I've owned quite a few rifles with extremely long throats, in both bolt guns and Contenders/Encores, but they all seemed to shoot fairly well. I had a 21" Contender barrel in 7mm TCU with such a long throat, I couldn't reach the lands even with 162gr BTHPs. It was ridiculous, but the barrel still shot pretty well with 120-162gr loads. I guess my point is, don't worry to much about the throat. Just try a few loads with 55-602gr bullets, and see how she shoots.