Thread: What will the hunting rifles of the future look like ?

DIY Rifles will become the norm.

Instead of paying stupid amounts of money to wait for a guy running a lathe in shed to get his act together, just ordet a stock, action, trigger and pre-chambered barrel. Add action wrench, headspace gauges, elbow grease and common sense, and hey presto 'custom rifle'.

Already being done by many.

Laos, mid 1990's. Up close to the Golden triangle. I was doing some work with UXO's. Up there firearms are totally verboten...So obviously the only people with guns were the Police, Military and the gangs ...and most local villages had at least one or two home made firearms to shoot food with (mainly monkeys). The entire shotgun was made from local goods (water pipe, wood, wire, door latch, spring, kids cap gun caps) and the gunpowder was made from local sulpher, charcoal and home made Pot Nitrate (complicated process using dirt from under a pile of old dead animals). Shot was road gravel held in with newspaper. Watched them kill monkeys out to 35 ish metres.

In any 1st world nation with machine shops and 3d printers, anything is possible.

Still say your local yocal look for a deer type wont be aloud a rifle or whatever in the far future.

Originally Posted by thatguy

Fire arm

He looks a bit like a young version of Jamie Oliver....

Originally Posted by viper

The way our sport is going courtesy of both the Government, police and a gun fearing public we might be using something like this.
Rumour has it that is what a Tikka will look like in 2050.

That looks like a high-powered throwing attachment to me.



I predict the forum will be renamed "NZ Hunting and Clubbing".

There will be the predictable treads about how the new metal and carbon fiber clubs are ugly when compared to the traditional wooden ones. As well as the benefits of smaller lighter clubs over bigger heavier ones.

Originally Posted by MB

What about one of these? Not a firearm and they will only get more powerful as batteries improve.

Definitely, surely a sustainable e-gun. Maybe they will let us keep those?

Originally Posted by SPEARONZ

I don’t understand why bullups are not a common design. Instead we chop our barrels off and load our rounds way too hot to compensate.

Any advancement on a projectiles bc will be a winner. Look at Hornadys success of late. Longer slimmer heavier projectiles 

It's hard to make a bullpup with a good trigger and bolt action bullpups must be horrible to load. I can't be bothered repeating all the reasons why I didn't like the AUG...

Originally Posted by 300CALMAN

Definitely, surely a sustainable e-gun. Maybe they will let us keep those?

Would something like that be classed under the airgun law limits or would it be unregulated?

Originally Posted by PadLo

Would something like that be classed under the airgun law limits or would it be unregulated?

I guess it's currently unregulated. I am sure if the ever become cheap/powerful enough they will be banned.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

to see future...maybe look at epic failures and not so popular changes in recent past...
carbon wrapped barrels....some love them,others curse them.
triangle barrels.....interesting concept that didnt catch on...
full overbarrel suppressors......they work really really well BUT you got to clean them properly.....hopefully the concept will morf into a full length overbarrel type arrangement.


suppressed shotguns...the u/o looked like spouting downpipe....awesome idea but cut off over half the market as not allowed for game birds AND need subsonic loads to make huge difference which is giant leap backwards for birdshot killing power...OK for rabbits in back yard but not lot of use at 40 yards.

tacticool...nuf said

subsonic...well its hanging in there but folks have to be very good to make it work well on game,awesome for plinking.

the mossberg 4X4 style stock.....yip interesting which brings up...

the super lightweight concept....great to carry,ok for single round..painfull for lots of rounds and can spray holes everywhere when heat up,cartridges got SMALLER to compensate with corrosponding loss of terminal oooomph for want of better term.

we seem to go around in circles with cartridge design...the funniest one I find is the 223 terminater /223-204 years ago we had 222 magnum,killed off by .223 then ruger grabbed the 222mag case,necked it down to .20 cal and the 204 ruger was born,its now neck up to .224 and is supposed to be best thing thing sliced bread,yip it works,but re invention of wheel to some degree.
the 300blkout yes we all know it was spawned to use in AR15 platform but it does nothing a 7.62x39 wasnt already doing.....and as subsonic round the OLD OLD OLD .32/20 was already doing it all be it with lighter projectile...the 30/30 still does it well too.
give pretty much any older cartridge the advantage of faster twist barrel and they can step it up with the best new jobbies.

barrel twists have gone from really slow for round ball,to fast twist for heavy splitzers then slowed somewhat for light n fast,not going faster again the projectile makers get kicked in arse for projectiles blowing up with fast twist n high speed...and again for stout projectile at slower speed not expanding enough.... monos have had huge push in last decade,they too work best fast and close.....if they keep being pushed as the have to be used,we may see bigger cartridges come back to push the monos faster to stretch range....and will need longer heavy barrel to shoot them straight and decent big stock to shoot them well.


or we will be systematically starved of components untill we all are using home rolled black powder and cast projectiles in flintlocks,or not shooting at all.

