Yes, Mr. "I can write on anything, and whatever I say is the last word on it because I say it." And of course, I mean this as a left-handed compliment.

I love it when he is praising whatever rifle he is reviewing and it is, of course, the greatest and latest and you should rush out and buy it. Why? The rag he writes for has a lot of expensive ad copy from this company. (You don't really think the mags make money on subscriptions, do you? They make it from the companies who take out the ads. GUNTEST is one of the few that dump on a particular gun or rate them. Don't see much in the way of ads in that one, do you?)

But I question one thing you said. "The company seems to be going through some growing pains, but the rifles come with an outstanding warranty and problems with a rifle will be fixed if the customer asks."

A company with a one year backlog isn't going to bother to fix problems that, from what I see from owners, is a rifle that rarely goes out without some problems, cosmetic or mechanical. An 'outstanding warranty' is only as good as their warranty service. Merkel, Kreighoff, etc rarely ships out a defective gun, but my presonal experience with them (the latter with a shotgun) was that if you got a bad gun, they replaced it rather than made you wait around and ask.

I do not feel that the role of a customer should be what the computer jocks call a 'beta test site.' My firm did that some years ago for two computer companies, who gave us the hardware to test, fixed problems on site, and let us keep it if we liked it. Thank you, but paying 12K plus for the privilege of helping someone work out a few bugs (and failure to do the bluing right or not send out a rifle with marks on it is not a development issue, it is pure neglect) is not my way to run a high end product line. As I said before, if they want to have the niche as the only 'made in America double' shop, then they should clean up their act, not trade on their customer's sense of loyalty to country as an excuse for sloppy and indifferent work. Remember what Samuel Johnson said about the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Dave