My brother seems to have this issue, anyone else run into this? Is this the way they all come or is it an aberration?

If you mean the holes on top of the action for the scope mounts, they are 3mm. All screws are of course metric being a Finish rifle.

yes its those screws and they seem to be bigger than 3mm. Also, apparently very few of these Tikka in the US are metric threads.

SOme came with metric threads that can be chased with a 6/48 tap and cleaned up correctly. Have your gunsmith do it or send it to Beretta and they will do it.

Baxter: I don’t have a Tikka rifle on hand to measure the screws, but it might not prove much even if I did, if it is true that some models have ‘American’ screws in them and others have metric.

If yours has METRIC scope base screws in it, which are larger than 3mm, they are PROBABLY M3.5x0.6 (3.5mm diameter, 0.6mm pitch) If they are AMERICAN, they are PROBABLY 6x48. (6 gauge – 0.138in, or 3.5mm - in diameter, and 48TPI) However, this is probability, supposition, call-it-what-you-like, NOT a guarantee.

You will have to determine exactly what the screws are in your rifle, because you cannot play ‘mix and match’ with different size screws. M3.5 and 6 gauge are - for all practical purposes – identical in diameter, but 0.6mm pitch translates to 42.3TPI. Running a 6x48 tap into an M3.5x0.6 female thread, or vice-versa, won’t clean it up correctly, it will totally wreck it!