" to introduce an 84M Hunter in .223 Rem. It would only have required a new barrel, magazine follower and magazine insert with virtually no risk. The only tooling costs would have been new molds for the follower and insert which are relatively cheap. The only likely complaint would have been that the bolt travel was longer than necessary since it would have been built on the standard 84M receiver.

Too bad they wouldn’t listen. That sure would’ve been cool.

Tag

IMO, it was/is super foolish to not allow the adoption of the .223 to the 84M platform.

Fast twist with ample magazine length on the 84M is an easy sell - and it sounds like it's an easy transition for the company.... I'd drop whatever I was doing and buy one of those in a heartbeat!

There's a lot of money changing hands every year to create custom rifles with these very features.

I HOPE the Kimber folks are paying attention....

They did offer a 223 Rem in an 84M
You must be referring to current offerings. I have handled one in a Classic Select. It was a sexy MFer too

Good catch.

Yeah, I should have said "Hunter" platform, as they did chamber the Montana and still chamber a Pro Varmint model. I was not aware that they chambered the Classic Select in .223, once upon a time.

The price tag says "Montana", but the rifle say 84L = Hunter.

That rifle cost $839 at a gun store.

It costs me a lot more than that to build a rifle on pre 64 M70 action.

And the Kimber 280AI shoots better than rifles I build at that weight.

tag

They made 223 Classic Selects.

Speaking of Kimber Montanas, I am a fan. I've got a few, and am looking for a couple more in certain calibers.

We known specific calibers have been inexplicably discontinued - .25-06 and .223 are just two examples. But, lately, I hardly see any Montanas available in any caliber. That's for both new and used. What's up with that? Covid? The move to Alabama? Kimber is phasing them out? Something else? Anyone know?

As far as seems apparent, they have no particular concern for the customer. They have very good rifles, but don't have a clue how to operate a business.

I called the closest Kimber master dealer and was told the Montana has been discontinued. I was really disappointed, but I found a used one in .260 Remington, which is on its way to me. Now all I need is bullets!

what could have been.... a fast twist 223 84m with room in the mag box.

buncha clowns running the place by the sounds of it

84L is just a long action, while 84M is their short action. The rifle pictured has a Montana stock and appears to be a Kimber Montana not a Kimber Hunter.

I’m amazed that something so obvious and so easily obtained, is being frivolous cast aside.....?

Toss a few samples in outdoor writers hands and watch the rave reviews roll in.

Sales would be screaming for more inventorying!

Sure looks like the hunter stock that the owner said it was with the trigger guard being the same color(molded in)

OK, I will change my firearm spreadsheet.

I know that place . I skinned deer there durning hunting season in my high school years in the mid 70's.

Hal

Stand corrected, sounds like I'm wrong on the stock. I thought the green color stocks were only used on the Montana's. The 84L though is their long action and is used on both the Montana and Hunter long actions. 84M action for the short action rifles.