I have two Tikka rifles, a Whitetail Hunter in .25-06 Rem., ss/lam, and a T-3 in .223 Rem,
blued/syn, I reload, and do OAL measurments, for all loaded bullets. In the .25-06,
I do not have any issues with seating to the lands, and getting that COL into the magazine.
Measured velocities correlate to published data. The .223 is very new to me, but for the
one bullet I have loaded for, very early in this load development cycle, I have been able to
use my typical COL's, given the OAL measurments. And I believe I could seat to the lands,
if the magazine allowed for that(have not checked that).
So maybe this long throat issue is only present in WSM chambers, in Tikkas. I will
say that given the accuracy of these two rifles, I sure wouldn't get hung up on not
being able to push another 100 fps, out of the load, or touching lands with bullets,
but I am an accuracy freak, not a velocity freak. The .25-06 shoots a variety of
bullets in the range of .6 MOA, to .3 MOA. Which is getting in a region that most
of this variance is the trigger work. What little I have seen of the T-3, .223 Rem, it
leads me to believe it will shoot at least that well.
As for the customer service issue, I have yet to need it, but the one question I e-mailed
to Tikka was responded to within two days. Having dealt with Browning a few times,
that meets, or excedes my expectations. I wonder why Muddyboots has not gotten
answers to his questions, within a reasonable amount of time...No judgement here,
just wondering. Incidentally, I thought the responses from the gentleman from
Sako sounded reasonable, and very pragmatic.
On the topic of WSM, the only rifle I have in a WSM chamber is a Howa 1500, in
300 WSM, that I won at a DU Banquet. I can reach the lands, with 150, and 168, grain
Barnes TSX bullets, but for these bullets, they really like being .050" off the lands.
I start to develop a 125 gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip load for it, for a groundhog voporizer,
and I could not reach the lands with that bullet. I eventually scrapped the idea, since
I decided I really didn't need to get abused by this rifle, for the purpose of making
ground woodchuck. The .25-06 TIkka is death from afar, on woodchucks, and
there isn't much to look at after an 85 gr. NBT gets done with them as it is.
From my OAL measurements on the Howa, the throat is a bit long, too.
It must be common in the industry to cut WSMs a little long in the throat.
Squeeze