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Liberty wrote:At the moment I'm holding tight to the purse, and expect to pick up a rifle in the spring or next summer. I'm leaning towards the M1A but I also want the Ruger GSM Scout. I'll probably eventually get both.

Well I understand the attraction to the M1A Scout Squad. If I were going to buy another M1A, that would be the one. And the iron sights on the M1A are pretty hard to beat. I forget where it was, but I was involved in a discussion about truck guns with someone, and I averred that my Gunsite Scout was a perfect truck gun, in the same way that a .30-30 lever rifle is a perfect truck gun. The M1A Scout Squad might well fall into that same category. If you think of the kinds of traits that make a rifle ideal for keeping on a gun rack in your truck, "handiness" would be right up there......

• light weight
• short length
• good ergonomics
• iron sights required
• intuitive optics nice to have
• of a caliber with range and power enough to deal with anything you'd be likely to run into in the lower 48
• with more than 4 rounds on hand, and the ability to reload quickly

Both the Ruger and M1A scout rifles have all of those bases covered.... just like an old fashioned .30-30, but with handy-dandy 20 round box magazines. Another thing about box magazines.... they are a good way to store ammunition. It is easier to pop in a new mag than it is to fish some rounds out of a box and put them 1 at a time into a magazine tube or an internal magazine. It doesn't mean you have to shoot all those rounds, but you have them already packaged and ready to go. And that means that you can easily carry the gun unloaded if you want to because loading and charging it is very quick.

The Canadian Rangers (a sort of cross between a "national guard" and "national park rangers") recently selected a new issue rifle to replace its aging arsenal of Enfields: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... mperatures

Here's what they came up with:



This article (http://www.scout.com/outdoors/hunting/s ... he-rangers) says:

Specifications include: .308 Win., 10-round detachable magazine, 20-inch barrel, iron sights calibrated from 100-600 meters, laminate stock, oversized trigger guard for gloved use, stainless construction with special coatings to combat corrosion and the Ranger logo etched into the stock. It will be issued with accessories such as extra magazines, a Pelican gun case and a trigger lock.

If I were on the market for another scout rifle, I would try real hard to see if any of these can end up in civilian hands. I think they are awesome.

In any case, I'm sure you'll be more than happy with the M1A Scout Squad. It's pretty nifty.

Liberty wrote:Col. Cooper once described what he thought of as an ideal if you only had one gun only. would be bolt action, lighweight, 30 cal, Scout type rifle.

I've been rather intrigued with the concept, Ruger has the Gunsite Scout but, I think I would prefer semi-auto. Maybe a M1A /Scout Squad.

I currently own a Ruger scout rifle, and I have owned a full length M1A. I think that an M1A reduced to "scout" length is probably a better defense weapon than the Ruger scout rifle, but it isn't a better all around rifle, and the M1A platform generally has some issues.......mainly around whether or not some of the critical parts are MIM instead of forged (see this thread: viewtopic.php?p=351522#p351522). Those are problems you'll NEVER have with a bolt action rifle.

But if you really wanted a semi auto .308 rifle, honestly, if you can afford it, the SCAR 17 is a better rifle......and you can forward mount a scout scope on it if that's your preference. It is significantly more accurate right out of the box than the M1A Scout Squad. It is softer recoiling than the M1A Scout Squad despite weighing nearly a full pound less. It is 38.5” long (stock extended to full length) to the M1A Scout Squad's 40.33", thanks in part to a 16" barrel compared to the M1A Scout Squad's 18" barrel. But with the stock folded, the SCAR only requires 28.5” to store (and it can be fired and will cycle with the stock folded if necessary). It has polygonal rifling (higher velocities and better accuracy) compared to the M1A Scout Squad's conventional rifling. It is simpler and faster to fieldstrip and clean than the M1A Scout Squad, and thanks to the polygonal rifling, the barrel is very easy to clean. It comes with excellent iron sights. It has a full length top rail and side and bottom rail mounting points. And, it has a folding stock that is adjustable for for length of pull AND cheek rise. Also, the M1A magazine insertion drill has always seemed clumsy to me, having to rock it in just right to engage the latch; compared to which the SCAR magazine slaps right in just like an AR's. And, if you don't want to be stuck using the FN proprietary magazines for it, you can convert the lower receiver (the upper is the serial number part) to an aftermarket one from Handl and be able to use any PMAG/SR25 pattern AR10 magazine made. The SCAR is fully ambidextrous, the M1A Scout Squad is not. The SCAR's charging handle can be swapped to the other side if you prefer, the M1A Scout Squad's cannot.

