As a fan of Ruger rifles, the thing that concerns me is that they appear to be marching down the same trail as Win/USRAC with the spinning out of proprietary and redundant calibers that have little hope of ever becoming truly popular. This hints and smacks of trouble with the bottom line in the gun division as they grasp at straws, trying to create a market among folks who already own many guns.

I've seen the new Hawkeye rifles and in my opinion they are cobs, with a cheap-looking, beadblasted metal finish and a just-as-bad-as-the-M77MKII trigger.

I am a fan of the Ruger M77MKII because they are inexpensive and every gun is a fun project approaching the thrill of yesteryear's sporterizing of cheap milsurps. They are easy to work on which is good since every one I have gets its barrel freefloated, action epoxy-bedded and I rework the triggers. Metal finish is usually pretty good and I like the wood stock design. Once the kitchen table work is completed they shoot pretty well, too. And I like the calibers they came in, particularly the 6.5x55 of which I have 3 and the 7x57. Rugers are normally dead reliable, too, with excellent feed/function reliability, something it seems is not guaranteed in many guns costing far more.

The ballistics of the new rounds are good, but new cartridges to produce old ballistics seems ridiculous to me.