Tuesday, October 15, 2013

A Good Friend's Rifle Is Back On The Line

Eric Ching's "Chingring" scout is back in service...


Before I knew I'd be leaving Minnesota I had one of the rifles bequeathed to me by our late and much lamented friend Eric Ching sent to me here.  This Remington Seven (blue synthetic) is chambered for the 260 Remington cartridge and wears a Burris 2.75x scout scope. What makes it especially Eric's rifle is that it's fitted with his Chingring - a sleeve attached to a cylindrical section of the barrel just ahead of the receiver.  Cut away most of the bottom of the sleeve and affix a Weaver rail and your rifle is ready for a forward mounted optic.  Back in the day of hopelessly expensive pedestal barrels this innovation allowed a fella to inexpensively install a scout scope on a skinny barrel.  This idea was borrowed, improved upon, and commercialized by Ashley Emerson and currently offered as the XS/Clifton Scout Mount by XS Sight Systems 

The neat little rifle arrived with some of Eric's mild deer loads (125 grain Nosler Partitions at ~2700 fps) and several boxes of factory 140s.  I took it to the range the other day to double check the zero, just because.  I will not chase whitetails this year; too many balls in the air, what with the new job, moving to Arizona, and all.  This very sensible scout rifle shot only one pair wider than an inch in 30 rounds and is now zero'd three inches high at 100.  We are going to be very good friends.  

As I shot through a partial box of Eric's handloads marked "2006" I remembered that I watched Eric drop a North Dakota whitetail at last light with ammo from this very carton on his last hunt the year before he died of brain cancer in 2007.  I miss our friend, but I will be honored to return his deer gun to the field - whether in Arizona, North Dakota, or Minnesota - at the very earliest opportunity.


1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the photos of the rifles. Congrats on the new job. Enjoy.

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