This time I want to talk about my relatively new Remington 700 Target Tactical 308 rifle. I got it home from gunbroker for a tad over 1250$ It’s long and heavy but certainly up to the task for military or law/enf precision shooting.

The gun: It has the triangular barrel so many people love to hate. I don’t get it myself but people despise how it looks. I think its pretty cool. Anyway the barrel is made of R5 hammer forged barrel steel, an excellent choice, it’s what USMC sniper barrels are generally made from. It has a deeply recessed target crown as well, I don’t really know what you’d have to do to this thing to bang the crown and damage it. The trigger is the adjustable 40X factory and I took it out right away and paid the great folks over at Botach Tactical $120 shipped to send me a Timney trigger which breaks so light and crisp, it’s great, WELL worth the investment. Botach has had every order to my doorstep so fast its scary and great pricing! Just so you know I am in no way a part of them just a very satisfied customer.

When installing the trigger I set mine so light that it was “firing” when I roughly closed the bolt. SO BE SURE!! I say again, BE SURE that you try it out 50 times empty to make sure you can ram the bolt home and not trip the trigger!! You don’t want to chamber a round and get an unwelcome and potentially dangerous shot fired! Ok, so you’ve safely set your trigger weight now the stock.

The stock is the Bell Carlson Medalist/Tactical stock. It’s aluminum bedded, fully adjustable for length of pull and cheek position. It’s olive drab with a raised, rough black “drizzle” of paint all over it giving it a nice look and a good texture for grip. The pistol grip built into the thing is comfortable and all in all it kicks ass. So get in behind your new girl in a good prone position and adjust it till your eye relief is perfect and length is just right for you.

Accessories: Very important, the two things you might want, a Harris bi-pod set up so the legs fold forward. That way when deployed you can push on the rifle a bit and sort of “lock” it into place from the torque on the bi-pod legs. The other is the BT mono-pod to support the rear of the rifle. Yes, you can sandbag it, you can sand bag the front too but this combo work’s well and is much quicker to set up and use for me. Not to mention easier than carrying around full bags of dirt or uncooked rice as I used in the sandbox for rear gun support. I would get the BT04-QK (again from Botach) It’s going to come up a little short but I put my left hand under the buttstock and hold onto the mono-pod, then you can adjust it as necessary using the knob or just squeeze your hand for slight adjustments in elevation. Try it and you’ll see it works out pretty well.

Optics and Accuracy: Nobody throw rocks or rotten food just yet. My $$ tree was picked thin on the gun side of it and I haven’t gotten my usual Leupold yet for it. I put on a 32x sportsmansguide Barska 61$ special until I get a better scope. In spite of the world’s junkiest scope and dark crappy optics I have managed after sighting in at 100 yards to hit a small UPS box out at 400 yards and hit the individual 2 3/4 inch tall letters I wanted to at will. I totally shot out the “p” and put one round each thru the U and the S of UPS and all when I meant too 😉 That’s sub-minute of angle accuracy, you can’t complain about that. Nice rifle!

Ammo: At the 100 yard line I tested Federal, Hornady and some off brand foreign match. All brands were 2 bullet weights, 168 and 175 grain, all were boat tail match bullets. The Federal Gold medal trumped them all, both weights did. I was surprised that Hornady A-max didn’t do as well I thought it would, still good ammo but the Federal Gold Medal definitely won the group contest. 168 or 175 it didn’t matter just a slight change in the POI. So I chose the 175 Gold Medal as my load of choice. The heavier the better, less wind problems. Once I get the good scope I intend to pit the Federal ammo against the military 118 LR round and see what will happen but that’s another post.

Summary- I have nothing bad to say, it’s a good rifle and for what you get it’s cheap. It is long and heavy, most would not want to lug it around all day and night. It’s a good precision rifle out of the box for sure but I wouldn’t hunt with it, get something lighter. It’s a joy to shoot and you should have little trouble hitting at the 1000 yard line. Recoil is also negligible, it’s a 308, so not terrible to begin with but it weighs with all your accessories on like 15-16 lbs. I would recommend this target rifle for fun or serious combat/Law-enf. work as long as you didn’t have to lug it very far.

Thanks for reading.

By: Cary Kieffer

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Cary Kieffer

USMC Infantry/Combat Veteran/MUESOC/Sniper School - Med Retired LEO w/ 8yrs on job before Iraq wounds caught up with me.

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