Considering an upgrade to your rifle for accessories? We tested the Salmon River Solutions Hunters Rail on a 6.5 PRC. See our thoughts below!
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The Bergara B-14 Wilderness HMR 6.5 PRC we tested here is getting an upgrade. I really love this rifle, but I wanted some options. In order to run the rifle on a tripod with Arca mounts, we needed – you guessed it – an Arca rail. We turned to Salmon River Solutions. They produce some high quality Ti muzzle brakes along with several options for mounting ARCA and Picatinny rails to stock forends. Gavin put a Ti muzzle brake to the test on the 22GT seen here.
About the Salmon River Solutions Hunters Rail
From the manufacturer’s website:
The all new Hunters Rail is the perfect setup for the weight conscious backcountry hunter. With 2″ of picatinny rail, an integrated sling stud, and plenty of usable Arca rail for use on a tripod. It’s the best multi use rail out there. The mounting side is slightly radiused to match the contour of any stock, and the ‘U’ cutout area is designed to wrap around the nose of your bottom metal.
Each rail comes with 3 sets of screws and tee nuts.
Short rail overall length- 10.625″, 3oz
Long rail overall length- 11.5″, 3.1oZ
Installing the Hunters Rail.
Adding the Hunters rail to the Bergara was a simple DIY project – anyone interested in tinkering can do it. If you don’t want the hassle, your local gunsmith should be able to do this in a short amount of time.
We started by removing the existing sling stud and barreled action from the stock. Next, we mounted the rail so we could locate and mark the third hole location.
At this point Gavin took over, putting the stock on Mathews PM-949V. He counterbored the aluminum interior chassis (using an endmill) on the Bergara and put in a steel insert for the mounting screw.
*NOTE: On many sporting type rifles, all you’ll need to do is drill a hole and use the supplied T-Nuts. Some holes may be re-used if already present!
With this done, the rest was very easy – just fasten the rail with the supplied hardware.
Putting it to Use
After the rail is installed, using compatible accessories like a bipod or tripod is easy.
Here we have an ARCA bipod, the MDT CKYE Pod using the ARCA portion of the Hunters Rail:
Since the Hunders Rail is full-length, an ARCA tripod can be used at just the right balance point for the rifle:
And you can also use a Picaninny mount bipod at the front of the rail:
And one last thing: If you’re using a sling, you can use the integrated sling stud to clip into! With the Hunters Rail, you have more options for hunting setups than any other setup I’m aware of- all in a weight conscious package!
Get the Gear
Salmon River Solutions Hunters Rail
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Thanks,
Travis Fox
