My nephew works in a small town in over in Pacific County. He’s got a good job and enjoys the rural lifestyle.

He has been telling me about how he and his workplace buddies like to go out into the woods and shoot their pistols and revolvers. He also says that most all of his buddies enjoy deer and elk hunting. His dad was never much of a hunter so he has never owned a center fire bolt action rifle before.

He felt a little bit left out of the fun so he called and asked for my advice on what he should look at for his first deer rifle. I told him to just hold off a bit and I’ll sniff around and see if I cant't come up with some sort of a sweet deal for him.

So here’s what I did. At the December gun show in Chehalis, I figured I could just walk in and buy a used Remington 700 short action rifle with a standard bolt face for like 350.00 dollars. WRONG.

OK, so on to plan B. I have an old FFL buddy and he got me a brand new Remington 700 short action stainless steel receiver with the bolt and trigger assembly. No barrel, no stock, just the receiver, bolt, and trigger. Sweet deal.

I was lucky enough to call in a few favors from days gone buy and got an old plastic Remington stock for free. It also came with the BDL floor plate assembly, magazine box, spring, and follower. The stock did not come with a recoil pad. Three separate gluing operations later, the recoil pad was attached.







So I get the Shilen select match stainless barrel in record time and chamber it up in .308 Winchester. No need to start a guy out with some sort of hyper magnum rifle to hunt the woods of Pacific County. I told him that they kill those critters over there with bows and arrows.

I still had to wait quite awhile on the bi-pod so it gave me time to crank out a new set of scope rings to attach the Leupold Vari-X II 4x12 scope to the rifle action.
















I also got him a carry case to cart his stuff around. Then I scored big time on some ammo components from an old tournament shooter I know. 200 rounds of Federal Match nickel plated .308 brass. A box of Sierra 168 gr. Match bullets and a box of 165 Hornady SST bullets will get this young man off and running. Throw in a flashlight and a flask of wild turkey, well right there you got yourself the toys for a fun afternoon in the woods.






I can tell you that my first deer rifle was not this nice, but that was then and this is now.

Cheers ... Marv