Should you own one? I've managed to live my whole half-century long life without owning one. Maybe you can, too...
On the other hand, most of the men I hunted with from childhood to young adulthood swore BY their Remington 742's and only one guy I hunted with in my formative years swore AT his. My dad got his in 1969, used it every fall until 1985, and swore it was the finest hunting rifle money could buy at any price. His brothers and my mom's brothers felt the same way. So did quite a few guys we hunted with that we weren't by blood relations to. We would have up to 35 hunters at our 20 acre hunting camp, and at least 20 of those folks used the 742 extensively. All but one of them was chambered to .30-'06. One of my uncles had to be different and his was a .308.
I know 35 guys in one hunting camp sounds like a lot, but this property borders a National Forest on 2 sides, and BLM land on another.... We didn't hunt on the property, and there were hundreds of thousands of acres outside the gate so we had plenty of room to spread out.
I grew up seeing a lot of deer hanging in the shade of pinion trees, thanks to being hit with a bullet fired out of a 742. It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most popular gun in the hunting camps of my formative years.
The one I am most familiar with is my dad's. It wasn't all that accurate with some loads. But my dad stumbled on to a load that consisted of a 168 gr. Sierra GameKing HPBT over a middlin' dose of 4064 in '73 when he started reloading... His 742 would group around an inch with that. Somtimes a little tighter, sometimes a little bigger, but always under an inch and a half. In the off-season, when he took the rifle to practice, he'd shoot over 100 rounds through it in a session -usually closer to 200 hundred. He wouldn't clean it until he was done with it for the day. When he cleaned it, he was very thorough about it. He had a special brush in his cleaning kit that he used to use and he said it came with the rifle when he got it. I never saw that rifle jam, misfeed, or fail to fire once, and my dad praised its reliability.
He could have cared less what "gunwriter experts" thought about semi-auto hunting rifles. He firmly believed that the bolt action was "yesterday's news" and that semi-auto rifles were the wave of hunting's future. My uncles shared that sentiment. In my dad's case, I think experience shooting the M-1 Garand and the M-14 during his military career had some influence on his thinking. His older brothers were Korean War vets, his younger brother was a Vietnam Vet like he was. So they all had experience with high-power semi-autos.
My dad, his five brothers, five of my mom's brothers, and eight other guys I grew up hunting with all thought very highly of their 742's and had nothing but praise for them. As I mentioned, the one guy who often cursed his didn't maintain it all that well.
Some of my uncles also had the 760 pump action. My uncle with the .308 742 had a 760 in .270 that would shoot groups under an inch with just about any 150 grain factory load it got fed.
I never felt compelled to own one, mostly because the semi-auto firepower didn't seem to be much of an advantage. Most of the guys I hunted with who had them filled at least one deer tag with theirs every year. They normally only fired one shot per deer tag, too, and that's why rapid repeating firepower seemed kind of non-essential to me.
It still does, for the big game hunting and centerfire target shooting that I do.
