Model Seven S.S. in .260

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I stopped by my local guns shop today to let him know I had the H+R .500 S+W being shipped from Davidson's. While there I spotted a used Remington Model Seven S.S. in .260 Rem. It reminded me alot of the Sako Finnlight or Kimber Montana, I looked it over, tried the trigger and action, drooled a bit and left the store. It ate at me for three hours until I finally had to go back to put a deposit on it.
The rifle felt like it weighed around 6 lbs., was S.S. and wore a synthetic Kevlar reinforced stock. I'm not sure if the barrel was 20" or 18 1/2", I think they made them both ways over the years. This is my first time with a .260. I hope to use it for deer and sheep hunting, so I'm thinking a 140gr. bullet?
Here's a stock photo.
Don

[DocHolladay]

Those model 7's have an extremely smoooooooth action. The trigger isnt to bad either.

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I was surprised by how smooth the action was and when I tried the trigger it was light and crisp enough that it actually surprised me when it tripped. That's a good thing!
I'm sure having a good gun buying month. LOL!
Don

[DocHolladay]

I have always loved the 700's, then I held a model 7. The action blows the 700's action out of the water.

I have bought a couple firearms since being at the store. One was an Owl Head Iver Johnson and the other was a semi auto Ithaca 20ga. I sold the Ithaca and kept the Iver Johnson. Wish it would have been the other way around.

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I paid $549 for this rifle. I was able to figure the date of manufacture as being 5/97. I'll bet the rifle didn't cost that much new, but according to what I see them selling for today it's still a bargain. Back in '97 I probably wouldn't have paid that much for the rifle, even though I'd have loved to have it. Makes me think that if I see a new rifle that I really want and it seems pricey I should just bite the bullet and ante up.
I put the Simmons Pro-hunter 3-9x40 from my 45/70 on this rifle and put a 4x40 Nikon on the 45/70. After bore sighting the scope I took it out back to see how close I was on paper. Shooting from 50 yards it was 1.5" to the right. As easy on the shoulder as a .243, but you can tell it's bringing a bit more downrange. To be honest if I had known I would find this rifle I doubt I would have gotten the Howa, but I'm still glad I did. I think I'm really going to like the .260 Rem.
Don

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I finally got to the range with this rifle today. The 140gr. SSTs didn't do too badly, with the worst 100 yard three shot group being 1.5" and the best 1.0". The 1.0" group was achieved using 36.0gr. of Varget which isn't too bad when you consider the lightweight pencil thin 20" barrel on this rifle. I've held off buying any other bullets until I saw how these shot. I'm confident that I could use these with good success, but the reloader's curse is a pursuit for something better so I ordered a box of Barnes 120gr. TSX bullets to try. One thing I found very encouraging was that all the groups fired were in nice triangle shaped groups, no strings either vertical or horizontal.
Don