My brother has pretty much every caliber Ruger M77 action'd rifle ever produced. I believe he was hooked on the easily adjustable trigger and the integrated scope mounts, which was a big deal back in the late 60's when he bought his first M77 in .243...before he was even old enough to legally buy a rifle. Then again, this is the same guy who got kicked out of the Boy Scouts for shooting squirrels out of trees with a .22 pistol while on a canoe trip. It must run in the family. Anyway, he recently took his .257 Roberts to a professional gun builder in Houston to have it gone through from top to bottom. The guy worked the gun over pretty well, even made everything metal into a matte black finish, camo'd the stock and built some custom loads. I'm not sure how much he spent on the whole thing but I'm sure it wasn't cheap judging the price of the new target grade Leupold scope sitting on top of it. I have never seen a rifle shoot like that one. Previous to the gun smith work, that rifle would shoot 1 1/4" - 1 1/2" on a good day. I've killed deer, hogs, etc., with it in brush country. If we were hunting open range I would just leave it at home or plan on crawling on my belly for a close shot. Basically, it just sucked. After the smith work his wife put the first six rounds into the same hole at 100 yards.
I have been looking for a Ruger Red Label over/under with 26" barrels for a while. We have a gun show pretty much every week in Houston. It's good to be home.
