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The best dangerous game rifle is one that never lets you down, and with which you can hit what you want to hit.

Anything above that is fancy work and money spent on cosmetics.

Utter reliability can be obtained from a factory rifle "finished" and tweaked by someone who knows what he's doing, in just a few hours of work.

Perfect fit is more difficult to achieve, but can be done satisfactorily if the shooter knows what to look for in matters of fit.

The choice of caliber is VERY secondary, as there are no really ill-suited calibers (within reason, not advocating the .22 WMR here...) as long as the ammo is top notch and the shooter can handle them. Everyone makes a choice based on a number of personal considerations, including field experience over the years, ammo/bullets availability, and "cool" or "classic" factors.

There are many good actions/rifles out there, and a lot more that are NOT what to use to get absolute reliability. Searches on the Net will yield opinions and advices from hundreds of people, spanning decades. A good indicative trend can be drawn from these.

Now, for the "Big Names". I have personally seen rifles worth thousands of dollars with totally unacceptable failures in the field. Comes to mind a take-down Dakota in .375 with ever-so misaligned action and barrel, that would not allow the bolt to pull back if used normally! Extremely few "DG" rifle makers actually get their rifles tested in the field under Pro conditions, and many of them build rifles for the big bucks sales and the hype on all the "DG" features they can cram in, without checking the function of these in the real world.

I have also seen a number of lowly rifles based on CZ/Brno, Zastava, or surplus M98 actions that were flawless performers (and to refute an earlier post in this thread, CZ actions have been used by top gunmakers for years, including Rigby in their London days before the California Rigby debacle).

If you look at the working tools of true professionals who spend their lives in DG game country, and whose lives depend on their rifles, you'll find a lot of battered rifles with homemade (crudely, at times) features that are the real Mc Coy, because it's not there to impress, but it's there because it works. Phil Shoemaker's rifles come to mind. I don't know him personally, but his rifles make perfect sense - and are ugly as a boar's butt.

So, what is the perfect DG rifle? I doubt that you can buy it over the counter. It's something personal, and you'll know it's YOUR perfect rifle after having gained experience with it, and modded it or changed it according to what you learned in the field, AND what you learned from people who have been there and done that.

But it does not need to break the bank, it just needs careful consideration and sound choices.

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Philip

Edited by Kano (07/07/15 05:11 PM)