Many of the better riflemakers have raised their prices significantly in the last few months. When D'Arcy Echols first started offering his synthetic-stocked 'Legend' in 1998 or 99, the price was $5,000. Now D'Arcy charges $12,000 for a 'Legend', and his walnut-stocked Classic goes for a whole lot more than that. I'm glad I hired D'Arcy to build some rifles early on! Gene Simillion has raised his prices as well.

Walnut-stocked rifles require a lot more labor and fine detail work, and that accounts for the price disparity, plus the cost of the walnut, stock furniture, etc.

Roger Biesen makes a great walnut-stocked rifle, and unless some radical changes have occured in his camp as well, the price is still reasonable. He has a very nice, full-feature 375 H&H on his website that is a very solid rifle for a very fair price at $6,000:

www.biesen.com

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