Before you groan, roll your eyes, and blow off the rest of our discussion--hold on for a minute! You do NOT have to buy a completely custom rifle to get good accuracy at longer distances. As a matter of fact, an inherently accurate rifle may already happily reside in your gun cabinet. Remember, I'm able to shoot 6 inch groups at 500 yards off shooting sticks with my off-the-shelf Remington action .300 Win Mag. If you buy SMART, instead of going for glamorous names or beautiful wood, you can get a very accurate rifle for minimal investment.

There are four major categories to consider in making a logical, thoughtful decision on the best rifle for you. These are the action, the chambering, the barrel, and the stock. I'll lay out 3 examples for each category, Good/Better/Best (Dale and I have done all 3!). Hopefully, we can save you some time, trouble and money! Here are the definitions we're using for these three categories:

· "Good" rifle choice: buying one off the shelf, or taking one you already have out of your gun cabinet, and developing a load carefully tuned for that rifle.
· "Better" rifle choice: buying one off the shelf, or taking one you already have out of your gun cabinet, and taking it to a competent custom gun smith and having it accurized (squaring up the action, bedding the action and barrel correctly, installing an adjustable after-market trigger, rechambering the original barrel); more better: all of the above, plus replacing the original barrel with a match-grade barrel).
· "Best" rifle choice: having a custom gun smith build your rifle to your specifications, with a custom action, match-grade barrel, after-market adjustable trigger, etc.

Obviously, as the choice increases in quality, so also does the price escalate.

1) THE ACTION: Choose an action that doesn't have basic accuracy problems. In our quest to extend our effective shooting range, we consulted, nagged, hung around with and basically drove nuts some world-class bench-rest shooters who are members of the same shooting range we are. We discovered that the vast majority of bench-rest shooters use rifles with custom actions based on the Remington 700 bolt action. Many bench-rest shooters, using these same Remington-based actions, enjoy prairie dog hunting. They routinely kill prairie dogs at distances of 1000 yards and further. Dale and I figured that if a Remington-based action was good enough for these anal-retentive guys, then it would be good enough for us. Lever actions, automatics, pumps and other configurations just can't compete, accuracy-wise. One other consideration: see if your chosen action can be configured to accept detachable magazine clips. It's MUCH faster to change out 3- or 4-shot clips, rather than having to stuff additional shells into an internal magazine, when you're trying to get a game animal down for good.

· GOOD: Remington 700 action; more good: Remington 700 action that accepts clips
· BETTER: Remington 700 action accurized, accepts clips
· BEST: Remington based Nesika custom action

2) THE BARREL: Choose your rifle barrel appropriately. Make sure your rifle's barrel is long enough and heavy-walled. Barrel length is needed for maximum accuracy and to allow enough pressure to develop so that final muzzle velocity is adequate. Shorter barrels are easier maneuver and lighter to carry, but are inherently less accurate--think of a snub-nose pistol versus a long-barrel pistol. Long barrels are harder to maneuver and much heavier, but protect your rifle's accuracy. Even more important, wall thickness of the rifle barrel is absolutely critical for consistent performance. Each time the rifle is fired, the exploding powder in the chamber hits the barrel like a hammer, creating a sine wave that runs down the barrel. Heavier barrels react much more consistently to this sine wave than lighter barrels, insuring the bullet emerges from the barrel at the same vertical and horizontal place each time. Also, heavier barrels heat up much more slowly than lighter barrels. Any shooter who has spent time at the shooting range is familiar with the phenomenon of vertical stringing of shots that occurs when a barrel gets hot from multiple rounds fired in a short period of time. You MUST be able to fire 3 or 4 rounds rapidly, in order to put your game animal down for good, without having your accuracy compromised by a hot barrel. A third important benefit of a heavy-walled barrel is the reduction in kick when you shoot it. Higher barrel mass translates into greater inertia and less kick. Dale and I noticed the bench-rest shooters all use very thick barrels; extreme distance varmint hunters have such heavy barrels that some of them need cranes to move them! We decided to use barrels as heavy as we could comfortably carry. The downside of a heavy barrel is--IT'S HEAVY!! However, at 5'3"/125 lbs, if I can carry my rifle, a Nesika .300 Jarrett all decked out with a heavy fluted barrel, big scope, and bipods, topping out at 11 lbs, daily over 10-15 miles of rugged terrain chasing elk, I figure anybody else can handle that load, too. A popular choice for the uninformed hunter is a lightweight rifle, due to its lightweight barrel. Rifle manufacturers seem to promote the reed-thin barrels especially hard for bighorn sheep/mountain goat hunters, expounding on how much easier they are to carry. These same manufacturers neglect to mention the dreadful long-range accuracy problems inherent to these rifles. Lightweight barrels are thin-walled, therefore lighter and easier to lug around, but they are unpredictable and very sensitive to powder load, temperature, humidity, altitude, etc. In addition, they overheat within 1 or 2 shots; they start vertically stringing the shots, ruining subsequent shots trying to get a game animal down. Another consideration with ultralight barrels is how hard they are on the shooter. With their lack of weight comes their terrible kick. How many people with lightweight-barreled magnums do you know who DON'T flinch every time they shoot them? To summate, heavy-walled barrels are a lot more work to carry, but are much more predictable, less sensitive, slower to overheat, and don't force chronic flinching in the shooter. One last item to remember for the barrel you choose--make sure it comes with (or have installed) a muzzle brake. Muzzle brakes are noisy, and efficient in clearing the shooting line on either side of you when you're at the range, but they are FABULOUS at reducing your rifle's kick when you fire. My Nesika-actioned .300 Jarrett, with its heavy barrel and muzzle brake, kicks about like my .30-06, even though it spits a 180-grain bullet out at 3336 feet/second.

