I was just curious, I bought two 7- 08 for my gread kids and they are shooters. Oldest kiull and Elk last year with his! I bout a 223 , floated the barrel and it shoots inside of a quarter. Just ordered a 243 from CCDN on close out for my windy day coyote rifle. Paid about $280.00 with shipping. these are great feeling rifles, plastic stock is the best I've seen on a factory gun and out shoot some of my custom guns that I have thousands invested in.
The Marlin X guns' factory synthetic stocks are OK, as far as injection molded plastic goes, but I don't think that they are quite as good as the factory synthetic stocks that Weatherby is putting on the current Vanguard2s. I've swap all of my Howa 1500 stocks for V2 take-offs.
I've got a couple Marlin X guns that shoot nearly as good as rifles costing four or five times as much. Funny thing is that even when you show guys how good they shoot, they won't buy them 'cause they are too cheap to shoot that good. What they "know" to be true over-rides what they can see with their own eyes.