I really enjoyed my M1A, and I'm still kicking myself for having traded it away for something else I thought I wanted, but honestly, if I had to choose today between keeping either the M1A or the SCAR, the SCAR would be the hands-down winner. Yes, it is a lot more expensive, but it is a LOT more rifle.

I don't know that the Ruger Gunsite Scout is the best bolt action scout rifle you can buy.....it probably isn't (Cooper really liked the Steyr version himself)..... but it is a very good all purpose rifle. Two things I am going to change on mine if you're still considering one:

1. I'm going to purchase an XS Sight Systems extended rail with peep sight for mine which will bring the rail all the way back to bridge the action, and I am going to replace the forward mounted Leopold 1.5-5x scout scope I have on it now with a rear mounted Vortex Viper PST 2-10x44mm scope. As I've gotten older and my eyes have deteriorated, the scout scope just doesn't work for me anymore.
2. The RGS is a beast for noise. Seriously LOUD. If you get one, people on either side of you at the range are going to complain about it to you. So I going to replace the "birdcage" flashhider with a .308 cal AAC 51T flash hider/suppressor mount so that it will accept my AAC 762-SDN-6 suppressor.

Otherwise, the RGS is as good a choice for an all around general purpose bolt rifle as I can think of.

I think that these kinds of polls are almost impossible to answer definitively for me. I own 8 rifles in 5 calibers: .308 Winchester, 5.56 NATO, .30 Carbine, 7.62x54R, and .22 LR. Two of the three .308s are bolt guns, but they are very different from one another. The third is a carbine length semi auto battle rifle. Two of the three 5.56x45 rifles are carbines, but they are entirely different one from the other in barrel contour, weight, rifling, metal type, furniture, etc.; and the third is a designated marksman rifle. There is a WW2 vintage M1 carbine. There's a Mosin; and a semi auto .22.

It's not a huge collection, but each one of them is a good choice for an "only rifle" in its own right if your question is scenario-based......as in, "what would be your only rifle if [insert apocalyptic scenario here] happened?" Each has strengths and weaknesses, So I can't really answer the question that way.

And if your question is simply more along the lines of "what is your favorite rifle?"...... I can't answer that either, because I like ALL of them, some more than others, but I like all of them. I can tell you which ones I like less and could part with without shedding too many tears - and those would be the Mosin and the 15-22. But while I might maybe eventually replace the Mosin with some other interesting older mil-surp rifle if I parted ways with it, I would replace the 15-22 immediately with another semi auto .22 of some kind. Of the two, I consider having a reliable .22 LR semi auto to be more important than having an aging mil-surp rifle.

When I answered this back on January 10th, I said:

Any commonly made bolt rifle - i.e. Remington 700, Savage 110, Winchester 70, etc. - for which parts are easy enough to find, chambered in either .30.06 or .308.

For me, the only caveat is that it must be left-handed. I refuse to buy anymore right-handed bolt rifles.

Later that month on the 22nd, I said it was an impossible poll. Then on Feb 1st I said:

I have since then acquired a SCAR 17S which I can't seem to stop bragging about. LOL. Anyway, it shoots the same caliber as my R700, and I have recently shot 10 rounds into well under 1" at 100 yards with it, a 10 round group size that my 700 was only able to consistently beat using handloads.

