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I havent had good luck finding any stores with a Gunsite Scout. I am looking for a bolt action rifle in .308 and have had my eye on one but cant seem to get my hands on one.

I have found out recently that I dont like the 700 SPS or the Savage hog hunter. The Ruger American just felt cheap in my hands. The savage trophy hunter xp felt pretty good though.

Is anyone here in Austin willing to let me come just hold the rifle, dry fire a couple of times and operate the bolt and other doo dads to see how it feels before I really pull the trigger? I have a current CHL, am prior Air Force if that matters or makes a difference.

Thanks,

If you're ever up DFW way, I'll show you mine and let you play around with it.


.....wait....


....that didn't sound right.


I'll show you my Gunsite Scout!!! (It's a lefty, by the way....)

I come up to the Rowlett area from time to time bit won't be up that way for a while.

Just don't ask me to polish your bolt ;P

Sending a PM

Thanks to sookandy and I will for sure be picking up one of these. Now just to decide 16 or 18 Iinch barrel.

Glad I could help out. Nice meeting you.

uthornsfan wrote:Thanks to sookandy and I will for sure be picking up one of these. Now just to decide 16 or 18 Iinch barrel.

FWIW, if I had to do it again, I'd go for the 18" bbl. Don't get me wrong.... I like my rifle, but I don't think that the extra 2" will add that much weight or negatively impact the handling, and it will add some velocity. The 18" version didn't exist yet when I got mine.

Well I dunno nuttin bout blistics, but I do believe everything I read and I read somewhere that the GS 16 was "for practical purposes" as accurate as the 18 so I got the 16 (for my wife ) for the handle-ability. Very nice rifle.

TomsTXCHL wrote:Well I dunno nuttin bout blistics, but I do believe everything I read and I read somewhere that the GS 16 was "for practical purposes" as accurate as the 18 so I got the 16 (for my wife ) for the handle-ability. Very nice rifle.

Yeah, I don't think the 16" bbl affects accuracy.......unless a given load's accuracy is dependant upon higher velocity. In fact, since both barrels have the same profile, my guess is that the shorter (and therefore stiffer) barrel is probably inherently more accurate on level or other.......although given two short barrels (16" and 18"), any accuracy difference is probably negligable. My concern was less for accuracy and more in terms of range. As much as I love it, .308 is not a particularly flat shooting cartridge, so range is fairly dependent upon velocity in order to "lob" the bullet out further.

I posted the following on the Ruger forum:

In "non-match" ammo, I've had pretty good luck with Federal Fusion 165 grain. Subjectively, whether I am shooting it from my 26" barreled Remington 700, or my 16" barreled Ruger Gunsite Scout, it is obvious that this is a "zippy" round.

Federal Premium Ammunition - Rifle

Federal claims 2700 fps out of their test barrel, which is probably a 24 to 26-incher. A 7.5"-9.5" difference of barrel length is pretty significant, and the effect of that on velocity is also measurable. A good resource is this article on The Truth about Guns: The Truth About Barrel Length, Muzzle Velocity and Accuracy - The Truth About Guns.

Note the first graph provided in the article:


Although the load descriptions appear garbled in that image, the first column is for Hornady 168 Grain TAP.......a bullet weight similar to the 165 grain Federal Fusion. The chart shows a loss of 120 fps going from a 26" to a 16" barrel. Granted, I have no personal chrono data to back this up, but the data from this article is a safe place to start drawing some tentative conclusions. Of course, they remain nothing more than tentative until you go out and test them yourself, in you rifle.

When I plug that velocity of 2585 fps in to Federal's own online ballistics app (Federal Premium Ammunition Ballistic Calculator) using a zero of 100 yards with a max range of 500 yards, I get: Those results give you pretty much a "point and click" rifle/ammo combo out to about 300 yards, beyond which you pretty much have to start using holdover values for whitetail or hog-sized game. 300 yards is "long range" for most hunting scenarios. The odds that you would need to hit something beyond that range are slim. If you do, then you probably need a different rifle/caliber combination. But for the kind of lightweight handy hunting rifle role that the RGS fills, 300 gives you a lot of leeway.

My RGS is a "truck gun". I keep it for the same reason that others might keep a lever rifle in their truck.... except .308 beats .30-30, and the capacity is greater. Mine is topped with a Leupold 1.5-5x32 VX-R Scout scope, from SWFA.

Chore like my 16" barrel.

The Annoyed Man wrote:...Those results give you pretty much a "point and click" rifle/ammo combo out to about 300 yards, beyond which you pretty much have to start using holdover values for whitetail or hog-sized game. 300 yards is "long range" for most hunting scenarios. The odds that you would need to hit something beyond that range are slim. If you do, then you probably need a different rifle/caliber combination. But for the kind of lightweight handy hunting rifle role that the RGS fills, 300 gives you a lot of leeway.

My RGS is a "truck gun". I keep it for the same reason that others might keep a lever rifle in their truck.... except .308 beats .30-30, and the capacity is greater. Mine is topped with a Leupold 1.5-5x32 VX-R Scout scope, from SWFA.

Nice post AM thanks. I had gotten ours as a "point and click" as you say, primarily as a HD/zombie attack rifle, but hope too some day to convince my wife to go deer hunting with me.

Heck we can barely see out to 300 yards which would be no fun distance to take a deer from anyway. I did get this Leatherwood LER27X32BDC scope for it but haven't mounted it yet.

Thanks for your post.