This past year I decided to rebuild my old shot-out Remington 700 ADL chambered for the 243 Win. I burned out this barrel on a rabbit hunt quite a few years ago. We affectionately refer to this hunt as The Rabbit Hunt. I will write about this hunt another day. It was incredible.

I decided to keep the 243 chambering since I have the reloading dies, experience with this chambering, and a whole bunch of brass. I wanted to put a heavy tapered barrel on rifle. My Ruger 77/17 has the tapered target barrel, and I really like the looks of this rifle. After searching the internet, I decided that E.R. Shaw had the barrel that I wanted at a price that I felt would fit my budget. Since my wife and I both worked, I took my barreled action to my local gun shop to ship back to Shaw. Since there would be no one at home during the day to receive the return shipment when it arrived, I asked that it be returned to this gun shop. In retrospect, I should have just shipped it myself.

I ordered a stock from Boyd’s. I chose their target/varmint stock in the pepper laminate wood. I got the one that has most of the inletting done that I could finish and glass bed myself. I thought this would be a good winter project. This whole process started in February. I figured that I should get the barreled action from Shaw around the first of May. This would give me about a month to put every thing together in time for prairie dogs in June.

This is where all the fun began. The first week of May I called my gun shop to see if they had gotten my rifle back from Shaw. No, they hadn’t seen it. I called Shaw and they hadn’t seen it either. They had no record of it ever entering their shop. So I called my gun shop again. Oh, and guess what, they found it. Sitting in the back room where it had been for the last 3 months. Still wearing the shipping label. Waiting for Santa in the big brown truck to give it a ride to Pennsylvania. It had never been sent to Shaw. In their defense, this shop had just lost their long-time manager and the guys were trying to figure things out. Any way, once we figured things out, and the action was sent to Shaw, the wait began again. After explaining the situation to the folks at Shaw, they got this project started for me a lot faster than I had hoped. After all the dust settled, I ended up with a good-looking rifle that can shoot better than I can see. It tips the scales at over fourteen pounds with the Redfield 4-16 scope, Burris Signature rings, Limbsaver recoil pad, Harris Bi-pod, and nylon sling. This is not a carry-it-around-all-day rifle. With this one, I just park myself next to the truck and either shoot off the bench, or roll out the pad and shoot prone off the bi-pod. Oh, and it will keep five shots inside a half of an inch at the standard 100 yards. I’m sure that it will do better than that when I get the eye glasses that I desperately need. I’m happy with the end of this adventure. However, next time I will try to keep things local so that I won’t have to depend on others for shipping. 

Author: Kent Hoggan 2006