Varmint Hunter wrote: "Groundhog hunting typically entails large volumes of fire over fairly flat ground"
You must be thinking of prairie dogs. Ground hogs are generally hunted in farm-type terrain which is often rolling or hilly.
And if your ground hog hunting entails large volumes of fire, someone must be missing an awful lot...or else giving the ground hogs a fair chance by firing multiple warning shots (just kidding, of course). Unlike prairie dogs, I just have never, ever found them in such great numbers that "large volumes of fire" were required.
As to big bores sending large chunks of lead across the countryside, I'll just end with this: I'd much have a neighbor who's a safe, conscientious shooter lobbing his 45-70 loads at varmints than a neighbor who gives little thought to backstops when he cuts loose with his .223.
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Encore 58 wrote: "Are the TC custom shop barrels better made than standard production. Can you have match grade chambers in custom barrels made by Fox Ridge Outfitters?"
The custom shop barrels are nothing more than standard production barrels but with a greater choice in terms of caliber, contour and finish. And, Thompson-Center does not have the capability to cut a chamber any way other than the upper-end of SAAMI spec (and occasionally over).
They have actually produced barrels in .22LR and .38 Spl which were called "Match," but none that I tried ever measured up to true match specs as the tolerances were, for lack of a better description, on the "loose" side. In fact, while both the standard and match chambers in .22 LR have shot quite well for me, on the whole, the standard chambers were the more accurate of the two when one considers aggregate scores over a number of years.
