If You Had A Choice....

[tonyb]

I am getting ready to build a prairie dog gun. It will be chambered in the 6 BRA, so there will be no weight requirements to meet. If you had a choice... would you build on a straight contour, or heavy varmint contour?

Tony.

 

[338 dude]

Well you are talking about shooting varmints I would go With a heavy varmint I think a straight bull barrel upsets the balance and it’s just too heavy the only advantage would be more mass to absorb heat better but I could think of several disadvantages Of going with two heavy or long of a barrel

 

[Sniper338]

Heavy varmint is plenty big. Just adding useless weight after that.

 

[Ranger188]

If only shooting p dogs, then you could go straight contour and cut off shorter if wanted to balance it out better.
Not like you'll be carrying it around a lot, if shooting off a mobile bench.
Run a slightly slower twist to get the most explosive performance of the slightly lighter bullets.

 

[tonyb]

Thanks for all of the responses, I guess I should have been more specific. Is there any accuracy advantage of a straight contour over a HV.

Tony.

 

[sdean]

Thanks for all of the responses, I guess I should have been more specific. Is there any accuracy advantage of a straight contour over a HV.

Tony.

No

 

[people]

Straight barrel will be heavier and should absorb more recoil. My grandpa had a 223 with a straight barrel. He said he liked to see the hits even up-close. He only shoot it off of his truck or off of the 4 wheeler. He said if I need to walk around I can use a lighter rifle.

 

[Hohn]

I am getting ready to build a prairie dog gun. It will be chambered in the 6 BRA, so there will be no weight requirements to meet. If you had a choice... would you build on a straight contour, or heavy varmint contour?

Tony.

I'd personally build the HV. The extra meat of the straight profile is in the wrong place to help with heat. Where the heat mostly matters, the barrels are similar thickness.

A straight taper also will always give a better stiffness to weight ratio. They are lighter for the same amount of stiffness. It's debatable if that stiffness is a good thing or where a barrel should be stiff, but the basic geometry is cut and dried.

 

[Cochran]

Heavy as possible. The fun of prairie dog shooting is being able to see your hits.
I shot a lot of prairie dogs with Mark Deluia. I mostly used F-class guns and couldn’t always get back in the scope to see impacts.
The best gun of the bunch was Mark’s 6mm Catbird. At 27 pounds and ballistic tips running 3800 FPS he could easily see the impacts. it was a lazer to about 750 yards. Past that I think it takes high BC match bullets to reliably score hits. Not explosive but beats missing.