Marketing & dare I say it, influencers are the key to the success of any gun, rifle or cartridges.
The sales of 270 Winchester boomed while writer Jack O’Conner (influencer…wasn’t a thing in the 50s-60s!) sung its praises, now the 270 is on the wane, then hello the 6.8 Western is introduced…how long does this cartridge last?
The 284 Winchester introduced in the early 60s, didn’t take off, now the 7mm bullets are popular the 284 shows up again.
5mm Rem Magnum failed, 17 HMR was a winner because of marketing, what’s happened the 22 magnum as a result?
As stated previously, the art of reinventing the wheel & marketing it as something new.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

to see future...maybe look at epic failures and not so popular changes in recent past...
carbon wrapped barrels....some love them,others curse them.
triangle barrels.....interesting concept that didnt catch on...
full overbarrel suppressors......they work really really well BUT you got to clean them properly.....hopefully the concept will morf into a full length overbarrel type arrangement.

suppressed shotguns...the u/o looked like spouting downpipe....awesome idea but cut off over half the market as not allowed for game birds AND need subsonic loads to make huge difference which is giant leap backwards for birdshot killing power...OK for rabbits in back yard but not lot of use at 40 yards.

tacticool...nuf said

subsonic...well its hanging in there but folks have to be very good to make it work well on game,awesome for plinking.

the mossberg 4X4 style stock.....yip interesting which brings up...

the super lightweight concept....great to carry,ok for single round..painfull for lots of rounds and can spray holes everywhere when heat up,cartridges got SMALLER to compensate with corrosponding loss of terminal oooomph for want of better term.

we seem to go around in circles with cartridge design...the funniest one I find is the 223 terminater /223-204 years ago we had 222 magnum,killed off by .223 then ruger grabbed the 222mag case,necked it down to .20 cal and the 204 ruger was born,its now neck up to .224 and is supposed to be best thing thing sliced bread,yip it works,but re invention of wheel to some degree.
the 300blkout yes we all know it was spawned to use in AR15 platform but it does nothing a 7.62x39 wasnt already doing.....and as subsonic round the OLD OLD OLD .32/20 was already doing it all be it with lighter projectile...the 30/30 still does it well too.
give pretty much any older cartridge the advantage of faster twist barrel and they can step it up with the best new jobbies.

barrel twists have gone from really slow for round ball,to fast twist for heavy splitzers then slowed somewhat for light n fast,not going faster again the projectile makers get kicked in arse for projectiles blowing up with fast twist n high speed...and again for stout projectile at slower speed not expanding enough.... monos have had huge push in last decade,they too work best fast and close.....if they keep being pushed as the have to be used,we may see bigger cartridges come back to push the monos faster to stretch range....and will need longer heavy barrel to shoot them straight and decent big stock to shoot them well.


or we will be systematically starved of components untill we all are using home rolled black powder and cast projectiles in flintlocks,or not shooting at all.

First novel I have read in a while
Really enjoyed it

Greeting to all of you a little bewildered by the endless procession of new must have cartridges, rifles, optics etc etc etc,
I was born in 1949 and by the time I started to take any notice of rifles the .303 was still king. Import restrictions meant that there were few new rifles available and they were too expensive for most to own. Boy have things changed. Although supply has slowed for the moment by the panic buying due to politics in the US and Covid the variety is endless. Whether any of it is as new or revolutionary as touted or how many of hunters actually take advantage of all the new wizzo bits is a matter of opinion. We each must make our peace with it.
Micky mentioned the .222 Remington Magnum. I was standing in Calibre Country (a excellent sports shop in Tamworth NSW in Oz) a couple of years back and was chatting with one of the locals. He had a .222 Rem Mag and was handloading for it with a Lyman tong tool. He was concerned that his supply of cases was getting low so I suggested that .204 Ruger cases could be reformed into .222RM and that the people in Calibre Country could probably help him with that. He had never heard of the .204 and reforming cases was a complete mystery to him.
I often wonder what would happen if I wandered into one of the local huts frequented by those with the latest in equipment carrying my iron sighted .303. For effect I could wear a black woolen bush singlet, shorts and Bullers. Added to this could be a Pikau and I could cook up some rice and apricots for a meal. I could let my white beard and hair grow long for the occasion. Do you think anybody would actually notice?
Regards Grandpamac.
PS In belated reply to the OP change for the forseeable future is likely to be ever smaller increments in improvement in hunting rifles rather than drastic change. In the short term perhaps a movement away from the big boomers which I think has started already. Sorry no ray guns.

@grandpamac I think sometimes we rush to overcomplicate things. For example.... I was watching an NZ hunting video on YT the other day and the young fellas were so busy dialling up that a deer that had been hanging around for a while buggered off. They were dialling for 200m.... I'm like "Really? You're dialling for 200m?".... But they messed around for so long they missed a sitter of a shot.

Sometimes (unless you're into long range hunting) the old fashioned "2-3 inches high at 200m" (dependant on calibre) is still the best method for hunting at average shooting distances.... I'm not anti dial-up, just wondered why they had been so wrapped up in the dial-up phenomenon. Especially so since they probably zeroed at 100m, so just hold a couple of inches higher at 200....

Greetings @bumblefoot,
Quite agree on the over dependance on dialing. My best hunting rifle for walking around type hunting is a T3 in 6.6x55 and a fixed 6 power scope with the long range duplex reticle. You can use the reticle to tell you if it is too far for a point balnk aim (the rifle is zeroed at 200 metres) so a 300 metre shot using the first dot should be possible without ranging. I think that the dependance on dialing is based on most scopes are second focal plane meaning the aparent size of the reticle compared to the game varies with the power and a hold over reticle is not much use. Add to this a lot of hunters and handloaders are very process oriented a in you do this then you do this etc. This results in many reaching for the range finder when they should be pressing the trigger. This happens a lot closer than 200 metres even in some experienced hunters.
Regards Grandpamac.

Bumblefoot & Grandpamac
Never truer words ever spoken
This younger generation have to use technology
There a time and place for dial scopes
This is the key reason i taught both my boys to shoot with open sights