From the late 90s into about 2005 Winchester sold a heavy barrel varmint/target rifle called the “Heavy Varmint.”

These guns were the post 64 push feed action with a heavy barrel and the HS Precision made marksman stock. You can see it is identical to the wooden marksman stock I talked a little about yesterday.

This stock came with a bedding block and pillar bedding. The gun itself was basically a modern version of the old “bull gun” Model 70s from past decades, It had the same contour 26 inch heavy barrel and stock style as the originals. The exceptions being no provisions and pre drilled holes int he receiver and barrel for mounting match iron sights. The guns came in .223 rem, .22-250 and .308 winchester. My heavy varmint pictured above is .223rem. I chose this because it had something no other factory HV bolt guns in .223 had at the time. That is a 1/9 twist. Giving the ability to shoot the heavier weight bullets that I used in AR15s. I suspect it’s slightly faster than 1/9 because it does accurately shoot 75-77 gr. HPBTs.

The guns are very accurate and such a heavy gun in 223 is a pleasure to shoot, I used this as my crow rifle for many years. Recently I put this Leupold on it with a BDC to match a load I use with 50gr Nosler ballsitc tips at a velocity too high for me to publicly give out here. It makes for a very flat shooting load for the small black birds out to 300 yards without needing to make an elevation adjustment.

For this post, I ran outa couple hours ago and shoot a 5 round group at 100 yards using the old reliable match load of 77 grain Sierra HPBTs using 24 grains of Vit or Varget. I have used this gun and that load to make 1,000 hits on a steel targets the size of a man’s chest. Even a shot I am not gonna tell you about because you wouldn’t believe me.

These are great guns and if you have a chance to get one I encourage you to do so. They don’t make them like this anymore. Literally.