A Gun a Week: Remington Model 788, .308 Winchester

Remington Model 788 in .308 Winchester. 

We all like recycling right? Want to save the planet and stuff. And lately we all like bad-mouthing cops too. So what if we could do both at the same time and get a rifle out of the deal? That's kind of what I did when I bought this Model 788 Remington back in 2006 or so...I really should've kept better records on purchase dates.

Back in those days, when the "Jack-Booted Government Thugs" kicked in your door to serve a warrant on you, and you possessed firearms even if you weren't allowed to, or if the warrant was a felony warrant, the cops would keep them! One of the things gun owners have to worry about in order to enjoy the privilege of buying and owning firearms legally is adhering to the law. It can be tricky--thus far I've managed to do so by not, you know, selling drugs, beating my wife, or killing people...etc. Stupid cops, right? Crazy that they'd take a firearm out of an alleged criminal's domicile. 

Hard plastic butt plate means you can't just lean it up
in a corner--it'll slide right down.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, someone's battered old Remington 788 was seized in a raid, or taken in as evidence in a criminal case, and held onto by "the government" for a while and then, in a burst of common sense, was sold to a firearms distributor/wholesaler to gain back monies for the courts, police departments, and other government entities. Seized firearms are essentially recycled for cash instead of being chopped up and destroyed. To me, it makes perfect sense to recoup some of the money spent on law enforcement by selling the possessions of lawbreakers to law abiders like me with a rifle addiction.

You see? Over-zealous cop bashing and recycling! Two for one in this week's blog.

And that brings us to my Model 788. Back then there was a store in Greensboro, NC called Southern Firearms--today it's called Dana Safety Supply operating as Southern Public Safety Equipment & Southern Firearms, but it's still there. Also back then, my "go-to" gunstore's owner heard from the guy running Southern Firearms at the time about some evidence guns that were for sale. And knowing my love of just about everything Remington--hair straighteners and nose hair trimmers notwithstanding--the manager, Ken Something-something, let it be known to me that he had a deal on a little rifle in .308 Winchester.

Everything Remington I always say.

The Model 788 was introduced in 1967 as a more affordable model than the Remington flagship, the Model 700. I can't imagine how it would be less expensive to make as it shares several qualities with the M700, but that's how it was marketed until about 1984. Mine was made in 1974 according to internet sources. The rifles are machined out of a piece of tubular steel, like the M700, but have rear locking lugs instead of the front locking lugs on the M700. The receiver "bridge" of the M788 is super long to accommodate these lugs, which might limit one from mounting a shorter, more compact scope, but they do allow for a shorter bolt throw which may or may not make working the bolt and reloading easier and faster--I have no opinion on that.

The 788's bolt is in front. Note the nine rear locking lugs as opposed to
the other two bolts, a Winchester and a Remington top to bottom, that sport
the age-old front-located, dual opposing locking lugs.

They might've saved money on the trigger assembly, since there's no adjustment screws on it. They just slapped them together and pinned them in and what you get is what you get. A M700's trigger can be adjusted by the owner though no one recommends that you do so--and yes, we all do so. And there's no visual cocking indicator that lets you see if the rifle is cocked and locked when you're afield but that's no big deal since the safety cannot be engaged if the rifle's not cocked. So if you got a second, and you can't remember if you loaded your rifle after you climbed up into your stand, try the safety? Though, if you can't remember, maybe you shouldn't be in a tree stand with a rifle at all.

The rear locking lugs and the big plastic safety at home in the action.

My Model 788 came with a bent scope attached--legend was it was used as a bludgeon in a murder so the nickname it got in that very small circle of friends (more like a triangle really) was "the murder weapon". 788's are magazine fed affairs too, but guess what was missing from mine? I've yet to get a good deal on a vintage rifle that comes with the magazine it was born with. It's always an Ebay or gun show crawl to get one of those pesky magazines that always seem to disappear. I can tell you, like the aforementioned Model 760 Gamemaster, the old magazines are pretty pricey...just as well. 

