Tikkas's T3 Tactical Is Also A Great Varmint Rifle
Engineered for the demanding tasks of law-enforcement professionals, this variation of Tikka's T3 rifle has everything the varmint hunter needs.
It's funny how different people see the same things differently. Several other writers and I got our first hands-on look at the new Tikka T3 Tactical rifle at a Primedia editorial roundtable. I am sure the image of a S.W.A.T. team member dressed in black flashed instantly across the minds of the others as we examined the rifle, but that's not what I saw.
The vividly clear picture depicted by my mind's eye showed me sitting in the middle of a South Dakota prairie dog town with the T3 Tactical by my side as a conveyor belt running from me to the nearby Black Hills ammunition factory fed a steady stream of .223 cartridges to my position. (In fact, I used it for a lot of my varmint shooting last year, and it worked beautifully.) More about this incredibly accurate rifle later, but first here's a tidbit of history.
The Tikka bolt-action rifle in its present form was introduced to American hunters in 1988 by Stoeger, which at the time was owned by Sako. (Both companies are now owned by Beretta of Italy, and Sako and Tikka riffles are distributed in the U.S. through Beretta USA, Dept. ST, 17601 Beretta Dr.; Accokeek, MD 20607; 800-636-3420; www.berretausa.com). Before then, about the only Americans who had ever heard of Oy Tikkakoski Ab (Tikka, for short) were the few who had bought that company's break-action, over-under combination gun with one barrel in 12 gauge and the other in .222 Remington.
First imported during the 1960s by Sullivan Arms of Indianapolis, Indiana, it represented a lot of gun for its $234.50 price tag. The Tikka combo gun is no longer available in the U.S., but the company does have all the bolt-action bases covered quite well, and this includes varmint rifles.
Several years ago a moose-hunting friend of mine, who is also an engineer at the Sako factory in Finland (where Tikka rifles are built), asked me to describe the ideal rifle to be used for precision shooting at long range. Now, I am not naive enough to believe he hung on my every word, but I am happy to say that a number of the design details I suggested have since appeared on several Sako and Tikka rifles, including the T3 Tactical.
Has The Right Stuff
One of the items on my priority list was a height-adjustable comb on the stock. Due to the extremely large objective diameters of some of today's tactical and varmint scopes, the scopes have to be mounted quite high above the receiver.
The Burris 6-24X Black Diamond with its 30mm tube and 50mm objective worn by my T3 Tactical is a good example. It is a wonderful scope, and its optical quality will leave you breathless, but when it is mounted on some rifles, the shooter is forced to lift his cheek off the comb of the stock in order to look into the exit pupil of the scope. Needless to say, this is not conducive to accurate shooting and less than comfortable to boot.
North American Whitetall
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