Discussion Forums

Nathan Foster

Hi Calin, I believe the first step is to be clear on your goals. A bit of Dr Phil / Texas thinking goes a long way here. A gun like this may be cheap to begin with, but after converting, it will have cost a lot more than the initial outlay. What you have to ask yourself is - is this what you really want or are you just trying to make do.

I have polished plenty of turds in my time. No matter how much folk rave about budget guns and no matter how good some of these are, they will never be more than an exercise in materials cost cutting. The scales tip more towards profits than the end user. Building hype or even forum threads around this simply enables it to continue As a simple example, the .300 Win Mag likes to sit at an OAL of around 3.633" for best accuracy with modern projectiles and to avoid powder cramping with its heavy weight bullets. Have a look at your mag box and see how much room is in there for such a cartridge.

As for a Whelen conversion, this could work better than other options due to the shorter OAL's. There will be some jump but that is normal for a Whelen. The mag box on your rifle should be steel sided which will make it better to work with than some other budget plastic offerings so this is another plus. It would be ideal to test dummy ammo but this will be difficult to test if you want to adopt an AI version. If you want to do something with this rifle, the Whelen could be a very good option. There are not many factory Whelen options at the moment so if you want to try this caliber, spending some money on the Axis could be justified.

Regarding the .375 Ruger, the mag box won't work so well for this. If you want a .375 Ruger, buy one. Its not going to cost any more to trade this rifle and buy what you actually want.

Understand that as you increase recoil and also change barrels, harmonics will be effected. The rifle may need some form of bedding if the project is to be brought to fruition. The Axis is not the easiest to bed so you need to have your head in the game for this, be prepared to go the distance.

Hope that helps a bit.