Rem 788 Bolt action rifle, the legend continues

[Pappabear]

I have a friend that bought a old old beat up Rem 788 in 308. It sparked my memory of my Riflesmith saying these were the best guns Remington ever made. They only made them in SA rifles, .223-243-7-08-308 stuff. So he said they were outselling and outshooting the more popular 700 so they dropped them. Who knows. But he said they are are crazy accurate and great guns. So I got a bug up my ass and grabbed one off gunbroker in .223 with 24 inch barrel so range report to follow. I'm taking my buddies 308 to sight in for him so Ill report on that s well. Sample of two but I hope to shed some light to this Ole gun!

Oh , I took the 308 to Sportsmans warehouse to grab some rings and there was an old guy behind the counter and told the exact same story my Riflesmith said about these amazing guns...he said if I knew they were going to quit making them I would have bought more. He said its the only gun he ever shot the barrel out of he loved it so much.

Small snippet from Wiki gunnery.

"The Remington 788 has two distinguishing design features. The first is the rear-lugged bolt. The bolt has nine lugs in three rows of three lugs each. They lock into the receiver behind the magazine well. Due to this design, the bolt handle lifts only 60 degrees on opening giving more clearance for scopes compared to the 90 degrees required for the Model 700 and other two-lug rifles. The bolt travel is also reduced because of the rear lugs. The bolt pictured is a pre-1975 locking model from a .308 Winchester caliber rifle. The locking bolt requires the safety to be in the "fire" or "off" position in order to rotate the handle and actuate the bolt. Rifles manufactured from 1975 to 1983 have non-locking bolts which can be actuated while the safety is engaged. The second distinguishing feature is the receiver. It has a smaller ejection port than similar bolt-action rifles, and no bolt lug raceways. The single stack magazine design yields a smaller feed opening in the bottom of the receiver compared to rifles using a double stack magazine well. When machining of these smaller ports is complete there is more steel remaining in the receiver between the ejection port and adjacent feed port, and significantly more steel overall where all receivers have the least strength. These characteristics combined to make the Remington 788 receiver more rigid and stronger than most, if not all, competing designs, including the Remington 700 which shares the same outside receiver diameter. A rifle's accuracy tends to increase slightly as the rigidity of the receiver increases, as this slightly reduces barrel deflection during firing. Thus the Remington 788 has the structural foundation to be a very accurate rifle."