Discussion Forums

Chris Murphy

Right O you jokers ive been sitting back with my pop corn watching this thread and this whole light weight rifle thing pisses me off.

Iain I am a south island hunter and most of my hunting is days away from vehicles. I am also not a great physical specimen, I'm 6 foot and 70 kg dripping wet. For a multi day hunt my pack weight is 18kg and I carry a 4.5kg (9.9lb) 7mm Practical No 4 contour barrel and S3 6-24x 50. This is very light for such a magnum and I have to keep my round count up to stay accurate. My wife often comes with me similar pack weight and carries a standard tikka 308 with 3-9x40 scope that I added 1lb of lead to the stock to make it shootable for her, she is 60kg.

I set out making carbon fiber stocks just for myself as there was nothing on the market that fit my needs. Everything was stupidly light and thin or Tacti Cool. the reason I wanted to make a lighter weight stock (800ish grams) was so I could add a heavy weight barrel and big optics and maintain the same weight.

Contrasting to me, I had a client come to me a couple of month ago thinking his scope was buggered as he was struggling to hit an A4 piece of paper at 100 yards. This guy is a similar height to me built like a brick shit house, plays rugby and spends a lot of time in the gym. So he brings in his rifle a fucken tikka super light with fluted barrel in 270win with a fucken bipod on the front. Before even touching the gun I said your scope is fine the rifle is stupid. So I took it to the range to check it and it was shooting .4". I moved the scope around, still shot fine (remembering I am averaging at least 100-150 rounds per month testing clients rifles and my own shooting). I asked the guy why he bought such a light rifle and it was because the fuck-wit in the shop told him he needed a light rifle. Because of this he lost out on 3 big trophy stags, missed and wasted shit loads of ammo trying to sight it in.

So back to your question Iain. For those calibers 9- 9.5lb with a scope is a good weight for climbing up round the tops.