Carry-a-Kimber wrote:I have a 700 XCR in 7mm-08 and two 700 SPS Tacticals and the $550 rifles will run circles around the $1000 one when it comes to precision accuracy. The XCR is much lighter and a better hunting rifle, but if I want to shoot nice tight groups I pick up one of the SPSs. For the price of the Ruger Gunsite Scout you could get an SPS Tactical, thread the barrel, add new bottom metal, and have a few bucks left for optics. But I still find myself wanting that Ruger.
At the December Dallas Market show, the guy at S.A.W. told me he saw
left-handed Gunsight Scout rifles selling NIB in the $700 range.....from more than one vendor. He thought perhaps Ruger was having some kind of promotion and the dealers were getting the left handed rifles cheaper than the right handed ones.....which is very unusual.
That was very tempting to me. There are a number of arguably better alternatives in .308 for the role, namely semi-automatic rifles like the AR-10—which can
also be configured as scout rifles. But, I really like the idea of the simplicity of a "do-it-all" bolt action rifle with a higher magazine capacity and "scout" optics. To this day, cognoceti acknowlege the British Enfield rifle with its 10 round capacity magazine as the best of the WW1 era battle rifles.......in the battle rifle role. The Mauser may have been a better hunting rifle, and the '03A3 a better target rifle, but a Tommy with an Enfield could produce a superior rate of fire with fewer reloads.
In the Ruger, you have the simplicity and reliability of a bolt action rifle. With controlled round feeding due to the claw-type extractor, you are never going to have double-feed issues or any of that. With proper ammo, the rifle is capable of MOA to slightly sub-MOA accuracy—which is plenty good enough for hunting, whether it is people or animals. It has adjustable iron sights (missing from most modern bolt action rifles). The flash suppressor, useful in its own right, is threaded on, so presumably it can be removed and a "silencer" suppressor added. It is light (at 7 lbs, it's an easy 2-3 pounds lighter than an AR-10) and has an adjustable length of pull.
I love me some .308, and I believe that in many ways it is the perfect rifle cartridge, but it does have its limitations. Even in a full on sniper rifle with a well-trained shooter, there are better choices for extremely long range work. I've been reading Chris Kyle's book "American Sniper." In it, he says that while his longest kill was at 2100 yards with a .338 Lapua, the vast majority of his confirmed kills were at 400 yards or less. He also says that he
rarely ever aimed for his target's head....there being too many uncertainties. COM killed them just as dead and was a lot more certain. If a guy like that with 160 or so confirmed kills says stuff like that, then it leads me to believe that while extreme accuracy in a rifle is a good thing, it is not the
only thing in that application.
I'm not knocking the SPS, and I certainly wouldn't mind having one, but I don't want to buy a rifle and then have to
convert it to a capability it doesn't already possess, if that conversion process means I've got to start cutting into the stock, etc. That, and the cost, are the main reason I haven't ponied up the money for a Badger Ordnance trigger guard/magazine system (or some other manufacturer's version of it) for my Remngton 700 VSF. I love that rifle.....just as it is. If the conversion kits were a "drop-in" solution, I might still consider changing it. But they aren't that easy, and I think I'm going to leave my 700 the way it is.
So that puts the Ruger scout rifle back in the running. To me, the charm of a rifle like that is that it
isn't a specialty rifle. It won't do any one thing as well as a rifle which is specialized to that one purpose, but it will do
all things tolerably well.....including sporting a 20 round removable box magazine for those days when you find yourself stuck at the Alamo.
