Szihn, thanks for your remarks. I find all of it quite interesting. No flames from me.

Ripp makes a good point that the USA is awash in Remington 700's and your experience reinforces his assertion.

As for the SAKO extractor option, I've heard good and bad. The point being that the SAKO extractor is dead reliable on a SAKO but a Remington converted to a SAKO really demands a bit of skill on the man doing the conversion, more so than may commonly exist according to some reports on forums. Seems that way for lots of aftermarket "improvements". Personally, if I owned a Remington 700, I'd clean it and leave it alone. Seems like elbow grease and an old toothbrush have a lot going for them.

I wonder how many Remington 700's exist in the USA, then how many commericial Mauser 98's there are. I then also wonder how many of the 14 million or so Mauser 98's made are being used in converted form as sporters. These numbers are all probably unknown by anyone. Well, I don't know at least.

I do not own a Remington 700 and I like my Mausers of whatever ilk; 96, 96 Strengthened and 98, along with my Mauser wanna-be Ruger M77's. But a guy that buys a new Remington 700 and makes sure it is squared away and devoid of obvious ills has one of the world's best rifles and certainly one of the world's Most-Likely-To-Be-Accurate.