I blame David_Walter! - 03/27/18
David was selling a faux Howa Alpine rifle in 7mm-08 a few weeks ago, I wound up with the Bansner's Alpine stock after he split up the deal. So I finally got to Sportsman's Warehouse yesterday to pick up a .308 Win Howa rifle with Kuiu Vias camo stock, which is the same barreled action as the discontinued Howa Alpine rifle. So total I'm into a faux Alpine rifle for around $650 total, Sportsman's had the Alpine .243 Win in stock as well for a close out price of $899. The other option was as .308 Kimber Hunter at $800, which I admit was extremely tempting but I wasn't exactly buying this rifle for me.
Swapping out the stocks dropped the rifle from 7 lbs to 6 lbs 2 oz, so I figure the total rifle will weight less than 7.5 lbs all up when it is ready to hunt. Which will save my daughter a full pound from the current all up weight of her M700 Classic in .300 Savage she loves. I was worried that if I went with the Hunter it might actually be too light for her as it took us a long time to work up to the recoil of her .300 Savage. I don't want her to be scared of recoil again and saving one pound is a big change for her, I figure she'll basically be shooting the same loads with this .308 as she does her .300, 125 grain NBT and AB as well as 135 grain TTSX so recoil shouldn't bother her too bad.
Swapping out the stocks dropped the rifle from 7 lbs to 6 lbs 2 oz, so I figure the total rifle will weight less than 7.5 lbs all up when it is ready to hunt. Which will save my daughter a full pound from the current all up weight of her M700 Classic in .300 Savage she loves. I was worried that if I went with the Hunter it might actually be too light for her as it took us a long time to work up to the recoil of her .300 Savage. I don't want her to be scared of recoil again and saving one pound is a big change for her, I figure she'll basically be shooting the same loads with this .308 as she does her .300, 125 grain NBT and AB as well as 135 grain TTSX so recoil shouldn't bother her too bad.