Lightweight Mountain Rifle Help

[Gila]

My personal preference is the Kimber Montana.

I've had Tikka's and while they shot great, could never warm up to them for a mired of reasons

1. Liberal use of plastic parts (trigger guard, bolt shroud, mags)

2. Detachable Clip (not my cup of tea on a hunting rifle)

3. Hard to load from the breech

4. Action Length..... only 1

5. Plunger ejector and a hook style extractor

And the synthetic stock in particular exhibits too much flex and feels flimsy....


Granted, my experience was with them in the early to mid 2000's, so the newer ones may be different?

Everyone has their preferences. I have one of the first T3s...didn’t know or care about the plastic parts...really do like the polymer DBM....the rifle has worked flawlessly for 18 years now. The stock fits me like a glove.

With the T3x none of your gripes are valid. The bolt shroud is metal and the bolt itself is bomb proof. The Tikka has a trigger that few, if any, other production rifles can match. Finnish SS is the best in the world. The trigger guard is still plastic like most other production rifles. If you want to see a flimsy stock, check out the Winchester XPR Stocks. The recoil pad on the T3x is also better than on the T3s. They also opened the ejection port on the T3x but I don’t breech load very often so I don’t notice the difference.

The ejector and extractor are of the same design as most other non-controlled feed actions. The action is actually more of a standard length. Tikka puts in a “short action“ bolt stop for short cartridges so the bolt doesn’t have to travel so far. If you are going to mount a large bell on a pic rail then a cheek riser is likely needed as with most other production rifles in the same class.. My solution for that is a stock pack.

 

[Gila]

I found out that the Kimber hunter model has quite a bit of plastic including a plastic stock and a plastic trigger guard. it goes for $900-1100. The Kimber Montana has a carbon fiber stock and metallic trigger guard and it goes for twice the tikka at $1500-1600. So if a person replaces the Tikka stock with a custom carbon fiber stock and the bottom metal, still matches the cost of the Kimber Montana.

 

[F0steology]

Rifle prices have gotten ridiculous. I remember the days snapping up the Montana's (not the crappy Hunter version) for 850 or less. Looks like those days are gone..

 

[F0steology]

Gila,

Thanks for the info. on the newer Tika's. It's probably been a dozen years since I've looked at their offerings.

 

[HighUintas]

Rifle prices have gotten ridiculous. I remember the days snapping up the Montana's (not the crappy Hunter version) for 850 or less. Looks like those days are gone..

Wow. How long ago was that?

 

[F0steology]

Used, not new. And granted, it was a handful of years in the past! Still, the prices over the past couple years have been absolutely insane.

 

[OMB]

Rifle prices have gotten ridiculous. I remember the days snapping up the Montana's (not the crappy Hunter version) for 850 or less. Looks like those days are gone..

My dad ordered a 6.5CM Montana through our local dealer in July of 2020, hoping to have it before Xmas to give it to me as a gift, was quoted $1400. I ended up lucking into finding one at a regional sporting goods chain marked down to $1099 and snapped it up. I haven't worked super hard to dial it in yet, but I'm consistently shooting .75 MOA groups at 100 yards with cheap remanufactured ammo. Would really love to snap another 6.5CM up as a back up, or another one in 308 or 280 AI but as far as I can tell, they haven't spun up new manufacturing for them yet at the Alabama facility.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Wow. How long ago was that?

Not even that long ago really, maybe 2 years ago it seemed like they popped up new for 850-1000 all the time. Sometimes you get lucky, I got my mountain ascent 300 win mag for 1100.00 here on rokslide. That was a gun I’d wanted for many years so I jumped on it.

 

[Huntingnorseman]

I have a Ruger Mark II in the frontiersman model in 30-06. 16.5 inch barrell. It has flip up iron sights. It is a bit heavier than what you are looking for but shoots light out to 300 yards with Zeiss 3-9