Peruse the pages of any gun or hunting magazine and you will see ads for lots of custom riflemakers. And although I'm sure many of them are pretty darned good, sending a gun off to a perfect stranger--for repairs, accuracy work, or a full-blown custom job--is a frightening proposition. It certainly was for me when I commissioned my first custom rifle in the mid-1990s.

Hill Country Rifles Big 5 Classic

I was in the market for a good, lightweight rifle that I could call on to fulfill a variety of hunting chores. I thumbed through the gun magazines, called the advertisers, and, I thought, asked all the right questions. After a lot of contemplation, I decided to give Hill Country Rifles a try.

I spoke with Matt Bettersworth, Hill Country's general manager, at length about my project. Several better-known shops were high on my list, but I was swayed ultimately by Hill Country's accuracy guarantee and the company's understanding of the importance of reliability in a hunting rifle. With modern technology, it is not that difficult to build an accurate rifle. But to build a rifle that can deliver tiny groups and cycle as fast as I can work the bolt, even when it's caked with dirt and mud, is much more difficult. I was convinced that the folks at Hill Country understood what I required in a real-world hunting rifle, so I sent them a Remington action.

The lightweight 7mm Remington Magnum Hill Country shipped back several months later exceeded my expectations. It shot everything into less than a half-inch and fed reliably, no matter how fast I worked the bolt. And it weighed less than eight pounds scoped and loaded! The rifle accompanied me on my first African safari, and I shot many head of big game with it before I retired it a few years ago when I entered my .30-caliber phase.

My collection of Hill Country rifles has expanded to include .260, 7mm Remington Magnum, .30-06, .300 WSM, .35 Whelen, .375 H&H, .416 Remington Magnum, and two .308 rifles. They wear barrels of varying makes, lengths, and contours, with a variety of stocks, but each of them meets Hill Country's legendary accuracy guarantee.

The guns from Hill Country Rifles come with an accuracy guarantee of a half-inch at 100 yards. The rifles are fired in an underground 100-yard range before they are shipped to the customer.

Guaranteed Accuracy
Hill Country Rifles does everything from general rifle work to full-blown custom rifles but is perhaps best known for its sub-inch accuracy guarantee. Every custom rifle Hill Country builds, from wood-stocked dangerous game rifles to flyweight mountain rifles, is guaranteed to put three rounds of factory ammunition into a half-inch or less at 100 yards. Semicustom Harvester rifles are guaranteed to deliver one-inch or better groups, and the .308 sniper rifles are guaranteed to shoot under a quarter-inch at 100 yards with factory match ammunition.

Those are pretty bold guarantees, but Hill Country has proven to me time after time that it can deliver. What baffles me is how the company does it. To satisfy my curiosity, I called Bettersworth and asked him.

"It's gotta be the bedding," he said.

Bedding rifles is not rocket science. (I have managed to bed a few guns without getting my hand permanently stuck to the stock.) I could not believe that Bettersworth would give so much credit for Hill Country's success to something so basic