I cannot believe these guys with their .243's. Buy a gun. Step up and get a 25-06. Done, and no more belly aching because it did what they asked.

Sorry but I hear more [beeep] about that caliber.

ive heard the wssm cals are real hard on barrels and arent all theyve cracked up to be or something

I have a .243 WSSM in a model 70 and love it, so much that I ordered a upper from Dtech. Here is a paragraph from an article I found on " wssmzone.com " -

Just as with the 223 WSSM, naysayers and pundits say that the 243 WSSM will burnout a rifle barrel much more quickly than its competition. To combat this criticism Winchester and Browning have done extensive testing and have concluded that both the 223 and the 243 WSSMs, respectively, do not burnout barrels any sooner than the competition. In fact, both Winchester and Browning ship all of their production and custom 223 and 243 WSSMs rifles with a chrome lined barrel; thereby increasing barrel life by nearly 500 rounds as reported by Dick Metcalf of Shooting Times Magazine in his June 2005 article Super Short Magnums -- The Rest of the Story.

I can't really give you any help with the price other than tell you to do a little research comparing prices of similar packages. As for the caliber IMO you can't go wrong.

Metcalf's words are near 5 years old now. As far as I know, no one is even producing factory WSSM's any longer. And too, Metcalf has proven to be no modicum of wisdom over the years. One would most often do well to read Metcalf's advice, then do the opposite.

And we would expect Browning to make the claim that the barrels in these guns were as durable as "the competition." (But what competition is that?) It would be more convincing to see an independent test done... but the folks who have bought these rifles by the thousands have voted... and they say they're extremely difficult to get any decent accuracy from, and that barrel life is terrible.

Browning/Winchester began lining the barrels with chrome because the first guns released were torching the throats out really quickly (more so the .223 than the .243)... The WSSM's rep for torching barrels is well deserved, it seems. The chrome lining will help a little, and may assuage the casual shooter, but not the serious rifleman.

Add to that the cost (and ever increasing scarcity) of brass and factory ammo, and the fact that you can get similar performance from other cartridges already well placed in the market (the 22-250 and the .243 win)... and it's hard to justify the WSSM.

Dan

My number one rule for buying rifles:

There is no right price for the wrong rifle.

Always buy rifles (or guns of any kind) for cash. Paying cash causes the buyer to make better decisions. If the cash looks better than the rifle, walk away.

If you want a rifle in this caliber, and this one showed up, it may be the right rifle. If you weren't already looking for one of these, but you were looking for a scope, buy the scope for a good price but leave the rifle.

There is no right price for the wrong scope either.

Fitch

I've been hearing about how tough the WSSM's are on barrels since I've been building uppers chambered in that line. I was working on a .243 WSSM upper before dies were even available. I was only able to get a set of pre-production dies from a friend at Redding to do my loading with, there was nothing else available. Without actually digging up the dates, I'm not even real sure how long it's been, but I believe it's been about 7 years (time flys when your building lots of uppers!)

In that amount of time I have built and shipped literally hundreds of uppers in .243 WSSM. I have yet to have my first upper come back with a washed out throat, or even one with fading accuracy. Yes, the .243 WSSM is going to be harder on barrels than another .243 caliber cartridge that operates at lower pressure and lower velocity. I don't have any hard numbers, but I would certainly think that if the WSSM's were as bad as what the naysayers would like us to believe, I would have had at least a few come back with fading accuracy.

I've been chambering my own barrels in .204 Ruger for only about 2 years, and have already had my first .204 barrel come back that has been "shot out". No, the WSSM's and the .204 are not in the same class, but I don't hear the warnings that the ".204's are barrel burners".

My customer that "shot out" his .204 barrel did it in two seasons of prairie dog hunting. When I gave him the bad news about his barrel, he just smiled. He obviously looks at it the same way I do: Getting enough trigger-time in to have the need to re-barrel ANY rifle is a good thing! I haven't had enough time in the field for the last 8 years to even come close to shooting anything out.....