Saturday I bought my wife her first ever firearm, a little inexpensive Taurus .22 for her to mostly look at. She's 71 and was a teacher for 40 years, and the NEA lead her to believe that all firearms were evil. Then she met me...
Anyway, I was looking at two different .22-250 rifles for myself, as a goal to see a long box under the Christmas tree. I had my hands on a Howa, and the trigger was gritty and heavy. I then was handed a Ruger KM77VT MKII. It was also a heavy rifle and it looked like the barrel channel wasn't as straight as I'd like, but it wasn't touching the barrel, and the trigger
was not what you'd expect from an out -of-the-box Ruger. It was wonderful!. The price was a negotiable $699, the same as the Howa, but I don't think there was any comparison.... Now to work on my wife, the keeper of the checkbook,.......and to figure out which scope to get for it...