If I'd wanted to flesh that out a little bit, I would have said that the AR with 75 grain bullets or chambered in .300 BLK or 6.8 SPC makes the Scout Rifle obsolete. The fact that I can get a 6.8 with 30 rounds for the same weight penalty as a 5-10 round bolt gun makes the bolt guns look a little silly.Originally Posted by LSP552
This coming from someone that actually owns a Scout rifle.
I hunted with a pseudo scout a few years. A .308 Mauser. The worst was the pathetic low light performance of the long eye relief scope. Gave up a lot of time at dawn and dusk vs conventional low powered scope.
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
I think this depends on what you are doing with a long gun. If you are going to war, a bolt isn't going to work (excepting specialized use). However, if you are out wandering around in the mountains or on the tundra, and want a long gun to hunt big game, defend yourself against creatures up to brown bears, whack a coyote or wolf out to 400-500 yards, or just enjoy being out with a rifle, an AR isn't nearly as desirable as a trim bolt gun in a caliber that has more power and/or reach out ability. I often spend 100 days a year out with a long gun, and it is with a bolt gun, Guide Gun, or shotgun, and only infrequently with an AR. Also, where an AR has edges and a magazine to stick you when carrying it, a bolt gun, Guide Gun or shotgun is easier to carry on your body or in your hands. An AR also attracts attention, where a more traditional long gun hardly causes a second look.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
This is why I don't leave The Tower.
Back the topic though, I recently spent a week humping an AR all over the backside of the high desert in Nevada. A 20 round GI mag doesn't really poke if your sling is set up right, and it makes you look cool because GI 20s are the heat. I can say that if I was in bear country I'd probably something a bit sturdier than a 6.8.
But the AR is perfectly capable on coyotes at 500.
Better hope they aren't in their winter fur.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
^^ This.
I've carried various long guns around, including a variety of self loaders. I find self loaders chunky, bulky and clunky compared to a lever gun or good sporter bolt gun. It's really really hard to get interested in carrying something around that isn't handy or comfortable to carry, especially when it comes to the relative horsepower levels of the various guns size/weight/bulk.
My take also, but difference of opinion makes the world go around.
Ken
I've played with the Scout principle, and have wound up with a general purpose rifle, that isn't really a scout, but I feel fills the same niche.
I think Cooper's ideas often make the most sense if you consider them in the context of the time they were conceived. When it comes to the forward mounted scope in particular, optics that were available in Cooper's prime had crappy light transmission, were prone to internal fogging, failed to hold zero, had a narrow range of eye relief and often broke. Variable scopes in particular often shot to a different point of aim at different magnification settings, and were notorious for being internally fragile. Aimpoints and etc were in their infancy, or flat unavailable.
My grandfather was of an age with Cooper, and regarded scopes as simply a point of failure. He often lamented that he couldn't get a lightweight bolt action rifle with a set of M1 Garand iron sights on it.
In that context, a forward mounted, low power, fixed magnification scope makes sense, particularly one backed up by a quality pair of irons.
Fast forward to the 2010's. I have a Leupold Vari-x III 1.75 to 5 variable on my .308. I zeroed it when I put it on the rifle in 2008. Since then it has gone through 6 years of deer and elk seasons in Western Oregon and Washington. At low magnification, I can snap shoot quite quickly with no risk of the scope smacking me in the eyebrow. The rifle rides in a truck on miles of nasty roads, it rains like hell here, and I hunt steep slopes where I've fallen ass over tea kettle more times than I can count. The rifle has held zero every time, and even after I take the action out of the stock, it's within an inch or two. My rifle has back up irons on it, but if I knew what I know, I wouldn't have paid the gunsmith to put them on.
As far as the rest of the characteristics go, I think the length, weight, power and accuracy requirements are absolutely ideal for a general purpose rifle. Folks frequently tote around rifles that are too long, too heavy, and recoil way too much. While I love rifles that will shoot sub-MOA there is usually a trade off in weight and or fragility to get that. 2 MOA was Cooper's standard and I think that's fine for most uses. The .308 cartridge (and cartridges in rifle the same power level) are perfect for anything short of big bears. My rifle fits the weight, power, and accuracy standards for a Scout Rifle.
I'm agnostic on the DBM. The game laws here require guns be completely unloaded in the truck, so a DBM would be convenient. Even in my wildest fantasies, where I'm a partisan in the mountains, fighting the hordes of Russian Spetsnez and El Salvadoran paratroopers who have descended on my Colorado mountain town, I think that if your tactics depend on volume of fire, whether from a bolt gun or a Ar15/AR10/AK, you aren't going to last long. Rather a well aimed shot or two, then fading into the underbrush seem to be the order of the day.
On a related note, some people roll their eyes at Cooper's allegiance to the 1911. I used to shoot them, but likely won't ever own one again. But if you set the Way Back Machine to anywhere in the 1950s to around the late 1990's, the picture is very different. The 9mm cartridge had not yet benefited from modern ballistic design, and thus ammo makers were trying to drive 115 grain or even 95 grain bullets at high velocities, with corresponding lack of penetration, so if you were going to carry an autoloader, .45 ACP was the ticket. There were few platforms other than the 1911 that had any degree of support for parts, gun smithing, holsters and etc. So you kinda arrive at the 1911 by default.
Again, you have to consider the times...
Educate a non-rifle guy re: bolt guns cut for stripper clips. What actions can this be done to, what kind /where do you source the clips, cost for the work, etc.
I don't think I've ever heard of this, but it seems like a neat solution.
I agree that these people are annoying but I think that's a bit of an overreaction and I'm glad you stopped.
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This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff
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