All but 2 of my rifles are second hand wood and blue. Most well under a grand. Two new ones, one was an $850 Rossi, the other a $950 Ruger..but I love seeing and handling new kit and if buying it floats someone's boat then fine.
One of the funniest things I've encountered was when shooting a NZDA silhouette match for the first time, with my old Interarms 308 and cast loads lol, the little guy next to me had a huge "precision" rifle in some exotic calibre with 3+k of optics on top, a total cost he told me around of around 8 grand as he looked pityingly at my old crapper with its Nikko Stirling on top. Then he found out, his first time also at silhouette, that he had to shoot off-hand. And yup, after a couple of shots, he just could not manage to hold the rifle up to acquire the target long enough to take the shot. I didn't do much good with my casts after we got past 100m but I was tfe one still wearing the grin at the end.
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