I have a pile of Ultra's... mostly assembled via the Boyd's stock route... they fit me perfectly and are very easy to shoot free hand... I have made a bunch of the heavy barrels into shorties... For me the best feel in a Handi is a heavy barrel shorty, 18-20" (I prefer 18")... the weight sits right between my hands and the gun feels so solid at my shoulder... I have half a dozen in this configuration. I don't have a .22/250 any more, decided to stick with .223 because I was loading for too many calibers, I moved away from the LA's (.22/250, .25/06, .280, .30/06) in favor of the SA's (.243, .260, 7mm-08, .308)... I really only miss the .280, even though I have 7mm-08. The .22/250 I had was a very accurate gun and did not suffer from any of the accuracy issues that you hear about.