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Thanks Joel.
I was wondering if you have ever made a specialist lightweight mountain rifle?
If you have an existing gallery and comments on archive, point me to it and I will post it up.
If not, a future project to set your skills to, if a customer orders one! If given free rein, what would you choose, calibre/cartridge chambering, rifle type/action/barrel length, targeted weight etc?
I know you are a mountain hunter for chamois/Isard, and do remember you have a very "non-Joel" rifle with a plastic stock if I remember rightly for that hunting?

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Dear John,

To put it bluntly, if I had to have only one rifle to hunt everything in the mountains I would choose a .270W.
I used this caliber a lot during fifty-three seasons of mountain hunting.
I started my mountain hunting career in 1966 with a second hand 8x60S 1951 FN Mauser fitted with a Lyman 48 receiver sight before getting the possibility of acquiring a Belgian made Raik Frères 6,5x57 98' that I gave up latter for a M-S NO model cal. 6,5x68 mounted with a 4x32 Hensoldt Diasta.
A few years later I was lucky to find a .270W pre-64 W70 Featherweight that I used for a long time.
The years helping I continued to use practically only .270W rifles, in particular a GK M-S which I re-barreled using a superb match grade 25" tube from MAPF (Manufacture d'Armes des Pyrénées Françaises - UNIQUE - Olympic Gold medal winner).
With this special M-S I killed more than two hundred chamois in our mountains with 130 grains RWS H-Mantel loads.
Of course, I used also many other rifles in various calibers, but almost never of magnum, except a 7RM during a period when, on the same territory, we hunted chamois, mouflon and mountain stag.
As I got older I converted to the smaller calibers.
I built several light chambered prototypes for some wildcats: 6mm-284, 6mm Remington AI and for some special cartridges: 5,6x57RWS, 6mmNorma BR before definitively becoming reasonable by focusing on the 6XC, the 6,5 Creedmoor and the sweet 6,5x55SE.
Now I hunt almost everything with 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5x55SE when stalking and with my .275 Rigby (aka 7x57) in driven hunt.
Of course I prefer classic rifles and nice walnut stocks but it must be recognized that the modern technical rifles using stainless steel, titanium, kevlar and carbon are precious by their resistance, their stability and their low weight when climbing the mountain becomes difficult and weather goes wrong.
Even if it must be shocking for some friends, I really like the Barrett "Fieldcraft" of which I have a 6,5x55SE that has been prepared and modified in our workshop.
We are currently manufacturing two "Light Stalking Rifles", a .270W take-down and another, even lighter chambered for the 6,5x55SE round, the two rifles being built on BRNO ZG47 and mod.21 highly modified actions.

Kind regards.

DORLEAC
www.dorleac-dorleac.com

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