@ Latigo Morgan Some years ago, I worked in the retail FA & accessories business for a major outdoor sports outfit. I had the opportunity to get to know the newest Winchester Model 70 bolt-actions quite well, since we carried them as one of our product lines. Fabrique National of Belgium now has the license to product rifles (Olin Corp. owns the name, if memory serves) under the Winchester and Browning names, and that’s whose product we were selling (amongst many others). Many Americans, quite naturally, wish that these fine old brands were 100% American-owned and manufactured like in the old days… a sentiment I share to an extent. However, if any foreign concern is to make Browning and Winchester, FN is probably the best choice out there. Why? Because John Moses Browning himself had a long-standing association with the Belgian firm, and so did his son, Val. In fact, when the elder Browning passed away in 1926, he was visiting Fabrique National at the time. Pre-1964 Model 70s are prized by collectors and shooters alike as a pinnacle of the gun-maker’s art and craft. Renowned for their quality and accuracy, they were known as “the rifleman’s rifle,” and with good reason. Under market pressure from less-costly competitors such as Savage Arms and Remington, the story by which Winchester’s upper management dropped the ball, so to speak, by moving away from controlled round feed and other desirable but expensive-to-produce features, is now well-known, which is why a stigma of sorts attached to their 1965 and subsequent products for many years. To clear the air, Winchester’s Model 70 has never been a bad rifle or even a mediocre one. Many examples of push-feed rifles from that era are very good or even excellent rifles; they were just not made according to the pre-1964 specs. However, 1965 was a long time ago and Winchester has long since righted the ship. The Model 70s produced under the aegis of FN are superb examples of the art of gun-making and every bit as good as their pre-1964 forbearers. Better, as heretical as that might sound to the purists. And the feedback from my customers was uniformly positive; I never had a complaint from someone who purchased a model 70 and then used it on a big hunting trip or safari. Smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-up all the way around. During the same time period, Winchester’s arch-rival Remington suffered a precipitous drop in quality and sales reflected that. Sad to see, really, given how storied a name in American manufacturing they once were. I could not then recommend the new Model 700 to customers, frankly, because they were so problematic. The old well-made ones? Yeah, no problem there. They were great. If you hanker for a Model 70 but don’t have the coin to get one new, consider tracking down a used Model 670. What, you ask? If memory serves, Winchester made them starting in the late-1960s and discontinued the line in the late 1980s. These… Read more »