AND.... while neither rifle is particularly good for SD inside the home, the 16" barreled semiautomatic SCAR is better than my 26" barreled bolt action 700 in that regard. It comes as close to a do-it-all rifle as I can think of.

Today, as I've been writing all of the above, I thought, "just one? Then make it my Remington bolt gun or my new AR". But that's dumb. Because tomorrow I might say that it is my Gunsite Scout, or a .22.

See? You can't really answer the question permanently....... at least I can't.

Excaliber wrote:

Crash wrote:I have a Howa 1500 in .308 with the 20" bbl and Hogue youth overmolded stock. It has done great on medium-sized game (a total of 15 whitetails, Fallow, and a 200-lb feral hog--all with one shot). I don't even notice the recoil and it will shoot 1", 3-shot groups at 100 yds off a bench as long as I do my part. I wouldn't hunt the big bears with with, and maybe not even a moose, but I'd use it for anything else in North America. I slipped and fell on a rocky slope a couple of years ago, dinged up the scope, and broke the plastic spacer between the stock and the recoil pad in three places. In the center break it pushed the spacer in about a quarter of an inch. I pulled it out with a paper clip, glued the three breaks tight and took it to the range expecting the worst. Shot a 3/4" group! I may buy other rifles in other action types and calibers, but this one stays with me forever.


Crash

How did you get all those animals to line up in the trajectory of a single projectile, and what bullet / powder load did you use?

Fixed it for ya:

a total of 15 whitetails, Fallow, and a 200-lb feral hog--all with one shot each.

Sorry - that was just too good to pass up!

As MeMelYup said above, "Now that's shooting."

BigGuy wrote:Remington bolt action model 700.
May not be the actual best choice, but I've had mine for better than 40 years and like it very much. It's big enough for white tails, but won't blow a rabbit or squirrel to pieces. The gun is way more accurate than I am.

My first post, made back on January 10th, said:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Any commonly made bolt rifle - i.e. Remington 700, Savage 110, Winchester 70, etc. - for which parts are easy enough to find, chambered in either .30.06 or .308.

For me, the only caveat is that it must be left-handed. I refuse to buy anymore right-handed bolt rifles.

I have since then acquired a SCAR 17S which I can't seem to stop bragging about. LOL. Anyway, it shoots the same caliber as my R700, and I have recently shot 10 rounds into well under 1" at 100 yards with it, a 10 round group size that my 700 was only able to consistently beat using handloads.

AND.... while neither rifle is particularly good for SD inside the home, the 16" barreled semiautomatic SCAR is better than my 26" barreled bolt action 700 in that regard. It comes as close to a do-it-all rifle as I can think of.

MeMelYup wrote:Sorry, but 3 firearms are a must. I have to have a 22 short, rifle, and long rifle for shooting some varmints, cans and other things. I need a hunting rifle for shooting larger game (deer, etc.) and some other varmints (hogs). Then I need a shotgun for other purposes (doves, ducks and other fowl shooting). We won't talk about the handguns.

No fair! If you're going to change the rules, then everybody gets to change the rules. If that's the case, then I get to add four more guns:

1. .308 bolt rifle (my original choice)
2. .22 LR AR15
3. AR15
4. SCAR 17
5. 12 gauge pump

If additional options are permissible, I would add:

1. an Apache gunship armed with Hellfire missiles
2. an M1A1 Abrams tank
3. a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (for its main gun......I love that gun.....
4. a room-full of MANPADs
5. a couple of Carl Gustavs and another foom-full of rounds
6. a truck-mounted M134 Minigun
7. a quality slingshot with a couple of barrels full of 1/2" ball bearings

Or, we could all just play by the rules.

Any commonly made bolt rifle - i.e. Remington 700, Savage 110, Winchester 70, etc. - for which parts are easy enough to find, chambered in either .30.06 or .308.

For me, the only caveat is that it must be left-handed. I refuse to buy anymore right-handed bolt rifles.