This year, seven of our field editors looked through the thousands of new products offered by the outdoor industry, tested hundreds of them, and finally came up with a list of the 22 best. These are Field & Stream's Best of the Best.
Philip Bourjaily, Peter B. Mathiesen, Keith McCafferty, John Merwin, David E. Petzal, Bob Robb, and Dave Scroppo
[BRACKET "Rifle"]
SAKO QUAD
Anyone who can learn to speak Finnish must be pretty clever, so it should be no surprise that it was the people at Sako who came up with the idea of a rimfire rifle with interchangeable barrels. The gun comes in .22 LR, .22 WMR, .17 HMR, or .17 Mach 2, or you can get all four as a set. Swapping barrels is a cinch even for the mechanically disadvantaged: Turn a key wrench to loosen a set screw that holds the barrel in place; pull out the old barrel; push in the new one; retighten the screw. I figured it out without even reading the directions.
The Quad is a racy-looking synthetic-stocked rifle with an excellent trigger, 50-degree bolt lift (which was quite stiff on the one I tried, but it was brand-new), and color-coded barrels so you can tell one caliber from another. Accuracy is outstanding. Quads are expected to turn in ¿¿-inch groups at 100 yards at the factory.
Ah, you say, but what about rezeroing every time you switch barrels? Even that has been taken care of. Burris makes a 3X¿¿¿9X scope called (what else?) the Quad with four resettable dials that are color-coded to match the barrels. Simply turn the dial, and you're there. $948 for the Quad in any single caliber; $1,739 for the four-barrel set; 800-636-3420; beretta.com -D.E.P.
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