I've always been a fan of short, handy rifles. I'd rather tote a lightweight and maneuverable six- to seven-pound, short-action hunting tool with an 18- to 22-inch barrel than lug a 24- or 26-inch standard-configuration gun weighing eight or nine pounds.

It's probably because I spent so many years working exclusively with handguns, so I'm into short and handy. My favorite factory-production hunting rifles have always been compact and semi-carbine bolt-action models like the Remington Model Seven, Ruger Ultra Light, or Winchester Model 70 Featherweight.

The barrel of all Ed Brown Damara rifles is fully free-floated, and a fine-fit threaded-on compensator is optional on the light-barrel Damara format.

My favorite of all hunting rifles these days is the new bolt-action Damara from Ed Brown Custom Inc. (Dept. ST, P.O. Box 492, Perry, MO 63462; 573-565-3261; www.edbrown.com), which is now available as a standard-configuration item in 7mm-08, .270 Winchester, .30-06, 7mm Remington Magnum, and .300 Winchester Magnum, with stainless- or blued-steel Shilen barrel and optional muzzle brake. The Damara is the rifle I hunt with when I can hunt with what I want, and I've hunted with the Damara from Wyoming to Namibia.

It used to be that carrying smaller, lighter weight rifles meant you had to trade something off in comparison to "full-sized" guns--accuracy or power or range or all of those very important things. Today, thanks to improvements in modern quality-control firearms manufacture and advances in ammunition technology, lightweight shorter barrel rifles can fire cartridges with every bit as much performance (sometimes even more) than the biggest and heaviest of their brothers.

SPECS Ed Brown Damara 300 Winchester Magnum Bolt-action Rifle
Manufacturer:	Ed Brown Custom Inc.
Model:	Damara
Operation:	Bolt-action repeater
Caliber:	.300 Winchester Magnum (other chamberings available)
Barrel Length:	24 inches
Overall Length:	45 inches
Weight, empty	6.9 pounds
Safety:	Three position
Sights:	None; Talley scope bases installed
Stock:	Brown Custom McMillan Graphite
Magazine Capacity:	3 rounds
Finish:	Satin blued receiver and barrel; black stock
Price:	$2995

And when you step up from standard factory fare to what is coming out of the custom riflemakers, you're really in a different universe. For pure accuracy, performance, and functionality, I'll stack Ed Brown's new Damara up against any other configuration of any other hunting rifle in the world at any price.

I said the Damara is "new." In terms of its current configuration, it is, but the basic format has been in the Ed Brown inventory for several years. The Damara's immediate predecessor was called the Ozark, which Ed originally conceived as a custom-built high-grade analog to the Remington Model Seven, to appeal to weight- and size-conscious hunters like me.

It had a synthetic stock with a semi-Schnabel tipped forend like the original wood-stocked Model Seven and a 22-inch barrel. When Winchester introduced the .270 WSM and 7mm WSM cartridges back in 2001 and 2002, I asked Ed to build a pair of Ozark models for those chamberings with 20-inch No. 3 contour barrels--one blued, one stainless. I like short, but I also like a little bit of forward balance; it helps me steady down, moderates muzzle rise, and keeps me more kinesthetically aware of where the front of the gun is. (I'm the same way about handguns.)

When he put these rifles together, Ed told me I should really consider them as prototypes of the next generation rather than standard Ozarks because he was planning on making changes and formalizing certain features and calibers into standard "production-custom" models that would be marketed as off-the-shelf products through selected retail gunshops (including the Gun Libraries of all Cabela's retail stores).

He said he was particularly glad it was to be me trying them out because he had discovered over the 30 years we'd known each other that if there was a specific feature or type of rifle setup that I really liked he never got orders for it from anybody else. So one of the smartest things he could do if he wanted to create a bestseller would be find out exactly what features I liked in a gun and then build them exactly the opposite. I was touched.