Having the option of raising and lowering the height of the comb allows each shooter to adjust the rifle for his own style of shooting and to the particular scope he will be using. The Tactical version of the Tikka rifle allows the shooter to do just that, and the adjustable comb is reversible for left- or right-handed shooters.

The height-adjustable comb of the Tikka T3 Tactical's stock can be switched to the other side for a left-handed shooter.

When mounting a scope on a varmint or target rifle, it is nice to have plenty of to-and-fro latitude so the scope can be positioned for optimal eye relief. In this respect, the adjustment range of the common receiver-attached scope mount can be quite limited on some rifle/scope combinations. I consider the Picatinny-style rail to be the proper solution to this problem, and I am happy to say the Tactical comes from the factory wearing exactly that atop its receiver.

The receivers of all other Tikka T3 rifles, except for the new Super Varmint, are grooved for scope mounting, and rings are included in the package. (The Super Varmint features a Picatinny-style rail much like the T3 Tactical.) My T3 Tactical was one of the first built, and because someone at the factory forgot to include rings, I used a pair from Warne for attaching the Burris scope.

Stock length is also important on a long-range rifle, and it is impossible to satisfy everyone with a nonadjustable stock. Some shooters prefer a short length of pull when shooting from the prone position and a longer pull when shooting from a benchrest. The optional spacers available for the T3 Tactical stock is a perfect solution to this age-old problem; you simply add spacers to make the stock longer and remove them to make it shorter.

When working hard to control the prairie dog population, I often shoot a rifle as a single shot, even if it has a magazine. Another brand of rifle I tried during the summer of 2005 would not feed reliably if I placed a cartridge through its ejection port and atop the magazine follower and tried to close the bolt. To avoid a jam, I had to carefully start a cartridge into the chamber. Not so with the T3 Tactical. I can simply throw a cartridge into its ejection port and be concerned about nothing except making sure I have the bullet end of the cartridge pointed forward.

The T3 Tactical has an extra-capacity magazine and comes with a Picatinny-type scope-mounting rail on its receiver.

During my first varmint shoot with the rifle I found myself checking the chamber on several occasions after closing the bolt on a round because I thought maybe it had somehow dropped out of the rifle. That's how slick the action was when feeding a manually loaded cartridge, and it was just as smooth when cartridges were fed from its detachable magazine. Effortless feeding from the magazine is due to the fact that it is of single-column design. That type of magazine has always had a reputation for giving up cartridges more smoothly than rifles with the Mauser-type, staggered-column magazine, and the Tikka rifle is proof enough of just how true this is.