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I've been researching inexpensive big bores for some magazine articles and really, a person can do quite well by diligently following the online gun auctions. I've bought and sold a bunch and I believe a person can do very well. I've had a couple of CZ's in .458 Lott and .458 Win Mag. They can stand some polish and glassing but they are good solid rifles. I had a .376 Steyr for a while. The cartridge was great but I didn't care for the rifle. I still have an identical Savage 375 H&H to the one above (even down to the scope and mounts) and it is the most accurate rifle of the bunch. It has a lot of plastic parts but it is a solid gun. I bought and sold a number of Mauser conversions to .458 but you have to be careful because a lot of them are not well done by people who don't really know their stuff. Fine for most hunting but not for dangerous game dependability. I ended up with a heavily customized .458 Win Mag Ruger 77. Someone had spent a pile of money on it and never cycled a shell afterward. I bought that gun for less than $700... but I also should add that I had a standard early model Ruger 77 that misfed shells and the standard open sights are a joke. I now have a Ruger .375 African and I like the rifle a lot in spite of pretty stiff recoil... but it will work for me in Africa with the older .458 for backup. Just the other day I walked into a local gun shop and the guy had a nice Browning .375 H&H on a Mauser action for leas than $800. It had some tiny bugers but by and large it was a real decent rifle. The thing is that guys will buy big bore rifles, shoot them a few times or go on a single hunt then all they can think of is getting rid of them because they don't like the recoil or they simply will not use them again. I believe these are the rifles to go after because a lot of dealers won't put much trade in them because they are slow movers. I paid less than $800 a piece for all of these rifles. Most hovered around $600 - $700 and a few Mauser conversions went for as low as $450 although I usually ended up with a couple of hundred more in them trying to update them.

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