Browning Hells Canyon Sport

Have an opportnity to purchase this rifle in 7mm Mag. Anybody have any experience with this rifle? Bit spendy for my needs, but might be tempted to buy it.

Thanks

Pete

Hells Canyon Sport or Speed? I just bought a HC Speed – never heard of a HC Sport. Can’t tell you much about it since I haven’t even got it home yet, but X-Bolt’s seem to be highly regarded as reliable no-fuss rifles that are accurate straight from the factory. Mine is chambered in 6.5 PRC.

The Hells Canyon Speed is dressed in a camo synthetic stock, fluted barrel coated in bronze cerakote, and a thin little radial muzzle brake.

I don’t personally have experience with the Hell’s Canyon line, but the Hell’s Canyon line shares the Browing X-bolt action, so IMO there’s nothing not to like about an X-bolt

The X-bolt is Browing’s top-of-the-line action and there are a million tests and reports on the interweb about the X-Bolt. If there’s somebody out there who genuinely tested the X-bolt and didn’t get very good (or better) accuracy from it, then I’ve never seen the test and I would have to question their results.

I believe the Hell’s Canyon series is fully glass bedded and free-floated, and they have Browning’s top-of-the-line trigger (Featherlite or something like that) so even more accuracy enhancements are added on top. Again, all tried and true enhancements.

7 MM Magnum, well, not much you can’t do on this continent with the granddaddy of the metric magnums, is there? Some would say it’s overkill for whitetail, but then again whitetail are not exactly known for being armor-plated, so I’d say there are a lot of rifles in the deer woods that could be said to be overkill. I don’t personally consider the 7 Mag to have harsh recoil, but it’s probably on the upper end of what I’d think of as desirable strictly for a midwest deer rifle. Of course, if you frequently head west, that’s a different calculation.

The ammo is going to be a bit more pricy than 06 most likely, but IMO this seldom matters to the average hunter. IN normal times, there certainly are plenty of choices in loadings.

In summary, if you like the rifle and the cartridge, IMO there’s no reason not to go for it because it’s very difficult to go wrong with an X-bolt.

Speed is correct. My mistake. A bit surprised that the barrel on the 7MM is 26″; many of the Sport calibers are 22″ or 23″.

Pete

I own two identical 6.5PRC Hells Canyon Speeds. Both shoot great and its very hard to tell them apart at 200 yards. The action and clip setups work nice. I hope to buy a 300PRC in the same setup as well.

trophy19 wrote:

Speed is correct. My mistake. A bit surprised that the barrel on the 7MM is 26″; many of the Sport calibers are 22″ or 23″.

Pete

Its the appropriate barrel length for most long action magnums. lots of slow burning powder to burn

ajw wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>trophy19 wrote:</div>
Speed is correct. My mistake. A bit surprised that the barrel on the 7MM is 26″; many of the Sport calibers are 22″ or 23″.

Pete

Its the appropriate barrel length for most long action magnums. lots of slow burning powder to burn

Correct I believe my old Savage 7mm Mag barrel length was about the same, my current 06 is shorter.