[Txhillbilly]

Typical Ruger! How many years have mfg's been making Scout style rifles,and now years down the road-Here's Ruger's!
Ruger needs to come up with some new innovation,and quit copying everyone's ideas.
They also need to fire whatever engineer that is designing all of their crap out of PLASTIC. Who wants to pay $995 for a gun with a plastic trigger group.

[DocWard]

Originally Posted by JonM

scout implies sending one or two guys out to scout ahead looking for enemy or recon a route of advance. they shouldnt be engaging the enemy and if cornered rapid sustained fire would be more advantage than a bolt gun with limited ammo capacity and fire rate can provide.

I'm thinking he meant "scout" more from a hunting perspective. His concept was a rifle that would be a true multi-purpose rifle, f "that will do a great many things equally well..." "The general-purpose rifle will do equally well for all but specialized hunting, as well as for fighting..." I don't think he was contemplating its use in the sense you are referring to.

And yes, the muzzle blast and recoil from a .308 through a barrel that length and a rifle that light has been mentioned in tests of the concept.

Like I said, I would consider one, but there are plenty of guns that are in line ahead of it.

[BombDoc]

I'm a big fan of Cooper's 660 in 350REM. I bought a Ruger M77 Scout 308 a few years ago. This is on top here with my 338WM.


It's very light and easy to carry all day. I would love to build a 660 to Cooper's specs but I never find them in good shape at a decent price. This new GS model may be in the want list now.

[JonM]

prolly my definition of a scout is different heh. when you try to please all you end up with a useless tool. the cooper scout rifle is a perfect example of overplanning resulting in a less useful piece of gear. his bren 10 was pretty much the same thing. the man shoulda stuck to writing magazine articles and making common sense quotes.

cooper wasnt the originator of the scout rifle concept he kinda took that from various sources which tried the same thing but it never has really worked. the british smle jungle carbine further back there is the sharps cavalry carbine and during the civil war there were short barreled rifle experiments to fulfill a scout role. those arent the only examples. the extra short barrel is usually the fail point. cooper's scout concept isnt new he just layed the concept out in words in a public forum first. militaries around the world from japan to russia to the USA experimented with the scout rifle concept to varying degrees of success and failure.

the problem with it is it tries to do too much and fails as an overall whole.

if you like the idea nothing wrong with it. im just not one to drink the cooper koolaid