anyone hunt with the 16 or 18 inch Noveske Rogue hunter

[jimmyp]

I was considering it for a new deer rifle. I like the polygonal rifling idea and the 16 inch upper is 4 pounds!

[randolph]

Go for it.
I have a 16" in 6.8. I bought the upper, built up a lower for it added a Zeiss 3.4x10 scope to it.
I absolutely love it. It is as accurate as any of my custom bolt rifles and way more fun to shoot.

[Ironman8]

How sturdy is the TRX rail?

I heard that Noveske claims the Rogue Hunter is strictly for hunting and not considered a "battle rifle" like the Recon would be. Apparently this has to do with the rail...

This would be a precision rifle anyways, and not an up-close, HD rifle, but I still want a sturdy rail...

[TWR]

I don't know how sturdy the TRX rail is but I've ran one on another gun for a year or better without any problems. It rides in the gun rack on the front of my 4 wheeler and gets bounced around pretty good, Troy irons on rail haven't shifted so that means the rail hasn't shifted any.

I pieced together a Noveske 16" Rogue hunter myself and haven't run it much yet but I trust the TRX for a hunting gun and I'm not exactly careful with my guns, they are tools.

[jimmyp]

I spoke to "Joel", I have been dithering back and forth on getting this for a while, John and he decided on the Rogue hunter concept after hunting with heavier models of their rifles, at 4 pounds for the upper it makes some sense if you walk into your stands a mile or so. The 16 with the 11 inch rail and the midlength gas system might make mores sense, the 13 inch rail looks a little funny to me.

[twadsw01]

About a year ago, I ordered a Rogue Hunter with a 16" Recon Barrel from them, in 5.56. Of course, it's accurate as all get-out. I've got a set of Troy folding backups on it, as well as an Eotech.

I took it into a stand a few times for deer, but haven't ever fired it at any. It's almost exclusively been used for carbine drills and <300yds precision (bench/prone) shooting (~2000rds). I've not experimented with putting known loads on the rail and measuring deflection or POI shift, but I've never noticed a zero shift once I got the irons dialed in at 100yds with the same ammunition (almost all of the ~2000rds has been XM193). It takes what I estimate to be between 25lbs and 30lbs of force downward at the end of the 13" TRX rail to produce any deflection detectable to my eye.

However, the rail will twist if you do not have it torqued down adequately. There's a little play in the thing so that you can line the rail's top 1913 up with the receiver's 1913 before you tighten it. this is good so that you can get pretty good alignment between the two, but a negative because it means that the only forces holding the alignment through recoil and being jostled around in a truck or from rough handling is the torque applied through those two tiny little nuts/bolts on the underside of the rail. Don't get me wrong, you can really cinch down on those things...but make sure you do! And Lock-tite them.

Not scientific, but it is what it is.