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
Cary Kieffer
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Picked mine up at Cabelas-Saskatoon in there discontinued section now MSRP was $2117 US and I paid $1699 CDN if you convert that to US $ works out to 1121 US now
pretty sure I stole it for that price real happy with it might make a few changes later on but for now I’m real happy with my rifle to bad they didn’t have two!
Ken, congrats. I recently had a drag out fight with Remington “customer service” over a new Remington 700 LR in 300 win mag, they failed miserably. I sold off that remington at a loss just to be rid of it. I’m through with them for good, years with them and no more after that total lack of customer service..I hope your rifle is everything you wanted, the one I had really shot well. (Sold off now) I recently picked up a new Savage BA-110 in 300 win mag, that Savage drives em’ home!! I really like my new Savage so far. I just finished my barrel break in. Thanks for stopping by TGR. Cary
The triangle barrel is for heat deposition and less weight . And the sps or ltr can’t touch the 5r mill spec barrel or 11.25 riflings in the target tactical. I’ve seen 2 different people in 2 different states shoot one hole at 100 to 150 yards using hand loads. Everyone I know recommends the federal gold metal 165 gr. if you’re going with store bought ammo. Choose a good scope, the scope makes a lot of the gun. I’m putting a nightforce or a Leopold mark 4 tactical scope on mine. Both are well worth the money. And a quick tip: if your hunting with this rifle , then you’re probly not going to take more than one or two shots at an animal in one day, so sight it in that way . Set your scope on and take your first shot and make adjustments and then your second shot. Only take 2 shots a day until you get it zeroed in. That’s too insure accuracy.
The triangle barrel is for heat deposition and no, that sps or ltr will not hang with the 5r riflings of the target tactical. And your not going to get good performance from any rifle after the six or 7th shot because hot barrel is not as accurate as a cold bore shot.
Craig, I rarely shoot more than 3-5 rounds a time so I dont know about the hot barrel part sorry.
I can’t think of a reason the triangular barrel would be less accurate. It hasn’t been for me. It shoots just fine. I thought I read some where one time the barrel was actually more rigid??…but I dont remember where I heard that.
Last price, Yes, to a certain degree may not be worth the extra money… The Target Tactical is long and weighs a ton, the Rem 700 LTR is shorter, lighter, cheaper and a pretty great rifle. Additionally the SPS Tactical, another 20 inch is also shorter, lighter, WAY WAY cheaper and the one I have is also a nail driver. You’d just need to drop that SPS action into a new stock, I went with another Bell Carlson. The Hogue stock it comes with leaves a bit to be desired.
So you may want to go with the LTR. ($900ish) but if you want a different stock than the H&S Precision that comes on the LTR then get the SPS Tactical ($550-600ish) and buy the stock you want elsewhere. Either of those 20 inch remmy’s will do almost anything the longer, heavier target tactical will and they do it for less $$. Hope that helps you out. Cary
Hey mate. I have read other reviews about this gun. couple of things i want to ask you if your experience theses
Hot barrel – 10 rounds and accuracy goes out the window
Triangle barrel – apparently decreases the accuracy… don’t know how.
Price – your paying alot for nothing really…
Any other info on it would be great mate because id like one
Please help me mate by getting back to me
Kind regards
Craig