The manager, Ken, had an eye on a pistol I owned at the time, so getting the rifle I wanted was a simple affair of "you buy my Ruger Super Blackhawk (in .357 Mag/9mm Luger) at Greensboro Gunworks, and I'll jaunt down to your store and buy the scope-bent, mag-missing murder weapon". We had to do it like that because of all the paperwork and commissions and such, and I think in the end I got the rifle for $250.00 plus tax...fricking tax. They tax us when we make the money, and tax us when we spend it? Both ends! And we're fine with it I guess...but I digress.

A vintage rifle deserves a vintage scope--especially if the rifle has a very long
receiver bridge that doesn't accommodate modern, compact scopes.

The gun's first trip to the range was as a single shot but it proved to be a shooter. The grubby barrel it peered down at the store didn't look any better after i cleaned it prior to shooting and that worried me a bit, but it still shoots well. All that neglect after murdering someone didn't seem to affect accuracy much, but I often wonder if it would shoot much better had the barrel stayed pristine. It shoots well enough that I wouldn't rebarrel it now--it'll last longer than I will.

As a handloader, the rifle's never had store-bought ammunition through it. Everything I've blasted out of it was hand-rolled by me, and the favorite load it seems is the one built around Nosler's 125 gr Ballistic Tip bullet. And it the powder Winchester made for the .308 Win. round since they started loading the round: Win 748. The two just came together in "the murder weapon" and shot just fine. Fine enough even to be used on a quick, after-work hunt with a buddy of mine up in Stoneville, NC.

A tweak of scope adjustment, and this dog will hunt.

A hay field partly surrounded by a band of trees was the setting where the garden-poaching herd of deer would appear at just about the same day everyday, and one day, J.B. and I were there fixing to get ready for them. At one point, the surrounding band of trees are nearly all pine trees which means for quiet stalking instead of crunching through hardwoods' leaves. And that was the plan of attack in the last few minutes of legal shooting light. We walked couched over on our knees in the pine needles to within 40 or 50 yards of a group of emboldened deer who had rarely been shot at in those days. J.B., a lefty, was on my left and we whispered we'd shoot at the same time, him shooting a deer on the left, and I shooting a deer on the right.

At the time I had mounted on the rifle a Leupold Vari-X III, 1.5-5x scope which is a fine and dandy choice for bright sunny days (and hard kicking rifles), but we were under a bower of pines nearly thirty minutes after sunset and I was straining to see a smallish doe through the little 20mm objective in the dusk. We were counting down and I was bobbing around trying to find the cross hairs to put on the shoulder of one of the deer. And we were counting down. Finally, I settled in and squeezed off the shot and my little doe disappeared. Turns out, since the deer were so close, I had hit her very high on the shoulder through the spine and she died instantly where she had stood.

Older scopes tend to be longer for their power, so I stuck this old Redfield on the 788.

That was the first deer I shot with that rifle and the last, though I have hunted with it and shot it many times since. It just hasn't happened for the rifle again, but I'll keep trying. So from the belly of a government recycling plan, for good or bad, I reclaimed "the murder weapon" for hunting and shooting. It's chambered in one of the best all-round cartridges ever developed so it was a no-brainer at the time. 

In the ironic world of guntardness, these days many 788s will garner a higher price on the used market than the old Remington standby M700 which the 788 was developed to be cheaper than. Find an old 788 in 30-30 Winchester or 44 Remington Magnum, and you better dig deep into your pockets to buy it. I owned another 788 Carbine in .243 Winchester but I sold it off to make room in the safe for other projects. No, I think owning only one of these old bolt guns is enough to get a taste of how shooters and hunters from the last century went around hunting and losing their magazines in the woods so I'll just hang onto mine for a while longer. But if you see it for sale any time soon at Southern Firearms, I'll probably be in jail!

Worth its weight in gold if you have a 788 without one. They don't make 'em
like this anymore.