· GOOD: 700 Remington, Sendero barrel
· BETTER: 700 Remington, accurized, Sendero barrel
· BEST: Nesika action, after-market match-grade heavy fluted barrel

3) THE STOCK: Choose your rifle stock appropriately. The beautiful woods and inlays available on some of the high-dollar rifles look great in the gun cabinet, but can get ruined in the field--what we've done to the once-beautiful walnut stocks on our .30-06's is heartbreaking. Wood stocks can affect your rifle's accuracy as well. If they get wet, they can swell. They can even be affected by variations in temperature, humidity and barometric pressure/altitude. This can change the bedding of the action and the barrel, which can seriously affect the point of impact/repeatable accuracy of your shooting. Composite stocks are uninspiring, but fairly indestructible and impervious to water. They also are insensitive to temperature, humidity and barometric pressure/altitude fluctuations. In addition, you won't cry when you gouge a long scratch in a composite stock. Beautiful wooden stocks don't deserve the punishment they get being dragged through the woods chasing our elusive game animals.

· GOOD: Remington 700 action, sendero barrel, composite stock
· BETTER: Remington 700 action, sendero barell, accurized, composite stock
· BEST: Remington-based Nesika custom action with match-grade barrel, composite stock (we like McMillan)

4) THE CHAMBER/CALIBER COMBINATION: Choose a chamber/caliber combination appropriate for the game you'll be hunting, that doesn't have basic accuracy problems. You need a chamber designed with magnum specifications for a high muzzle velocity, to allow flat shooting. You also need a large enough diameter caliber to be able to use a bullet with enough mass to pack a punch at long distances. In other words, you have to balance powder capacity against bullet mass. Smaller calibers such as the .243, the .270, and the 7 mm allow long, slender bullets with excellent sectional density; these rifles reach out beautifully because they can fire bullets who fly in a very stable fashion, but don't pack the overall kinetic energy bigger calibers do. The 7 mm magnum, in particular, seems to carry the stigma, with outfitters, of being just good enough to wound the elk, which the hapless guide has to then go and track down. Don't fall into the trap of "bigger must be better." The bigger the caliber, the heavier the bullet needed to get a favorable sectional density, which can make it very tough to pack in enough powder to get a fast enough muzzle velocity for flat shooting. For example, the .338 Win Mag commonly fires bullets from 200 to 250 grains; the 200 grain bullet has a high muzzle velocity, but poor ballistics due to its unfavorable sectional density. The 250 grain bullet has excellent sectional density, but has a relatively low muzzle velocity due to its mass, therefore dropping like a rock down range. My husband and I have found that the ideal compromise for us, finding the best of both worlds (ballistics vs. kinetic energy), is chambering based on .30 caliber with magnum powder capacity. We chose .300 Jarrett for us. After witnessing how our rifles in this chambering/caliber combination literally decked 800 lb bull elk at long range, we are of the opinion this chambering/caliber combination, loaded properly, is competent to handle anything the North American continent can throw at it.

· GOOD: Remington 700 action, sendero barrel, composite stock, chambered for .300 Win Mag or equivalent (.300 WSM, .300 Ultra-Mag, etc.)
· BETTER: Remington 700 action, sendero barrel, composite stock, chambered for .300 Win Mag (equivalent), accurized; additional level of improvement: rechamber for .300 Jarrett
· BEST: Remington-based custom Nesika action with match-grade barrel chambered for .300 Jarrett