![]() ![]() Placement is darned near everything! One needs to know two things- range and trajectory. A couple hundred feet per second at terminal end just won't make that much difference in killing ability. Within reason, if one has an accurate rifle, and knows the trajectory of the load he is using, a short barrel really doesn't make much if any difference, assuming caliber and bullet construction/weight is adequate to start with. I should probably practice at 600 or 700. So far I haven't had the occaision to test my resolve with the '98. My rangefinder is only an "800 yard" model anyway- probably only reliable to 650 or so- good enough for my skill level. It is probably good to 1,000, but I'm not. MY max - I have a heavy barreled M98 in '06 that shoots 3 shot groups right at 1" at 300 yards with a good rest. Or maybe 500 under perfect conditions - my max with anything. I'm right happy with it, it's a nice carry, and I won't hesitate to use it to 400 yards. I'd guess the MV of "Stub", as I call it, is about the same as. I've never chronographed a load in my life and feel no need to. I don't have the figures for it (some others here do) and don't really care. MV for any rifle isn't an X/inch straight line, as often quoted, but a curve, which drops off/steepens fairly gradually down to about 20 inches of barrel length, then steepens pretty dramatically below that. That's just my not-in-stone benchmark for Stub. "Short barrel" isn't really a handicap for most hunting to at least 400 yards. The stock has been shortened and slimmed for proportional looks and "to fit the wife", but mostly I carry it - with a 1" slip-on pad over the Decelerator. I seem to have anticipated Ruger on that one by about 10 years. Now I have a range-finder, and still use the rifle. I figured later from the 300 yard initial estimate/hold and the lower heart hit) that sucker was actually 375 yards or better. The farthest was a caribou at 356 long paces over open ground - no short-stepping. Lots of stuff has fallen to it since - another sheep, at least one black bear, several moose and several caribou. Or more precisely - 2 half-days hunting, 6 days packing meat. With a Dall ram taken at yards on Saturday, a 42" moose at 80 yards the next Saturday, it was a darned short season! 2 days hunting, 5 days packing meat. The stock got refinished and metal work beaded/blued just in time for hunting season, weekends only. I didn't "lose accuracy" - I gained consistency. Most anything then went into 1.25 inches for as many rounds as I cared to shoot. I thought about that for a few weeks, then glass-bedded the receiver and 2 " of bbl, free-floating the rest. The first 3 shot group cloverleafed, the second two nearly did, but 5 shots consistently went to 5-6" with the last two in each trial being random fliers. Cleaned the bore, and it didn't look half-bad - some rust for about 2 inches at the muzzle- but whacking the barrel back to 17 inches took care of that as well as the bulge. It went up in my rack and I went back to work on customers' guns.Ī couple weeks later I had slack time and took it down to work with it.įirst thing I noticed - this time! - was the bulge a couple inches back from the muzzle. I should have offered the dude $50 instead of $80 - he was out the door like a shot with the money. A new barrel self-installed and blued wouldn't be so bad financially if it came to that. The more heavily rusted barrel seemed to be mostly surface rust and not deeply pitted (it wasn't) but I couldn't see down the bore it was so bad, so I figured that for a write-off, but cleaned up it might make a 3MOA close-range, knock-about, self defense "boat gun" for the price. Figured the lightly pin-rusted receiver was good anyway, and the peeling stock could be refinished. 30-06 RU77 tang in pretty bad shape from - he said - wet basement storage. I also have never found the 180 grain C&C to be inadequate on one mule deer, and who knows how many caribou, a couple sheep, and at least two black bears I've used it on, from ranges of 10 to 300 yards I doubt one could tell a difference in effectiveness between a 220 and a 180, short barrel or not, with proper placement and reasonable range. If you don't count the times they've just scared the crap out of me. But I don't go around trying to poke holes in Griz or Brown Bears. ![]() Oh, I dunno - my stubby '06 seems to have been doing quite well for the last 35 years here in Alaska. ![]()
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