Thread: Mountain rifle

G'day Antz,
I'm guessing you are thinking of hunting the alps for red deer, chamois and tahr.
SAUM's setup makes a lot of sense but not everyone has extra testicles like him and Richie McCaw.
My personal theory is that the bullet and powder weight should be proportional to the rifle weight to keep recoil and mechanical stress within reasonable limits.
We think of the NZ mountains as wide and open but there's also a lot of scrub and bush hunting specially on the west coast so try and limit yourself to 18 - 20" barrel.
Light weight is a big advantage due to long distances walked, high climbs and a lot of carrying for a small amount of shooting (but its good shooting).
Look at a 120 - 140gr projectile in say 270, 260, 6.5x55 or also popular in those parts is the 280. If you go full magnum then carry a big gun and use 24". Just my opinion.
For scopes, Leupold seem to have the best lighter weight models and good reputation for NZ conditions so use the VX6 as a benchmark to compare others. Swaro 3.5 - 18 is a lighter build and OK if you don't want to dial. However, if you don't dial you need a bigger flatter shooting cartridge like the 7mmRM... Leica make the best rangefinders and binoculars but aren't a specialist scope maker and are yet to be proven in NZ conditions (wet & hard knocks). Nightforce are said to be excellent but are heavier and reticle design is aimed at target/tactical use; March and Sightron are focussed on target work with hard out hunting as a spinoff, also not a long history in NZ. -12x or -18x is as much as you can use for NZ mountains and you need a low end of 4x or 3x in the bush.
Sako 85 is also the benchmark for NZ rifles - easy to use, reliable, rugged out of the box. However, if your budget is less, Tikka are perfectly good, well thought of here and some models are very light. Aftermarket carbon stocks are available in NZ.
My pick would be a Tikka T3x lite in 260rem x 140gr (load it hard) with optilock mounts and a VX6 3-18x44 (no illumination) a skinny sling and no bipod, brake or suppressor.