After spending years of shooting a custom rifle, I was very concerned about possibly going back to a factory rifle, but I was told by Scott Grange at Browning that I wouldn’t be disappointed in the performance of the new factory guns.
Our test gun is an X-Bolt which was developed in 2008.  More specifically, we had our hands on an X-Bolt Stainless Stalker in Carbon Fiber.  After years of producing the tried and true A-Bolt, Browning developed this new model which has some pretty good improvements to cater to the guys like me who have been shooting a custom rifle for years, but don’t want to pay the custom gun prices.
Our test gun is 300 WSM with a 23” barrel and tips the scale out of the box at 6 pounds 6 ounces.   The Dura-Touch® Armour coating on the stalk make for a sure grip and weather resistant finish.  The bolt has three locking lucks and a heavy duty extractor and plunger style ejector.  The sixty degree rotation on the bolt makes for short movement to eject the cartridge out of the chamber.  The X-Bolts new Feather Trigger system is probably one of the best improvements to an off the rack factory gun.  It is adjustable from 3 to 5 pounds and our test model was set at 3.1 pounds when we got it out of the box.  The trigger system had absolutely no creep and felt like a gunsmith had done some polishing and turned this into a custom trigger, but it was fresh out of the box.  The barrel is free floating and fluted with a target crown.  The target crown means that the final machining on the end of the barrel insures that the rifling’s do not get damaged.  Any damage to your rifling’s will cause major accuracy problems.  The X-Bolt comes in barrel lengths from 22 inches for standard cartridges, WSM cartridges have 23 inch barrels, magnum cartridges come in 26 inch barrel lengths.  This gun has a detachable rotary magazine which lines up the next round directly with the chamber.  This proved to make for very smooth feeds even with a short magnum cartridge.  I feel that this system is a great asset for anyone wanting to shoot a short action cartridge.  Browning has eliminated the base plate on the X-Bolt where the magazine goes as is with the A-Bolt which reduces weight.  The magazine release button is ample in size and the design insures that you can even pull it out with heavy duty winter gloves on.  The receiver itself is where the X-Bolt gets its name.  Each set of mounting holes for your scope has four holes creating an X.  This system makes for an extremely secure scope mount.  Until recently, the only mounts that would work on this setup were the Browning X-lock mounts which is a combined mount and ring set-up, but there are aftermarket products available now.  The X-lock system is what we used and it was an excellent setup.
We originally set this gun up for a spot and stalk spring bear hunt in British Columbia.  Our shots could be as close as 20 yards but could also exceed 500 yards.
After bore sighting the gun for a 200 yard zero, it was off to the range.  With nearly a box of ammo through the gun and on target, we started working on loads.  This gun was shooting factory Federal Ammunition with Barnes 165 grain TSX bullet in sub .5” MOA.  Prior to the bear hunt, we fired over 100 rounds through this gun which has continued to shoot sub .5” MOA groups.  Our local range goes out to 800 yards and this gun can consistently hit the mark on a 14” steel target.  This gun is the best factory gun that we have ever put to the test.
On the trip to British Columbia, we successfully connected on two different bears with this exact gun.  Mark Boardman of Vortex optics was successful on a seven foot bruin at slightly over a hundred yards.  The big bear only went 25 yards before he piled up from one well placed shot out of the Browning Stainless Stalker X-Bolt.  I personally carried this gun on every rifle hunt for the entire 2010 hunting season.  Over a half a dozen deer and a couple of antelope fell to the X-Bolt and all with one shot kills.
I have so much confidence in this gun after the 2010 season that it is the first gun I grab when I open my gun safe and look for a weapon of choice.  This gun is for sure a custom gun at a factory gun price.

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