Perfect Rifle Weight?

B

Badger Arms

New member
Rifle weight is an area of concern for anybody. Is there such a thing as the perfect rifle weight? I'll just submit here a few observations.

For accurate fire, I believe that 12 pounds is ideal. Yeah, you aren't going to lug the rifle very far, but that's not the point, is it?

For off-hand shooting, I think I'd rather have 9 pounds. I think the M-1 Garand is a really good gun for this as are the many DCM AR-15's out there in the same class.

For Military use, I'd want a gun around the 7 to 7.5 pound range fully loaded.

There are many factors at work here. I think that ballance and steadiness of the hold is very important in a rifle. Carrying this to its extreme, you can have a 1,000 pound rifle that would be very steady and impossible to hold. You can also have a 6 ounce rifle that is very undsteady counting almost exclusively on skeleton and muscle tone to steady the gun. Inbetween is a happy medium.
 
In the equation, you also have to take into account the caliber of the rifle in relation to its weight to consider expected/acceptable recoil.

I offer this next without comment as to the source (We can discuss the merits of that source another time): Jeff Cooper feels that the correct weight for a rifle/shooter combination is determined by holding the rifle, set up for the field, by the small of the stock in your shooting/strong hand at arms length. If you can hold that position for at least one minute the rifle is not too heavy.
 
rifle weight

A lot depends on whether you are going to carry it a lot, as opposed to shooting it a lot. From the recoil point of view, stock design is or can be significant.

As for the formula that Mr. Marshall got from Jeff Cooper, Cooper must have been a whole lot stronger than I am or was. For instance, Model 70 Standard Target Rifles, as I recalled, weighed about 10.5 - 11# with iron sights, a sling and 5 rounds of ammunition, 308 or 30-06.

They were quite comfortable rifles to shoot, but I doubt that I ever could have held one of them, in the manner described by Marshall-Cooper. I would not have described myself as excessively "weak".
 
Cooper is probably pretty strong. I'd disagree that a person's ability to carry a gun dictates the ideal weight for that person. It does, however, increase my overall tolerance for recoil. I can handle my 350 Scout rifle quite handilly and yet the muzzle blast alone scares shooters next to me away. I'm not superhuman, now, but a few dozen rounds of .300 WM don't scare me a bit.

Back to the subject. I'd agree that caliber plays a factor here to some degree. Still, that is more a factor in flinch and shot recovery than it is in accuracy. True, those mean a lot. So long as the weight is sufficient to shoot accurately, I will usually jump on the lighter gun and deal with the recoil.
 
I've been giving this some thought for the past few months, too.

For my personal use I see no point in lighter than seven pounds or heavier than about 9.5 pounds. For best hitability I think Cooper's Scout is a bit too light. Seven pounds is OK in the woods or climbing a mountain but it isn't as steady when it comes time to shoot.

I also think adding some weight and some barrel length to a Scout helps in other ways. It decreases blast and decreases recoil. Both of these are improvements when you are trying to thread the needle.

If designing an optimum hunting rifle, I think I would choose one a bit over eight pounds with a 24 inch barrel in a not too powerful chambering. I consider this light enough to carry all day.

Really heavy rifles (over 9.5 lbs) are most useful at the rifle range or for housing a cartridge suitable for shooting elephants.
 
It's just over ten degrees out with a breeze that will only get stronger as the day goes by. About three inches of snow means pack boots, and I'll at least have to have some coffee to make it to noon. My stand is only a half hour slow walk from the house, mostly up hill. After two climbs yesterday I think the Contender Carbine in 7-30 Watters and Leu 1x4 will do just fine. 140gr X bullet at 2600 will have to be enough. With sling my guess is four pounds. beertrucker-x
 
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