It was a 30-06, and boy I tell you what! It had "THE" slickest (than owl shit) action, light weight, good looking wood, and balance. I really thought I was done buying guns for a while, then I examine one of these rifles. Now, it does sport a Euro look with the more enclose action, but boy that gun looked like it could feed! I'm a little of a traditionalist, but did I mentioned I like this gun!

I'm with you. I sold a rifle so I could pick up the rifle in 300 WSM. I like it. Very smooth rifle, and even for a WSM it feeds extremely well either single shot or from the magazine.

I have two Tikkas. A Stainless/Laminate Whitetail Hunter,
in .25-06 Rem, and a T-3 Lite(blued/synthetic), in .223 Rem.

I want more!

This last weekend, doing some load development, for the
.25-06 Rem., with 85 gr. Combined Technology(Nosler coated) Ballistic Tip bullets, I shot a .4" 3 shot group.
It was one oblong horizontal hole...Which probably
means if I can clean up my trigger work, I will have
one ragged round hole. I have a Howa 1500(300 WSM),
two Savages(.308 WIn, and .22-250), and one Remington
700(.270 Win), to go along with the Tikkas, and every
time I shoot the Tikkas, I make a mental note to buy
more Tikkas! All of these guns are sub MOA shooters,
with their favorite ammo, but the smooth action on the
Tikkas, and the nice trigger, gives them a clear lead,
in my race for more guns. I hope Tikka figures out they
need a .20 cal offering, before I have to scratch my
itch with a Savage. My Savages shoot, but I am not
fond of the Accu-trigger force limits, on the sporter
version trigger. That and if I want a two stage trigger,
I'll shoot my AR-15s.

Squeeze

What are the differences between the T3 and the White Tail Hunters?

I have two of the older versions mod 55 S.A. and 65 L.A.
They are sweet shooters.
My next factory rifle will likely be a T3.

quote:

Originally posted by squeeze:
I have two Tikkas. A Stainless/Laminate Whitetail Hunter,
in .25-06 Rem, and a T-3 Lite(blued/synthetic), in .223 Rem.

I want more!

Squeeze

Hey Squeeze,

What scope mounts did you elect to install on the T3? I'm ordering a T3 Hunter this week--just planning ahead. TIA,

HS

I'm fond of Tikka rifles and EAW (German high quality) scope mounts. I own a Master Deluxe (withetail) 695 in 300 WM and I love it. My next rifle will be likely a Tikka. - Lorenzo

I'm all for Tikka and CZ as well. I find both to be excellent rifles, and certainly both sell well. What surprises and disappoints me both is that the U.S. rifle makers seem to be giving them our sales market. It's the same thing as the Japanese with the automobile market all over again. I'm not given to brand loyalty and will buy whichever serves my purpose best. My last 3 new Remington rifles have required glass bedding, barrel floating and trigger work, $250. each, to make them shoot as well as my Remingtons from the 70s and 80s. So much for brand loyalty. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

quote:

Originally posted by wildboar:
I'm fond EAW (German high quality) scope mounts.

I do not see any reason to pay $300 + for a set of rings and bases. There are several American companies that produce mounting systems that are as simple or simpler, and as good at returning to zero as EAW.

High labor costs + unnecessary complexity = low value for the money.

Sorry about the delay in answering a
couple of questions in this thread. I
am having some admin problems with my usual
Netscape browser, and have had to resort
to stepping way down to MS IExplorer

What is the difference between a Whitetail
Hunter(M595/M695), and the T3? Two obvious
differences come to mind. First T-3's only
come in one action size. They are long action
rifles, with a short action stop, for the stubby
chambers. They are so dang light, that
I doubt there is enough weight savings, to
make it worth fighting with Beretta's bean
counters for the additonal tooling cost of
having seperate rifles for short and long action.

another obvious difference is on the T-3, they
closed off the top of the action. I would
suppose that is some sort of strengthening
measure, but it makes loading single rounds
tough for folks with fat fingers. I have
fat fingers, and I can get it done with the
T-3, in .223, but it is not just a throw a
fresh round in the hole and slide the bolt
forward. I don't do much single shot shooting,
except off the bench, and with this rifle, I
just load the group to shoot, in the mag, and
be done with it. Not really a problem, unless
one wants it to be one.

There is one smaller detail, in the box
magazine construction. My WH M695 has a metal
sided long action magazine, and I hear that
the WH M595 has a plastic sided box magazine,
that has some flex issues, where loaded
mags can be hard to load into the action.
On the T-3's they added strengthening
ribs to the short action mags, to fix this
issue.

Well I guess there is one more difference.
Weight! My WH M695 is a stainless/laminate
gun that feels like a tank, compared to the
T-3 Lite(blued/synthetic). I haven't checked
the specs on these two rifles, but there feels
like at least a lb and maybe close to 2 lbs
difference in the weight. I like the extra
weight in the M695, because turning a hot
.25-06 round loose has a noticable bump to
it. With a lighter rifle, that would not
make for a fun gun to shoot a lot. As it
stands, I like this gun's weight to horsepower
ratio

As for the question about the scope, I have
a "floater" scope on it for now, but as soon
as the gun slush fund recovers, I am planning
on trying out one of the Mueller scopes, in
4-16x50 illuminated mil dots, or just the
plain illuminated dot, version. Besides
using this rifle for a battery gun on a
future P Dog trip, the primary use is to
build a night/twilight varminter. With
a night friendly scope, and some low report
Blue Dot loads, the neighbors will barely
notice that some cottontail flower muncher
just lost it's head.

Squeeze